Donald -

To be clear - no import of random or of hashlib is required to trigger this issue. The null script alone triggers the issue; the Python hash secret is initialized at startup regardless of script contents.

Yes, there is a race condition at system boot which we can probably resolve with userspace manipulations. I still feel that having Python hang indefinitely under certain circumstances, even when the application does not require any entropy, is a violation of the principle of least surprise. At the very least, there should be a command-line flag to disable "secure" initialization of the hash secret.