Re: cvs commit: src/games/fortune/fortune fortune.c

From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog_at_lemis.com>
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 08:37:11 +0930
On Saturday, 23 July 2005 at 13:09:41 -0600, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> In message: <20050723064449.GZ842_at_wantadilla.lemis.com>
>             "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog_at_freebsd.org> writes:
>> You should take a look at what I committed.  It simply uses the
>> microsecond value returned by getlocaltime() for the automatic seeding
>> by srandomdev().  It fixes the problem.  I can see only two
>> explanations:
>>
>> 1.  srandomdev(), random(4) or friends are broken.
>> 2.  random(4) has been initialized incorrectly.
>>
>> Currently I'm guessing (2), but I don't care much either way.
>
> When sradnomdev() is broken, *DO*NOT* kludge around them by
> committing half-baked "fixes" like you did.

This code is good enough for fortune.  Nobody's claiming that it's a
solution to random number generation.  Others should look at that
aspect, not get involved in a commit war.

> It is broken.  We need to find out the *REAL* cause of the problem.

Agreed.  Is anybody doing that?  It's not my area.

> If Rush gets more quotes than normal, and that annoys people to find
> the real problem, we shouldn't mask it.  It is a really bad choice
> from a security point of view.

So it's better to back perfectly valid code rather than to look for
the real culprit?  What kind of security is that?

Greg
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Received on Sat Jul 23 2005 - 21:07:13 UTC

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