[Bug 804355] Re: jot random number generator broken in batch jobs

[James Page]

Thanks for taking the time to prepare this patch.

Some feedback on the update:

1) debian/changelog

athena-jot (9.0-5yandex0) oneiric; urgency=low

a) oneiric development has close since its now been released - your fix
needs to target precise.

b) 9.0-5yandex0 works but is not inline with the way the version should
be incremented - 9.0-5ubuntu1 would be appropriate.

* Use arc4random number generation instead of time based

You should add (LP: #804355) to the changelog entry - that way this bug
would be closed when the package is accepted into the archive.

2) patching

This is quite an older package and pre-dates some of the newer package
format options; it would be nice to switch this package over to
source/format 3.0 and provide the fixes as a patch rather than changing
the upstream source code directly.

See http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/DebSrc3.0

Thanks for you work so far!

Cheers

James

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/804355

Title:
  jot random number generator broken in batch jobs

Status in “athena-jot” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  jot -r generates same random numbers within one second time so it's
  unusable in batch jobs like shell scripts.

  There is code for initializing "random" seed:
      s = (randomize ? time(0) : STEP_DEF);
      /*... snip ....*/
      srand((int) s);

  Here is an example of this behavior:
  rbtz at rbtz-desktop:~$ date +%s; jot -r 1 0 10000000
  1309455778
  9981995
  rbtz at rbtz-desktop:~$ date +%s; jot -r 1 0 10000000
  1309455779
  2355993
  rbtz at rbtz-desktop:~$ date +%s; jot -r 1 0 10000000
  1309455779
  2355993
  rbtz at rbtz-desktop:~$ date +%s; jot -r 1 0 10000000
  1309455779
  2355993
  rbtz at rbtz-desktop:~$ date +%s; jot -r 1 0 10000000
  1309455780
  3745306
  rbtz at rbtz-desktop:~$ date +%s; jot -r 1 0 10000000
  1309455780
  3745306

  As fast fix pid can be added to seed
  srandom((int) s ^ (getpid()<<4));

  As good fix arc4random or similar mechanism can be used.

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