Subversion : some progress

zfil wrote:
The slowness is due to /dev/random that is VERY slow on this machine.

"When the entropy pool is empty, reads from /dev/random will block until additional environmental noise is gathered. (Source: Linux Programmer's Manual, section 4)"

So apparently the environmental noise density contributing to the entropy pool is very slight on these boxes. Using /dev/urandom seems like a perfectly acceptable alternative here.

/* sidebar:
I believe it was Robert Coveyou who said "The generation of random numbers is far too important to be left to chance." But my favorite geekjoke about random numbers is in the form of a cartoon depicting a random-number generator function like this:

  int getRandomNumber()
  {
    return 4;  // chosen by fair dice roll
               // guaranteed to be random
  }

*/