Re: recent sysinst UX changes

[Reinoud Zandijk <reinoud%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Nov 09, 2020 at 10:10:56AM +0000, nia wrote:
> i run into it on real hardware, thinkpad t60.
> 
> my preference is:
> 
> - when booting in a VM, if there is no RNG device attached,
>   the system should print a warning with instructions on how
>   to attach the device.

In practice this means running in Qemu I guess? For all machines there is the
possibility virtio-rng device as per spec (is there another?) and mentioned in
the virtio bounty on tech-kern@. For x86_64 aka AMD64, the situation can be a
lot easier.

When running Qemu on an recent host using NVMM, the RDRANDOM instruction is
not trapped and will use the hosts entropy. I've checked this with installing
the 9.99.75 installation CD and installing on a harddisc. At no time i've been
asked for entropy. So apparently when using qemu+nvmm new installs
automatically get good entropy to start with.

Reinoud