why might debian install require constant pressing of ENTER?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

| I seem to vaguely remember there being occasions where my systems have
| perked up when I hit the keyboard.

There is one case where this can be explained: when the system is
generating keys (eg. for IPSec or BIND or SSHD) it needs random
numbers.

/dev/random will only yield bytes if the system thinks that it has
enough "entropy"; otherwise, a read will hang until enough entropy has
accumulated.  One source of entropy is keystroke timing and another is
mouse events.

    "Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random
    digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed
    out several times, there is no such thing as a random number --
    there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict
    arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."

	John von Neumann

If the program needing random numbers uses /dev/urandom, no delay will
occur BUT the keys may be very weak.

PS: I was looking for that quote and came up with von Neumann's
wikiquote page.  I saw this quote for the first time and liked it:

    "You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place
    your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics
    under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place,
    and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so
    in a debate you will always have the advantage."

	Suggesting to Claude Shannon a name for his new uncertainty
	function, as quoted in Scientific American Vol. 225 , (1971),
	p. 180

They don't say which Number of Volume 225 that came from.  It is
Volume 3 (September), one of only two that I still have from 1971.
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