Strange experience with diskperf

[David Shaw]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 12:17:29PM -0400, Charles.Thomas at pfpc.com wrote:
> 
> We have had a strange experience with gnupg and diskperf.  It seems right
> that it should be publicized.
> 
> We installed gnupg in our development and QA environments and all went
> well.   When we went to promote the application and supporting code to
> production we had a rude awakening.  We found that we could not encrypt.
> gnupg would hang in the encryption phase.
> 
> QA and production are identical windows servers running Windows Servers OS,
> Version 5.2.3790.
> 
> Eventually we noticed that diskperf was off in the QA environment, but
> active in production.   We turned it off in production, and the problem
> went away.  We turned it back on, but the problem stayed away (for now?).
> 
> It is not clear if this is a Windows or a gnupg bug.  Either way it does
> not give one a warm a cosy feeling.  Has anyone else had a similar
> experience?  Should it be brought to the attention of developers?

Consider it brought to their attention.

What you are seeing is probably related to the fact that GnuPG can use
diskperf as one of its random number sources.

Can you give more information - specifically what version of GnuPG?
Also, on your system without diskperf, do you get a message like
"NOTE: you should run 'diskperf -y' to enable the disk statistics" ?

David