Bug#1106083: scilab: FTBFS: autobuilder hangs when using the kernel of trixie

[Santiago Vila]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 12:09:48AM +0200, Étienne Mollier wrote:
>  0. if I trust Helmut Grohne, I cannot empty the entropy pool;
>     maybe I can just make it more strained, so the behavior may
>     be unreproducible to some extent: for instance I have not
>     managed to reproduce the behavior straight on my laptop;

I would be quite surprised if the entropy pool was the problem.

I remember the time when several packages (mostly
cryptography-related) failed their test suites because of this.

I found haveged to be the perfect workaround for that, and I always
installed it in all my autobuilders, but I stopped using it two years ago
when the kernel had a new implementation of /dev/random making haveged
not necessary anymore (maybe this is what Helmut might have
told you about the entropy pool).

Moreover, as a test, I've built scilab 20 times with haveged
installed, and the failure rate is more or less the same.

I think the entropy pool is unlikely to be the problem.

(But of course I'm glad that you are considering all possible
scenarios).

I guess that at some point we should probably tell upstream about this.

Thanks.