I need to setup a Debian HURD test machine to investigate a problem I was seeing in the Crypto++ library. After setting up the machine and running an apt-get install for some build tools I noticed Python was failing:

    Fatal Python error: _Py_HashRandomization_Init: failed to get random numbers to initialize Python

It seems HURD no longer provides /dev/urandom out of the box. This is new behavior, and it was not present in the past. It is present in the ISO's from June 2019 (https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/current-hurd-i386/iso-dvd/).

Python may want to employ a fallback strategy since whatever is using Python ignores the error and trucks on.

Sorry to dump this on you.

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jwalton@hurd-x86:~$ ls /dev/*rand*
/dev/random

jwalton@hurd-x86:~$ python --version
Python 2.7.16

jwalton@hurd-x86:~$ uname -a
GNU hurd-x86 0.9 GNU-Mach 1.8+git20190109-486/Hurd-0.9 i686-AT386 GNU

jwalton@hurd-x86:~$ apt-cache show python
Package: python
Architecture: hurd-i386
Version: 2.7.16-1
Multi-Arch: allowed
Priority: standard
Section: python
Source: python-defaults
Maintainer: Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org>
Installed-Size: 68
Provides: python-ctypes, python-email, python-importlib, python-profiler, python-wsgiref
Pre-Depends: python-minimal (= 2.7.16-1)
Depends: python2.7 (>= 2.7.16-1~), libpython-stdlib (= 2.7.16-1), python2 (= 2.7.16-1)
...