Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758235AbZCONHn (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:07:43 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751583AbZCONHd (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:07:33 -0400 Received: from pfepb.post.tele.dk ([195.41.46.236]:60550 "EHLO pfepb.post.tele.dk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751465AbZCONHc (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:07:32 -0400 Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:09:30 +0100 From: Sam Ravnborg To: Geert Uytterhoeven Cc: linux-kbuild , LKML , Roman Zippel , Ingo Molnar Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] kconfig: improve seed in randconfig Message-ID: <20090315130930.GA7146@uranus.ravnborg.org> References: <20090315102341.GA6051@uranus.ravnborg.org> <20090315102856.GB6292@uranus.ravnborg.org> <10f740e80903150353i233d0da5rabde6e97607e3435@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <10f740e80903150353i233d0da5rabde6e97607e3435@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1432 Lines: 36 On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:53:03AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:28, Sam Ravnborg wrote: > > 'make randconfig' uses glibc's rand function, and the seed of > > that PRNG is set via: > > > > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?srand(time(NULL)); > > > > But 'time()' only increases once every second - freezing the > > randconfig result within a single second. > > > > My Nehalem testbox does randconfig much faster than 1 second > > ?and i have a few scripts that do 'randconfig until condition X' > > loops. > > > > Those scripts currently waste a lot of CPU time due to randconfig > > changing its seed only once per second currently. > > > > Change the seed to be micrseconds based. (I checked the statistical > > spread of the seed - the now.tv_sec*now.tv_usec multiplication > > there further improves it.) > > > + ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? gettimeofday(&now, NULL); > > + > > + ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? seed = (unsigned int)(now.tv_sec*now.tv_usec); > > Just wondering: may there be some platforms that don't offer microsecond > resolution, and tv_usec is always zero? That would indeed be bad for the seed. Googling did not turn up anything. Sam -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/