5 Jan 2023, 18:24 by purushar...@gmx.com:
> Namaste Rachel, Theo(s),
>
>> Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2023 at 5:50 PM
>> From: "Theo de Raadt" <dera...@openbsd.org>
>> To: "Theo Buehler" <t...@theobuehler.org>
>> Cc: "Rachel Roch" <rr...@tutanota.de>, "Misc" <misc@openbsd.org>
>> Subject: Re: Is CRONTAB(5) random really random ?
>>
>> Theo Buehler <t...@theobuehler.org> wrote:
>>
>> > On Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 06:15:43PM +0100, Rachel Roch wrote:
>> > > According to the docs :
>> > >
>> > > > A random value (within the legal range) may be obtained by using
>> > > > the ‘~’ character in a field.
>> >
>> > The random numbers are drawn once and then repeated regularly. This
>> > behavior has always bothered me but never enough to spend the time
>> > needed to fix it (it's not immediately obvious how to do it). A
>> > workaround is to use a
>> >
>> > sleep $((RANDOM \% 512)) && run_whatever
>> >
>> > construct. The number to the right of the modulo should be a power of 2
>> > to avoid modulo bias.
>>
>> Any solution would need to be careful, so that a operation doesn't run
>> multiple times in an hour. Each column should be '0 + random % range',
>> but multiple columns contain ~, it gets weird.
>>
>
> The following thread may be helpful:
>
> "Regarding randomized times in crontab"
> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=158705405304672&w=2
>
> Dhanyavaad,
> Dharma Artha Kama Moksha
>
Thank you all for your insightful input, looks like the $RANDOM prefix idea is
the only quick-fix to this.
I didn't realise the random value was only set once. Maybe someone should
update the man page accordingly ?
