Smolt database is broken

[Mike McGrath]

Yaakov Nemoy wrote:
> On Nov 19, 2007 11:13 PM, David Kewley <kewley at gps.caltech.edu> wrote:
>   
>> I noticed something similar many months ago, where my machine's entry didn't
>> even have the right architecture.  As I recall, I emailed the Smolt
>> maintainer, and he said it was probably a problem with the client-side UUID
>> generation not being random enough.  As a result, multiple machines could
>> get the same UUID and so write to the same server database entry.  That's
>> the last I heard about it.
>>     
>
> That is in fact a possibility.  It uses the output from
> /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid to work.  Is there a flaw with this
> method that we know nothing about?  Should we use another?
>   

Its funny (not that I'm laughing) but there seems to be a handful of 
UUID's that come up more often then others.  two or three of them quite 
a bit more often.  It might be worth it to black list those UUID's and 
have the client re-generate if one of those UUID's comes up.  If there 
is a problem with /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid not being random enough 
though this might not actually correct anything.  Can anyone confirm?

    -Mike