From owner-freebsd-arch Mon Feb 26 4:49:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from smtp02.primenet.com (smtp02.primenet.com [206.165.6.132]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F2B6937B401 for ; Mon, 26 Feb 2001 04:49:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr05.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp02.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id FAA21322; Mon, 26 Feb 2001 05:43:16 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr05.primenet.com(206.165.6.205) via SMTP by smtp02.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAiaaWNP; Mon Feb 26 05:43:08 2001 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr05.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA16208; Mon, 26 Feb 2001 05:49:25 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200102261249.FAA16208@usr05.primenet.com> Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random To: kris@obsecurity.org (Kris Kennaway) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:49:20 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), kris@obsecurity.org (Kris Kennaway), arch@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20010225193157.A16118@mollari.cthul.hu> from "Kris Kennaway" at Feb 25, 2001 07:31:57 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > Ignoring that, what makes you think you can come up with a better > > algorithm than Donald Knuth? > > Me? No, but others have done so. Terry, the existing rand() is a bad > algorithm just about any way you look at it. It's useful because it creates repeatable results with the same seed, which are the same for the same seed on other platforms. We have supposed cryptographically strong random numbers from /dev/random. Are you going to replace the 48 bit algorithm with an algorithm that's cryptographically strong? If you do, could you put it on the bottom of /dev/random and kill of the "entropy harvesting" so I can use my 386 machines again? At least let it be a compile time option, set in make.conf. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message