Re: Random not so random - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Bruno Wolff III
Subject Re: Random not so random
Date
Msg-id 20041004155742.GA8488@wolff.to
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Random not so random  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-general
On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 10:14:19 -0400,
  Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> It occurs to me that you might be seeing predictability as an indirect
> result of something else you are doing that somehow tends to synchronize
> the backend start times.  Are you connecting from a cron script that
> would tend to be launched at the same relative instant within a second?
>
> It might improve matters to make the code do something like
>
>     srandom((unsigned int) (now.tv_sec ^ now.tv_usec));

Using /dev/urandom, where available, might be another option. However, some
people may not want their entropy pool getting 4 bytes used up on every
connection start up.

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