Re: svn freezing at checkout on FreeBSD

Branko Cibej to Anton Shepelev:

> > On FreeBSD 14.3, svn 1.14.2
>
> Out of interest, where did you get this version? I have a VM
> with FreeBSD 14.2 and the Subversion in ports is version
> 1.14.5.

Probably an unfinished upgrade from 14.1.  After `pkg upgrade
-f' (which fixed some other errors), my Subversion is 1.14.5
(r1922182).  The issue persists.

> > I have made sure that both /dev/random and /dev/urandom do
> > not block, by reading a single byte from them:
> >
> >    od -vAn -N2 -tu2 < /dev/random
> >    od -vAn -N2 -tu2 < /dev/urandom
> >
> Reading one byte won't tell you much. You just tested that the
> entropy pool isn't empty. Try reading 100 or 1000 bytes,
> that's a more realistic test.

It works, too.

> Subversion itself uses randomness -- via APR's
> apr_generate_random_bytes(), which uses /dev/urandom on
> FreeBSD -- to encrypt passwords on disk. This is an optional
> feature and doesn't seem to be enabled in the port. And
> anyway, /dev/urandom is guaranteed not to block, see
> https://s.apache.org/7v30k .

I thought urandom was symlinked from random, but checking currnt
FreeBSD docs shows it is not (or no longer) so. OK.

> Given all of the above, what evidence do you have that your
> checkout is blocking on /dev/[u]random ->

It is the only reason I have seen mentioned in connexion with an
infinte blocking of svn.

> -> and not, for example, on DNS resolution?

In case specifically of DNS resolution, svn does not hang
forever.  Futhermore, `svn up' and `svn ls' do not freeze on the
affected system, from working directories connected to the same
repo which it hangs with during co.  My latest test shows that
`svn co' get all the files excep the last one (alphabetically).
and only then hangs:

             <https://paste.c-net.org/RadioBanging>