Re: Inquiry about the removal of flag O_NONBLOCK on /dev/random

Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-09-07T13:03:34Z

On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 12:16:56PM +0200, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 10:25 AM Guozihua (Scott) <guozihua@huawei.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2022/7/26 19:33, Guozihua (Scott) wrote:
> > > On 2022/7/26 19:08, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> > >> Hi,
> > >>
> > >> On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 03:43:31PM +0800, Guozihua (Scott) wrote:
> > >>> Thanks for all the comments on this inquiry. Does the community has any
> > >>> channel to publishes changes like these? And will the man pages get
> > >>> updated? If so, are there any time frame?
> > >>
> > >> I was under the impression you were ultimately okay with the status quo.
> > >> Have I misunderstood you?
> > >>
> > >> Thanks,
> > >> Jason
> > >> .
> > >
> > > Hi Jason.
> > >
> > > To clarify, I does not have any issue with this change. I asked here
> > > only because I would like some background knowledge on this flag, to
> > > ensure I am on the same page as the community regarding this flag and
> > > the change. And it seems that I understands it correctly.
> > >
> > > However I do think it's a good idea to update the document soon to avoid
> > > any misunderstanding in the future.
> > >
> >
> > Our colleague suggests that we should inform users clearly about the
> > change on the flag by returning -EINVAL when /dev/random gets this flag
> > during boot process. Otherwise programs might silently block for a long
> > time, causing other issues. Do you think this is a good way to prevent
> > similar issues on this flag?
>
> I still don't really understand what you want. First you said this was
> a problem and we should reintroduce the old behavior. Then you said no
> big deal and the docs just needed to be updated. Now you're saying
> this is a problem and we should reintroduce the old behavior?
>
> I'm just a bit lost on where we were in the conversation.
>
> Also, could you let me know whether this is affecting real things for
> Huawei, or if this is just something you happened to notice but
> doesn't have any practical impact?

Just following up on this again...