Fixing getrandom()

Posted Sep 29, 2019 19:37 UTC (Sun) by flussence (guest, #85566)
In reply to: Fixing getrandom() by mezcalero
Parent article: Fixing getrandom()

So, I had a lingering question that the last paragraph of that page answers sufficiently.

I've got a system where the NVRAM is probably fine, but it has a broken EFI implementation (AMI), where nobody bothered to implement deallocating deleted vars, so eventually it'd start returning -ENOSPC for every write operation. Me naively leaving pstore panic logging enabled soon flushed that out (followed by real panic at efibootmgr failing, and a day of downtime trying to figure out what went wrong and tearing the room up to get at a CMOS jumper).

The kernel help text for EFI features could use a gentle reminder that yes, EFI firmware *is* written by the same nincompoops as the bad old BIOSes of the 90s, and should be equally mistrusted.