The Year 2038 Bug. Time is Running Out!

GSP Services ^ | 4/6/2004 | Unknown

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Many 32-bit root servers currently use the FreeBSD 4.7 operating system. As with all Unix and Unix-like operating systems, time and dates in FreeBSD are represented internally as the number of seconds since the UNIX Epoch, which was the 1st of January 1970 GMT.

32-bit systems can only store a maximum of 231 non-negative seconds (2,147,483,648 seconds or about 68 years). Which means that 32-bit UNIX systems won't be able to process time beyond 19 Jan 2038 at 3:14:07 AM GMT.

One of the common solutions will be to switch to 64-bit architecture systems that can store a maximium of 263 non-negative seconds (9,223,372,036,854,775,808 [9.2 Quintillion] seconds or about 292.27 Billion years), which is about 22 times the estimated age of our universe!

For the curious: A switch to 128-bit architecture systems would yield a maximum of 2127 non-negative seconds (170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,728 [170 Undecillion] seconds), which is about 18.4 Quintillion times as many as 64-bit systems.

* For informational purposes only

As of Tue Apr 6 17:26:48 GMT 2004 there are currently:

1,081,272,408 seconds since the UNIX epoch. 33 years, 9 months, and 12 days until 19 Jan 2038.

To give an indication if a Unix machine is 2038 Compliant, one can run this perl script to see if the time is incremented correctly. #!/usr/local/bin/perl

use POSIX; $ENV{'TZ'} = "GMT";

for ($clock = 2147483641; $clock < 2147483651; $clock++) { print ctime($clock); }

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Will Unix even be used anymore in 2038?

When do we start to panic?

[Constitution Day]

We're doomed. DOOMED.

[vin-one]

should I stock up on water and amunition now. or what......

[Maceman]

When do we start to panic?

Well, I'm guessing a lot of Freepers will be stocking up on canned goods and toilet paper pretty soon.

Personally, I don't plan to start panicking until January 18, 2038 -- at which time, God Willing, I will be 88 years old.

[Professional Engineer]

When do we start to panic?

The 17th of January, next year. We've gotta get a 33 year head start!

[EggsAckley]

I guess I won't really worry about it. By then, I would be a bristly 95 year-old curmudgeonette. Computers would be the LEAST of my problems. LOL!

[Support Free Republic]

Donate Here By Secure Server

[Eddie Dean]

Rather than start vanity thread (I've lurked long enough to know that's BAD!) so I think I'll use this thread to post my problem...

I have a 1.5G drive that I would like to install some flavor of Linux - it's too small for RedHat.

I'm primarily going to use it to surf the web (no email) and familiarize myself with Linux OS.

Any help/advice will be rightly appreciated.

[Destructor]

"32-bit systems can only store a maximum of 231 non-negative seconds (2,147,483,648 seconds or about 68 years). Which means that 32-bit UNIX systems won't be able to process time beyond 19 Jan 2038 at 3:14:07 AM GMT."

They won't need to process time beyond that date. If you doubt me, then read your Bible.

[RetiredArmy]

I'll worry about this in 2037, if I can still remember what year it is. I think I will be around 87 years old then, so if I am alive great. If I am dead, someone else can worry about it!

[RWR8189]

This could be hugh!

[wjcsux]

Damn! I was planning on getting a haircut that day.

[jdege]

Unix uses an unsigned long for timestamps.

On a machine with 32-bit longs, that gives a maximum of 2^31-1 seconds, beginning Midnight Jan 1, 1970, Coordinated Universal Time.

This means an overflow in 2038. It's something Unix folks have been aware of for a good number of years.

Microsoft's internal timestamps are epoched a Midnight, Jan 1, 1980, Pacific Standard Time, so they have an extra ten years to deal with it.

Personally, I expect that every OS vendor will have moved off of 32-bit machines, by 2038. Though I'd not be surprised if Microsoft were still running subsystems in 32-bit mode. (Remember, Microsoft's first port to a 64-bit machine - NT on the Alpha - was run in 32-bit mode).

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Luckily for Unix geeks, most systems were ready for the year 2000 out-of-the-box (at least as far as the operating system is concerned).
However, this 2038 hurdle is a much bigger one: January 19, 2038 will be a serious problem on many platforms, especially Unix and Unix-like platforms, because these systems will "run out of time".
Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038, I fully expect to see lots of things breaking magnificently: satellites falling out of orbit, massive power outages (like the 2003 North American blackout), hospital life support system failures, phone system interruptions, bank problems, etc.
That's because one second later, many of these systems will have wildly inaccurate date settings, producing all kinds of unpredictable consquences. In short, many of the dire predictions for the year 2000 are much more likely to actually occur in the year 2038!
The year 2000 was just a dry run. In case you think we can sit on this issue for another 30 years before addressing it, consider that the temporal echos of the 2038 problem are already starting to appear in date calculations for mortgages and vital statistics!

[theFIRMbss]

>Will Unix even be used anymore in 2038?

"When I'm president UNIX will only be called the 'Apple OS'!"

[Spruce]

FreeBSD

[Diddle E. Squat]

This guy is about to turn even more blue:

GREAT FALLS, Montana — Montana's Libertarian candidate for Senate has turned blue from drinking a silver solution that he believed would protect him from disease. Stan Jones, a 63-year-old business consultant and part-time college instructor, said he started taking colloidal silver in 1999 for fear that Y2K disruptions might lead to a shortage of antibiotics....

Papa Smurf runs for Senate

[Dallas59]

This is the fault of Bush.

[July 4th]

Will Unix even be used anymore in 2038?

It wouldn't surprise me at all. It's made it this long!

[martin_fierro]

bristly ... curmudgeonette

Sweetheart, you're that now.

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