FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months [LWN.net]

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 18, 2015 19:10 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (guest, #16953)
In reply to: FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months by nnewton
Parent article: FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Good luck with that, people run this stuff and expect stability. As an example Debian testing has a warning that they occasionally break things (and they do) yet people screamed up, down and sideways because when they pulled systemd into testing they broke things. And just like this they didn't blame it on using the testing, they blamed it on the software.

Doesn't matter how big your warning is someone will post that they've never had problems running and then people start to rely on it and blam it will break and they will blame the software "because it's always been stable". I almost wonder if they shouldn't just do a release every so often that breaks everything just as a reminder not to use these development branches on production machines.

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FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 18, 2015 20:25 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (11 responses)

The conversation with testing usually goes more like this.

Me (user): I have identified this problem in testing. Is this known?

Person purporting to speak on behalf of debian: Don't run testing.

And the conversation goes in circles for 15 minutes while they attack the me until someone finally provides the answer. "Yes it's a known problem since 2 weeks ago. Yes there is no secure way to update the repository keys." Or similar.

And later I eventually find my way to a solution and/or workaround.

In other words, it shouldn't be surprising that people yell about problems in testing, because the communication around problems in testing is so bad.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 19, 2015 7:46 UTC (Thu) by ghane (guest, #1805) [Link] (6 responses)

My conversations go like this:

Me: There is a problem with testing
Colleague: What! Why are you running testing? Didn't you know debian says don't run testing? Does boss know?
Me: <whine> But I need gpsd from this decade! And I am the boss of the company!
Colleague: A friend of a friend ran testing once, and he was fired the next day, and his fridge ran out of beer.
Me: The three were related?
Colleague: No, but why tempt fate. Don't run testing.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 19, 2015 12:12 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (5 responses)

Heh. Seems people are more scared of testing than Rawhide (and there's experimental yet!). Usually my Rawhide bugs get completely ignored (usually closer to releases which is understandable), fixed within a reasonable time, or a "yeah…other stuff needs to land yet" (read: "probably should have built things in a side-tag") responses, but very rarely "that's a dumb idea".

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 19, 2015 21:22 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link] (4 responses)

It's probably because lots of people get encouraged to try testing when they shouldn't, and it's got a undeservedly bad reputation as a result. In the RH universe I've got a smooth progression from CentOS/RHEL (reliable, out of date) to Fedora (won't be broken on a day-to-day basis, big changes every six months, fairly current software) to Rawhide (here be dragons).

In the Debianverse anyone who complains about out-of-date software in stable will be told to use testing because it's *practically* stable. This ends up being no fun for the person who discovers testing is not the same as fedora, or for the people maintaining testing who don't need to be doing end user support.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 20, 2015 20:15 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

It sounds also like people who *understand* "here be dragons" and want to help by providing bug reports, are actually being chased away by the developers!

If I choose to run something unstable, find a problem, and ask "is this a known issue?", then what's wrong with providing me with a yes/no answer? I'm not asking you to fix it, I just want to know whether I should be filing a bug report!

I know there are various shades of grey, but at the end of the day, I do know that if I ask a simple question and get a bunch of non-answers, it is extremely annoying. Especially when it is blatantly obvious either (a) they don't have a clue to my motives for asking, or (b) they clearly didn't bother to read the question properly.

Cheers,
Wol

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 21, 2015 23:59 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

Typically it's not the developers responsible for the problem, but third party community members on webistes/mailing lists/irc/etc who suffer from a malady known as "know-it-alls". The actual developers are petty good.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 23, 2015 4:22 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I would ask "so who is supposed to test *test*ing if no one is supposed to run it?" to those folks. I wonder if they think it should be renamed "dumping ground" or something.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 21, 2015 12:02 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

These days there's a reasonable chance that you'll be pointed to the backports system instead of directly to testing.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 20, 2015 9:57 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

> Don't run testing.

Then how this "testing" is supposed to be, well, tested? Isn't the whole point of testing to be a staging ground where problems are found and fixed? So why this "person purporting to speak on behalf of Debian" is upset that someone found a problem in testing?

[Disclaimer: I run testing, updated daily. Yes, even at work (where it's updated weekly).]

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 20, 2015 12:20 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (2 responses)

> Don't run testing.

I recall conversations and posts that state that Debian has a de-facto rolling-release distribution called "testing". And if I remember correctly, there were attempts to promote testing as an accepted distribution that can be used by end-users. Or have I been dreaming this up?

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 20, 2015 12:38 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (1 responses)

People have talked about making testing be that, under the banner CUT ("Continuously Usable testing").

However, that does not describe the nature of testing as it currently exists. Notably, testing spends, to a first approximation, six months out of every two years in a "freeze" state where it only receives updates to fix release-critical bugs pursuant to getting it into a state where it can become the new stable. For added fun, during the freeze, packages which have RC bugs are removed from testing (they remain in unstable) until an acceptable fixed version of the package is submitted.

(And after the freeze is over, it spends a couple of months in a flurry of updates and reinstatements.)

I'm currently running testing on my home desktop system, but I wouldn't use it in a "production" environment unless I had the resources available to set up a proper testbed environment.

FreeBSD random number generator broken for last 4 months

Posted Feb 20, 2015 19:38 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Yeah, I think No Frozen Rawhide (branching Rawhide off at Alpha rather than Beta or RC (I forget which)) has been a great improvement. It basically stalled development for projects where version x+1 couldn't be worked on/prepped because if it was targeted for Fedora N+1 because Rawhide was stuck with x which is targeted for Fedora N. It adds a month or two to the time to prep a release. Though the extra time is/should be lower activity since stabilizing the imminent release should be a priority, but not everyone works on critpath packages either.