It serves no useful purpose and wasn't as popular as its equally meritless
cousin, srandomdev(3).
Setting aside the problems with rand(3) in general, the problem with this
interface is that the seed isn't shared with the caller (other than by
attacking the output of the generator, which is trivial, but not a hallmark of
pleasant API design). The (arguable) utility of rand(3) or random(3) is as a
semi-fast simulation generator which produces consistent results from a given
seed. These are mutually at odd. Furthermore, sometimes people got the
mistaken impression that a high quality random seed meant a weak generator like
rand(3) or random(3) could be used for things like cryptographic key
generation. This is absolutely not so.
The API was never part of a standard and was not widely used in tree. Existing
in-tree uses have all been removed.
Possible replacement in out of tree codebases:
char buf[3];
time_t t;
time(t);
strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%S", gmtime(&t));
srand(atoi(buf));
Relnotes: yes
seed, the random number generator rand(3) still sucks and is unlikely
sufficient for crypto use. Correct what appears to be a cut and paste
error from the srandomdev() man page.
Submitted by: Ben Mesander
track.
The $Id$ line is normally at the bottom of the main comment block in the
man page, separated from the rest of the manpage by an empty comment,
like so;
.\" $Id$
.\"
If the immediately preceding comment is a @(#) format ID marker than the
the $Id$ will line up underneath it with no intervening blank lines.
Otherwise, an additional blank line is inserted.
Approved by: bde
