2038: Only 21 years away

Post by jackvalentine » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 1:52 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #158

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>verifying that the "ancient" Linux system they setup to replace their mainframe 25 years "ago" is safe. The problem with mainframes is that they can't be trivially upgraded or migrated to 64-bit like modern OS's on x86 hardware can be. Vendor lock-in, retirement of OS, bare to the metal coding, etc caused this. If these mainframes were running a modern OS, it would have been trivial to upgrade them to a 64-bit versi…

Be careful about your definition of absurd. Somewhere, right now, some poor bastard is building an NT 3.51 workstation for some stupid reason. I'll bet you $0.05 that some future poor bastard will be building NT4 or 2000 devices in 2038. :)

Post by shortstuffsushi » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 2:21 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #255

cpeterso wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank's website allowed me to set a recurring monthly transfer until the year 9999. The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates like 02017 in their work. :)

> The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates like 02017 in their work. :) Hopefully they don't have any octal-related bugs.

Post by sedachv » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 2:36 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #13

_uhtu wrote: post #5

Is there a reason why they decided to store time as seconds from 1970? In a 32-bit integer nonetheless. It seems like basic logic would have lead the original designers to make it at least 64 bits so that you'd never overflow it (with a 64 bit time we'd be good til the year 292277026596). 64 bits would also allow you to also cover the entirety of history, all the way back to 13.7 billion years ago when the Universe c…

Back in 1970, no language had a 64-bit integer type. And it started with Unix, which was a skunkworks hobby project, so a thinking of "we'll solve it within the next 68 years" is perfectly reasonable. They could have made it unsigned instead of signed, which would have made it work until 2100 or so, but I think a 68-year horizon is more than most systems being built today have.

Post by emcrazyone » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 2:38 AM UTC

archgrove wrote: post #3

This is (serious) a part of my retirement planning. I'll be mid-50s when this hits, and have enough low level system knowledge to be dangerous. In about 15 years, I'll start spinning up my epochalypse consultancy, and I'm expecting a reasonable return on investment in verifying systems as 2038 compliant.

Post by astrodust » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 2:40 AM UTC

HankB99 wrote: post #223

tyingq wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't be the same magnitude of issues. However, I'm sure there will be plenty of apps on said 64 bit Linux that have issues. I commented about a mysql problem here that exists on 64 bit MySQL, on 64 bit Linux. It's not much of a stretch that some internal apps at a company would have similar issues. Edit: Ntp has something of a protocol issue to be addressed as well.

Yeah. I was working on an IoT system that uses NTP to set time. I generally plan a 20 year life span for tings like this. There's S/W I wrote over 20 years ago that is in devices still in use. The only good thing about this is that I'll not likely be around when trouble crops up. I didn't see any way to accommodate changes that are nearly decades away in code I write today.