Bug 1465323

Summary:	virt-customize cannot set random seed for fresh Debian 9 guests
Product:	[Community] Virtualization Tools	Reporter:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Component:	libguestfs	Assignee:	Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
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Version:	unspecified	CC:	ptoscano, redhat-bugzilla
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Last Closed:	2025-10-17 00:10:33 UTC	Type:	Bug
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Description Richard W.M. Jones 2017-06-27 08:33:20 UTC

Description of problem:

  $ virt-sysprep -a debian-9
  ...
  virt-sysprep: warning: random seed could not be set for this type of guest

This is a newly created Debian 9 guest, so d-i has run but the
guest has never been booted normally.

Debian 9 uses systemd and systemd-random-seed.service.  The
service file contains:

  [Unit]
  ...
  RequiresMountsFor=/var/lib/systemd/random-seed

which seems to indicate that this is the path where the
random seed would be stored.

However this path does not exist, and virt-customize works
by assuming that the seed file exists before it will detect
and overwrite the seed.  I'm guessing this file would be
created at first boot of the guest, which is too late.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

libguestfs-tools-c-1.37.14-3.fc27.x86_64

How reproducible:

At least once.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a new guest using d-i.
2. Run virt-sysprep on it.

Comment 1 Peter Lawler 2019-02-05 22:54:07 UTC

Still happening in virt-sysprep 1.38.6 (on debian itself)

Hopefully not too many server farms are relying on this to work as intended. Bit of a worry that there was no script failure when attempting this, as I'd argue that the user's intention is clearly to set the random seed and any failure to do so should generate a major error and stop the sysprep operation, not merely continue on as if this isn't a possible security problem.

Comment 2 Red Hat Bugzilla 2025-10-17 00:10:33 UTC

This product has been discontinued or is no longer tracked in Red Hat Bugzilla.

Comment 3 Alasdair Kergon 2025-10-17 12:52:13 UTC

Reopening because Virtualization Tools has not been discontinued.