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Anyone Besides Zune Owners With New Year's Crashes?

Posted by timothy on from the coincidences-abound dept.

aputerguy writes "My Fedora 8 Linux server crashed sometime between 18:59:40 EST (GMT -5:00) and 19:00:00 EST (GMT -5:00) on Dec 31, 2008 which remarkably corresponds to within at most 20 seconds of the New Year in GMT. I have been running this same hardware non-stop for more than six years and other than the occasional reboot for kernel (or distro) upgrades, it has not crashed more than 1 or 2 times in 2237 days of cumulative uptime. Nothing other than background processes were running at the time of the crash. Could this be a coincidence or was there some 2008/2009 rollover issue going on here? Has anyone (other than Zune 30GB owners) noticed similar year-end issues with their computers or electronic devices?"

29 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. SKY TV set top box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in the UK, our skytv settop box crashed (lost all tv channels but not the menus precisley at 00:00 1/1/2009 needed a cold boot to get the channels back.

    1. Re:SKY TV set top box by sentientbeing · · Score: 5, Funny

      A similar thing, though probably unrelated to the leap second - my parents VHS clock has been flashing 12:00 since 1986.
      It would probably bring bad luck for the new year to set it correctly for 2009, so I think ill leave it.

      --

      ------
      beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
    2. Re:SKY TV set top box by MentalMooMan · · Score: 5, Informative

      My mythtv box (running mythbuntu) crashed within about a second of midnight as I was trying to watch the fireworks, and stopped responding to ping, ssh, everything.
      My excuse for staying in and watching the celebrations on TV is that... my dog ate... my shoes.

      Yes, that'll do...

      --
      43rd Law of Computing:
      Anything that can go wr
      fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core Dumped
  2. nope... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    debian etch, RHEL, centos, all 300 odd servers stayed up. so did irix and solaris boxen from ancient times of the roman empire..

  3. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No.

    You are alone. Very, very alone.

  4. Well this is obvious... by oskard · · Score: 5, Funny

    My Microsoft Windows desktop crashed sometime between 18:59:40 EST (GMT -5:00) and 19:00:00 EST (GMT -5:00) on Dec 31, 2008 which remarkably corresponds to within at most 20 seconds of the New Year in GMT. I have been running this same hardware non-stop for more than 5 hours and other than the occasional BSOD and Windows updates, it has not crashed more than 1 or 2 times in 174,237 seconds of cumulative uptime. Nothing other than spyware, malware, and System Idle Process were running at the time of the crash.

    --
    Sigs are for Terrorists.
    1. Re:Well this is obvious... by oskard · · Score: 5, Funny

      It was just a joke, sorry, I don't want anyone's shit on me :(

      --
      Sigs are for Terrorists.
    2. Re:Well this is obvious... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's with all the 4chan idiocy on Slashdot recently?
      4chan is funny when you're a teenage boy, but for those of us that aren't...

    3. Re:Well this is obvious... by Forty+Two+Tenfold · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ever heard of OLPC project? Heeere's the result!

      --
      Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
  5. No problems by sdo1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nope. Everything's fine here in New Ampst

    <carrier lost>

    --
    --- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
  6. Errrrrrr by segedunum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't you actually boot it, or failing that, take the hard drive out, perhaps look at some logs and actually find out rather than aligning it with a certain set of mystical circumstances?

    1. Re:Errrrrrr by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

      Because thinking rationally is hard.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:Errrrrrr by aputerguy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I rebooted it and it went just fine. I looked at the logs and saw now errors. Last entry was in /var/log/maillog at 18:59:40 (not an error). So, not sure how to figure it out - tempted to try to replicate though by setting time back to 18:59 on 12/31/08 (and shutting off ntpd)

  7. Probably coincidence. by Thiez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Could this be a coincidence

    Yes. People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none. Had your server crashed a week ago you wouldn't think anything of it (maybe 5% of all servers mysteriously crashed exactly one week ago, but because it was an 'ordinary' day nobody noticed). Anyway, since you noticed your server crashed at new year and reported it on /., and with 6 billion people on this planet we will soon hear stories about other computers that mysteriously crashed around midnight. Not because there has to be anything special, but because computers are crashing all the time and new year (and your post) made it appear special.

    I doubt it has anything to do with leap seconds, if your computer ran for 6 years it survived the leap second of 2005.

    1. Re:Probably coincidence. by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes. People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none.

      So you see a pattern in people's behavior? ;)

    2. Re:Probably coincidence. by Snowblindeye · · Score: 5, Informative

      People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none.

