On Tuesday 15 February 2005 11:39 am, Pete Gonzalez wrote:
> > > I currently have a problem with generating random numbers (/dev/random
> > takes
> > > undefinied amount of time) which slows things very much.
> > > That could explain the 'unpredictable' factor: maybe you don't have
> > > enough random numbers on your system. But do a strace and it'll help
> > > understand where the process 'hangs'.
> >
> >I recompiled APR with "--with-devrandom=/dev/urandom", then recompiled
> >my Subversion client against that APR, and the problem went away.
>
> I have thought about this problem, and I would like to argue that
> "/dev/urandom" (or even better the alternate timer-based implementation)
> should be the *default*, rather than being a retarded "gotcha" for
> new users:
<TEXT DELETED>
> In my case, the /dev/random issue turned out to be a design problem
> in the 2.4 Linux kernel (see below). I've also seen several newsgroup
> discussions discussing improper default configurations for /dev/random,
> so this situation can occur in several ways.
I'm not going to claim I truly understand how /dev/random works, let alone how
it can be improperly configured. However, I wonder if the misconfiguration
can be detected programatically? In other words, is it possible to modify
the Subversion or APR configure scripts to look for this situation and
default to /dev/urandom if it appears necessary?
-Sean
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Democracy is three wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
-- Benjamin Franklin
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Received on Tue Feb 15 19:21:02 2005