Re: Random not so random

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.