      Very true. There is an interesting book by Leonard Mlodinow called "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" which is all about the way humans misinterpret random events to see patterns that are not there.

      http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375424045

      http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040

    3. Re:Probably coincidence. by Thiez · · Score: 5, Informative

      Let's use that number. The odds of a server failing during the 20 seconds before midnight on 31 december are 1 in 5 million. Suppose there are 50 millions servers. Simple math says the chance of your server crashing is extremely small (1 in 5 million), but there will be about 10 people who have a crashed server. That is normal (using your number there will be 10 servers crashing every 20 seconds every day of the year) but those 10 people will think it 'an awfully unlikely coincidence', while the other 15379200 server crashes during a year are ignored.

      Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the new year can't have anything to do with the crash, I just think it's way more likely that your server crashed randomly and you see causality where none exists.

  8. test by wizardforce · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Could this be a coincidence or was there some 2008/2009 rollover issue going on here?

    set the system time back a few mins before the crash occured and see if your server crashes again... otherwise it's idle speculation

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    1. Re:test by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Insightful

      First good idea in this whole discussion. Don't forget the hardware clock as well.

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:test by LunarCrisis · · Score: 5, Funny

      You guys aren't thinking far enough. A time machine is clearly in order!

      --
      Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
      Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
  9. driver by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Zune crash was due to a specific hardware driver. Perhaps you also have an unusual hardware driver on your setup that was affected?

  10. RiteAid pharmacy y2k09 bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On 12/30/08, I submitted a request with my pharmacy to refill a prescription to pick up on 12/31/08, and received the following email, verbatim:
     

    Your Rite Aid prescription confirmation
    Greetings from the riteaidonlinestore.com pharmacy,

    Thank you for choosing to refill your Rite Aid prescription(s) online at the riteaidonlinestore.com pharmacy.
    The following refills have been sent to the Rite Aid store that you selected, along with your preferred pick-up date and time:

    Patient Name: ********
        Rx ******** ********
        Rx ******** ********

    Rite Aid Store Location:
        ********
        ********, ********
        ********
        ********

    Pick-up Date and Time:
        Thursday December 31, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    If you have any questions regarding your prescription, please contact your local Rite Aid directly at ********. Please note that you will need to pay for this prescription when you pick it up. If you have selected to self-pay for this medication, you will pay Rite Aid's price.

    Thank you for visiting the riteaidonlinestore.com pharmacy. We invite you to visit us for your other prescription needs and great deals on nonprescription items. We look forward to assisting you!

    Some things to note: I've got to wait until next christmas to pick up my drugs, and they were so concerned about patient privacy, they obscured all my contact information, prescription numbers and the pharmacy's phone numbers with asterisks. (I didn't do that myself!)

    So, I wonder if their log files are full of java.lang.Exception logs today...

    --ob

  11. Mysteriously coincidental with this event.. by vorlich · · Score: 5, Funny

    my cat hid under the bed at almost 25 seconds into the New Year. Right after he heard the first of the fireworks. However he did restart normally about 22 minutes later after a soothing saucer of milk. I wonder if ...

    --
    Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
  12. Linux 2.6.21 hangs on leap seconds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You didn't specify your kernel version, but if it was 2.6.21, you may have hit this:

    http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux2.6.gita=commitdiffh=746976a301ac9c9aa10d7d42454f8d6cdad8ff2b

    Thankfully this was a short-lived bug which only affected 2.6.21.

  13. Re:Adding some data by aputerguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Froze - couldn't ping or ssh or get console response. I know the time cuz last maillog entry was 18:59:40 and the clock (on my emacs session) said 18:59 at time of crash. Hardware is: ASUS P4P Rebooted without ever but required me to manually poweroff

  14. Fedora 8 locked up here by AZPolarBear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My Fedora 8 system locked up after the leap second update was logged at 00:00 UT. I was my DHCP server, so the network went down.

  15. Re:boxen! by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 5, Funny

    On Debian, RHEL, Centos & Boxen! On Irix, Solaris, Ibex & Vixen!

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  16. Re:Well, after drinking a couple of beers by rishistar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Being more refined, I spilt a Gin & Tonic all over my keyboard. The keyboard doesn't work now - maybe it was the drink, but as it was an MS jobby I'm willing to bet it was a Zune like crash. Crappy Microsoft products.

    --
    Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
  17. Re:Well, after drinking a couple of beers by Sebilrazen · · Score: 5, Funny

    For the parent to copy and paste their post with just the mouse had to have been a nightmare.

    --
    "There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.