Re: Waiting for Randot (or: nia and maya were right and I was wrong)

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell%mumble.net@localhost>]

> Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 12:23:46 +0100
> From: Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>
> 
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 01:25:36AM +0000, Taylor R Campbell wrote:
> > We might also do something similar with the motd -- add a single line,
> > citing entropy(7) for more details, if there's not enough entropy.
> 
> Please don't - that is one of the least usefull places to put such a
> note.

Can you expand on why?

It's a common place these days for, e.g., `software updates have been
installed requiring a reboot' (Ubuntu); it can be a single line (we
used to have paragraphs of text!); it would give a reference to the
user-oriented documentation to read for more information.

> I still think that this should be dealt with (once and for all) at
> installation time (as we did for a short period, for some machines and
> install methods) - but apparently it is impossible to reach consensus
> on the wording and supported methods, so I won't touch it.

It's fine to put _optional_ functionality into sysinst, perhaps in the
utility menu or in the post-installation config menu alongside setting
the timezone and enabling ssh &c.  What's not fine is making the user
feel trapped until they take some remedial action about entropy,
before they can proceed to anything else in the installation.

The installation process is already too cumbersome and full of
incomprehensible jargon with mandatory questions about things like
BIOS disk geometry that even I (despite being a member of the core
team) have no idea how to answer correctly.

I'm not saying this to blame you for complexity -- I appreciate the
work you've put into improving sysinst.  I just expect that the impact
of thrusting mandatory questions full of jargon in a user's face is to
make them hate the questions and do whatever minimal activity they can
to get through without really improving security.  Cf. certificate
warnings, which just induce mindless clickthrough.