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

[Doug Barton]

Changing venue to -current, since these kinds of protracted discussions 
don't belong on the commit mailing lists.

Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> But for whatever reasons, many systems seem to have incorrect
> random(4) initialization. 

I don't think it has anything to do with /dev/random initialization, I think 
that there is an error somewhere in the fortune code that is causing this 
problem. I have seen the same problem Greg has for a long time now, but for 
me it's the fortune with the CVS $FreeBSD$ tag that comes up about 8 times 
out of 10. This is still true even on a system that has been up and running 
for hours, and has kern.random.sys.seeded: 1

I can't tell if it's a problem with how the files are randomized in the 
first place, or how they get played back, but I haven't looked at this very 
hard yet.

> You'll recall the debate about removing Rush Limbaugh fortunes recently

I didn't see this debate as I've had e-mail "issues" for the last couple of 
days, what list was it on? In any case, I would not be at all happy if these 
fortunes were removed. I agreed to add them to the "offensive" fortune 
database because the rule there is that you don't add -o or -a to your 
command line unless you are willing to run the risk of being offended. If 
every committer gets to go through the fortune database and remove every 
fortune that they find offensive, it's going to be a mighty small file.

The obvious alternative is to make their removal a local hack if you feel 
that strongly about it.

> This is the only place
> where it seems to make any difference, so it's easier to use a
> different seed.

Since my thesis is that this is not a /dev/random initialization problem, I 
tend to agree with you. Just to be on the safe side, I have bumped up both 
the size and number of my /var/db/entropy files, and I'll gladly be proven 
wrong on this one. However, I sincerely doubt that this is actually a 
problem with /dev/random.

hth,

Doug

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