On Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:29:22 +0200 Mattias Rönnblom <[email protected]> wrote:
> Den 2026-09-12 kl. 18:16, skrev Stephen Hemminger: > > Many performance tests use rte_rand() and the random number > > can perturb the results. Add an ability to override the automatic > > random seed on DPDK startup. > > There is a way to seed the PRNG already, rte_srand(). Why the tests > can't use this? > > Provided the test results depend on something that use the PRNG before > the test driver has had the opportunity to call rte_srand(), controlling > the *initial* seed may be required. > > I don't think this feature should be controlled by an environment > variable. There is no precedent for that. If this functionality is > deemed useful, it should be an EAL command line option, it seems to me. There are several tests already using rte_srand() so that is one option. The choice of environment variable was to match the existing test harness infrastructure that uses MALLOC_PERTURB to pre-seed malloc.
