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The BBC Looks At Rollover Bugs, Past and Approaching

Posted by timothy on from the ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.

New submitter Merovech points out an article at the BBC which makes a good followup to the recent news (mentioned within) about a bug in Boeing's new 787. The piece explores various ways that rollover bugs in software have led to failures -- some of them truly disastrous, others just annoying. The 2038 bug is sure to bite some people; hopefully it will be even less of an issue than the Year 2000 rollover. From the article: It was in 1999 that I first wrote about this," comments [programmer William] Porquet. "I acquired the domain name 2038.org and at first it was very tongue-in-cheek. It was almost a piece of satire, a kind of an in-joke with a lot of computer boffins who say, 'oh yes we'll fix that in 2037' But then I realised there are actually some issues with this.

6 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. You cant win... by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you reuse code, you get rollover bugs.
    If you start over from scratch you get brand new bugs.

    Reusing the code, you have a lot of the issue from the past already fixed, so you are not introducing bugs that you had in the past.
    Making new code, you can modernise the code set, so you don't run into particular troubled code, and is easier to follow.

    Programmers are human beings, they make mistakes, they can't give 110% every day. Even the best of them will often have a stupid bug, that they can't believe that they had slip.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. Volunteers by dfgfgfdgsgsdfsdf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given that so much of the GNU/Linux code base is written by volunteers I wonder who it is exactly that is going to fix all of the code. I mean back when it was written Computer programming was much less of a gold rush. Nowadays everyone is competing for jobs that pay $120,000. Who is willing to go through all of the old code and fix it for free?

    1. Re:Volunteers by belthize · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given that so much of the non-GNU/Linux code is written by paid programmers I wonder who it is exactly that is going to fix all the code. I mean back when it was written Computer programming was much less of a gold rush. Nowadays everyone is competing for jobs that pay $120,000. Who is willing to pay programmers to go through all of the old code to fix it.

      It's really not an issue. It's already fixed in OpenBSD. Certainly there's some user space code that also counts seconds since 1970 but if folks would simply start now there's no future fix necessary. The set of code written today which will be in use in 2038 will be vanishingly small. The remaining folks will pay some gray hair to knock it into shape. Missed code will make itself apparent sometime that Tuesday morning.

  3. Re:2038 is working itself out already by omglolbah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In the business I work "profibus" is considered a "new" technology. The standard was published in 1989.

    We still run a token ring coax network for most critical systems on a significant part of the oil rigs in the North sea and on onshore installations supporting them.

    Some of the controllers are 20 years old and just milling along happily. We did a replacement of NVRAM recently and that is all the service the modules need.
    I fully expect this crud to still be in use in 20 years. Conservative bastards >.

  4. Re:2038 is working itself out already by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the hardware is still fully operational after 20 years in a hostile enviroment like an oil rig I'd say its anything but "crud". It was probably some of the best kit on the market.

    This might come as a shock but a lot of businesses want kit that Just Works reliably 24/7, not the latest trendy junk that would impress a Hipster cycling past on his fixie bike but lasts about 5 minutes in the real world.

  5. Y2K was -not- a small issue by mccalli · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason so little went wrong is because people spent ages testing and upgrading/fixing beforehand. Had we left it all to 1st Jan 2000 there would have been issues,

    It annoys me to see Y2K trotted out time and time again as a non-event. It was a very big event, and by the large part it was very successfully handled.