rsync - Apr 2002 - rsync md4sum code.

G'day,

I've been working on a Python interface to librsync and have noticed that it
uses md4sum code borrowed from Andrew Tridgell and Martin Pool that comes
via rsync and was originally written for samba.

Is there anything special about this code compared to the RSA md4sum code that
can be found with libmd <"http://www.penguin.cz/~mhi/libmd/">?

Python uses the RSA md5sum code for it's md5 module, and making a Python md4
module was as simple as "sed 's/\(md\)5/\14/i'" over the
Python interface code.

I'm contemplating some cleanup code hacking on librsync and was wondering if
the samba based md4sum code was "better" than the RSA code, or if it
is
worth switching.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ABO: finger abo@minkirri.apana.org.au for more info, including pgp key
----------------------------------------------------------------------

On 27 Apr 2002, Donovan Baarda <abo@minkirri.apana.org.au>
wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> I've been working on a Python interface to librsync and have noticed
that it
> uses md4sum code borrowed from Andrew Tridgell and Martin Pool that comes
> via rsync and was originally written for samba.
Tridge recently discovered a bug in that code that probably does not
weaken the digest, but that may make it incompatible with standard
MD4.  Basically, tail-extension is not properly carried out for blocks
that are a multiple of 64 bytes in size.

I haven't had a chance yet to check how this affects rsync.  If it
does, I suppose we should evolve the protocol to fix it.

There's not meant to be anything special about it.  One of my TODO
items was to replace it with a faster implementation.

--
Martin