/dev/random changes

[Russell Coker]

It seems that the behavior of /dev/random has changed recently in rawhide.

I have a machine configured to use an encrypted swap space with /dev/random as 
the source for the key via the "-d /dev/random" option to cryptsetup.

Until recently the command "cryptsetup -d /dev/random create swap /dev/hda2" 
completed in a reasonable amount of time.  Now it will hang almost 
indefinitely (I've waited for over 16 minutes).  Pressing the SHIFT, CTRL, and 
ALT keys repeatedly during the boot process can make cryptsetup complete in 
as little as a second.

It seems to me that previous kernels used some entropy that's available during 
boot (such as interrupts from the hard disk) and recent kernels have stopped 
doing so.

Is this a bug or a feature?

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