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    SubjectRe: RFC/PATCH: Random pid generation
    On Mon, Jan 10, 2000 at 08:25:54AM +0100, Ph. Marek wrote:
    > Hi Linus, hi Alan, hi everybody else not explicitly mentioned,
    >
    > here's a
    > patch for testing (comments please cc: to me) and
    > inclusion for the 2.3
    > series (if believed to be ok).
    >
    > Short summary:
    > More and more programs (eg
    > CGI-Scripts) use the PID as pseudo-random number.
    > As this isn't really
    > random and easily guessed from the outside (esp. with
    > daemons loaded while
    > booting) it's a little bit troublesome.
    > My patch allows some kind of
    > modification to the current routing which just
    > increments the last pid
    > until a free pid is found.
    >
    > Possible are
    > - last_pid+1 (as before);
    > -
    > complete random (entropy pool);
    > - low and/or high byte randomness added;
    > -
    > multiply last_pid with prime, add another prime;
    > - pseudo-random.
    >

    I did a patch to do this a while ago (it was submitted by Matthew
    Kirkwood) and it was rejected. I believe that Alan didn't feel that
    it contirbuted much other than hiding /tmp races in badly witten
    programs.

    Sean

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