MD5 is broken sometimes, an option to use SHA would be appreciated.

the topic has been brought up on the mailinglists, e.g.:

http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/browse_thread/thread/360d5b76ea2c614a/9e36f023614f8baf http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/browse_thread/thread/eeb44c894342d6f7/4b951b6d3a8644dd http://modpython.org/pipermail/mod_python/2006-June/021482.html

I'd like to propose that the hashing algorithm should be put somewhere else with the possibility to set the preferred hashing algorithm generally - since this is used in this several situations (sessions, postdata, comments,..). possibly something along the lines of the attached patch?

svn diff of the changed files

i had put this is in django/utils/hashes.py

for anybody who's also experiencing this problem, Alain Tesio mentioned another odd factor and its workaround on the modpy-mailinglist:

http://modpython.org/pipermail/mod_python/2006-July/021544.html

I had the same problem, and a similar solution, instead of dumping the md5 I just test to see if it is working properly by

if (md5.new('testencrypt').hexdigest()!='17500f56515d37cd65a68aca1b4679a6')

If it fails then I use sha, if it passes I use md5.

From nikl's comment, this looks like it's caused by another library being installed: libmhash2, not a Django problem.

Still, if it's a problem then perhaps we should have a work around?

Since this appears to be caused by a third-party library breaking things that are out of our control, I'm going to mark invalid.