Comment 29 for bug 1988819

@juliank Thanks for the tip about machine id. May I also ask, for repeatability, is there an official/supported way to run (unit) tests on the upgrade logic alone, say, by feeding `/var/lib/dpkg/status`, index files and maybe some environment variables/APT::* preferences to `apt-get` and then running a simulation?

As you have seen in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/2017399, the least amount of state for a reproducible report involved a livecd iso. And if I had been much further down the road it would have been impossible to trace the issue to the "original" state that everybody else also has access to.

Regarding md5, the first or last 64 bits (or 32bits for i386) already give a good random number for this purpose. There is no need to deal with 128bit integers.