> Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 12:23:46 +0100 > From: Martin Husemann <mar...@duskware.de> > > 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.
