Re: ATF tests still failing to complete within 2 hours on amd64

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 02:34:49AM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> 
> Only happened once, but given that other people have reported this
> panic in chat I think that test may need its tolerance loosened. :(

The risk of a false positive is 3 in 10,000.  I suspect that, in fact,
the data being emitted by the RNG are in fact badly biased at boot
time under some circumstances: a much larger problem than a test that
falses positive and reboots the machine immediately at startup one
in 3333 tries!

I have recently committed changes that allow the i386 port to load
saved entropy from the boot blocks such that any positive result
from this test would indicate either a bug in the test (unlikely;
it is very widely used) or a bug in the generator itself.  I'd be
very interested in hearing from anyone who gets a reboot with the
boot block entropy loading turned on.

Thor