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Re: svnserve processes

From: Branko Čibej <brane_at_xbc.nu>
Date: 2005-02-12 22:17:47 CET

Jani Averbach wrote:

>On 2005-02-12 21:31+0100, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>
>>On 11.02.2005, at 21:53, Igor Hjelmstrom Vinhas Ribeiro wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Reading from /dev/random takes an undefined amount of time.
>>>/dev/random is a source of "true random" numbers in Linux - the
>>>timing of some events like keyboard manipulation is used for
>>>producing these numbers and, if there is nobody doing stuff that is
>>>used to feed this random number generator it simply blocks until it
>>>happens.
>>>
>>> Try removing /dev/random (or moving it to something else) and
>>>creating a link from /dev/urandom to /dev/random. /dev/urandom is a
>>>pseudo random number generator that always returns a number
>>>immediately.
>>>
>>>* Just as an experiment: try doing your stuff while someone
>>>furiously plays with the keyboard on the machine in which the
>>>process is stopping. You will see that the wait will be *very*
>>>reduced.
>>>
>>>
>>Hold up. I gotta ask about this. I didn't understand a word the OP
>>said... what are we talking about? Are we saying that subversion uses
>>/dev/random, and that this takes a long time unless someone is banging
>>on the keyboard on the server?
>>
>>
>
>On certain cases, i.e. when creating a new repository, SVN needs a
>source of "randomness". It uses for this on Linux and on other systems
>when present, /dev/random device, which is a "true random source",
>which will block if it's empty.
>
>
And once the locking branch is released in 1.2, every lock will need
randomness, too. We must change _something_ so that we don't have to
rely on how APR was built.

-- Brane

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Received on Sat Feb 12 22:20:20 2005

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