Re: [Gzz] Global cell IDs

[Tuomas Lukka]

> There's a simple solution for this: Don't use block ids as part of the 
> cell ids. Instead, use a secure random number. -- We generate one when 
> Gzz starts up and then increment a counter each time we create a new 
> cell, yielding 'FOO-nnn' cell ids as before. (However, we can encode 
> them as base64, sparing us some more screen space.)

Excellent. We'll do exactly this; it solves several problems in an 
unexpected way.

> I know this slows down startup, because we need to initialize the random 
> number generator. BUT, we need to do that anyway: without it, we cannot 
> save Mediaserver blocks (we currently do, but it's not secure when 
> publishing). So there's no additional cost in this really.
>
> When the speed penalty gets too annoying (especially when running the 
> tests), we can use a native implementation of SecureRandom that uses 
> /dev/urandom (there's one around somewhere, someone should look into it).

And we can use a slightly less secure RNG if we really want, as well...

        Tuomas