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Linux 5.1 Continues The Years-Long Effort Preparing For Year 2038 (phoronix.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

Linux 5.1 continues the massive undertaking in preparing the kernel for the Year 2038 problem. Phoronix: The Linux kernel has been seeing "Y2038" work for years and the effort is far from over. Thomas Gleixner (a Linux kernel developer who serves as a member of the technical advisory board at The Linux Foundation) sent in the latest Y2038 work for the Linux 5.1 kernel, which after a lot of ground work in previous kernels has introduced the first set of syscalls that are Year 2038 safe.

4 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. it seems early but it's not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We know from y2k that systems have a long lifetime. Software needs to be fixed well before 2038 to ensure that they work then, especially with Linux in so many embedded systems that make much more use of time data.

    Good on them.

  2. Re:it's too late by jeff4747 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ya know, I think you can survive with the timestamp on your CCTV feed having the wrong year.

  3. Problem will hit before 2038 by ardmhacha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Y2K bug hit well before the year 2000.

    Back in 1990 the company I worked for had a problem when a 10 year contract with scheduled payments was entered into the system in 1990. All the programmers in the company spent weeks working through source code searching for places where dates were stored with a 2 digit year. I assume the Y2038 bug has already hit systems where future dates are used,

    1. Re:Problem will hit before 2038 by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      30 year mortgages were being processed in 2007 ... but they're rarely using kernel time_t for any of that. Cron jobs in 2037 might need to worry.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)