This reminds me of the Linux kernel scheduler bug that kicked in after 208 days: https://www.claudiokuenzler.com/blog/247/linux-virtual-serve...
A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
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Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m still at where when I connect external hard drive or SSD via USB, use it and then eject it, I shut down the MacBook Pro completely before I unplug the USB cable. Just in case. The longest uptime I have had on any of my recent laptops is probably around 90 days but that’s because that laptop was sitting in my garage with wall power connected (probably bad for the battery) and some external storage connected and I’…
> I’m still at where when I connect external hard drive or SSD via USB, use it and then eject it, I shut down the MacBook Pro completely before I unplug the cable. Just in case. That sounds... a bit paranoid? At least on Linux (Gnome), if I click to "safely remove drive" it actually powers off the drive and stops external mechanical drives from spinning. No useful syncing is going to happen anyway once a hard drive n…
> A modern OS should definitely be reliable enough that it can be trusted to properly unmount a drive.
The problem isn't just in the OS side of the stack. Disk firmwares - especially SSDs - love to lie to the layers above [1].
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI does a good job of condensing the blog post to 2 paragraphs -- Mac refuses to let the tcp_now clock rollover when it exceeds the max value in its data type.
Can it summarize it down to a non-post?
Can it summarize this entire hacker news post out of existence?
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#74Does anybody else find these AI-authored blog posts difficult to read? Something about the writing style and structure just feels unnatural, it's hard put my finger on it. At the very least, the writing takes way too long to get to a point.
AI does a good job of condensing the blog post to 2 paragraphs -- Mac refuses to let the tcp_now clock rollover when it exceeds the max value in its data type.
Use AI to expand your thoughts into a long-winded post, use AI to compress the long-winded post into something that can be digested by a human.
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#75> It will not be caught in development testing — who runs a test for 50 days? You don't have to run the system for 50 days. You can simulate the environment and tick the clock faster. Many high reliability systems are tested this way.
IIRC the initial value for the jiffies time counter in Linux kernel is initialized at boot time to something like five minutes before the wraparound point, precisely to catch this kind of issues.
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#76I got tired of the AI writing before finding out if they even attempted to contact Apple about this issue? Does anyone know? Also, massively over-dramatised. Yes, a bug worth finding and knowing about, but it’s not a time bomb - very few users are likely to be affected by this. Knowing the nature of OS kernels, I’m guessing even just putting a Mac laptop to sleep would be enough to avoid this issue as it would reset…
> very few users are likely to be affected by this
I have a reasonably strong suspicion that I experienced this a week or two back, on a MacBook that doesn't go into sleep automatically and quite likely had 50-ish days of uptime.
It had all the symptoms described - tcp connections not working while I could still ping everywhere just fine, and all the other devices on the same network were fine. Switching WiFi networks and plugging in to ethernet didn't help. A reboot "fixed" it.
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#77> It will not be caught in development testing — who runs a test for 50 days? You don't have to run the system for 50 days. You can simulate the environment and tick the clock faster. Many high reliability systems are tested this way.
IIRC the initial value for the jiffies time counter in Linux kernel is initialized at boot time to something like five minutes before the wraparound point, precisely to catch this kind of issues.
WinCE too
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#78Orz! A kindly reminder for rebooting.
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI does a good job of condensing the blog post to 2 paragraphs -- Mac refuses to let the tcp_now clock rollover when it exceeds the max value in its data type.
Use AI to expand your thoughts into a long-winded post, use AI to compress the long-winded post into something that can be digested by a human.
Step 3) Sam Altman profits.
Re: A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
#80I got tired of the AI writing before finding out if they even attempted to contact Apple about this issue? Does anyone know? Also, massively over-dramatised. Yes, a bug worth finding and knowing about, but it’s not a time bomb - very few users are likely to be affected by this. Knowing the nature of OS kernels, I’m guessing even just putting a Mac laptop to sleep would be enough to avoid this issue as it would reset…
> very few users are likely to be affected by this I have a reasonably strong suspicion that I experienced this a week or two back, on a MacBook that doesn't go into sleep automatically and quite likely had 50-ish days of uptime. It had all the symptoms described - tcp connections not working while I could still ping everywhere just fine, and all the other devices on the same network were fine. Switching WiFi network…
I would not be surprised if people on HN were more likely to hit this issue than Apple's average users. We're a weird bunch ;)