Ralph Winslow wrote: > > Syd Alsobrook wrote: > > > > Just a curious question, does anyone know if linux in general and > Debian in > > particular are year 2000 compliant? > > We're OK until 2017 (and since I'll surely have a 64-bit system by > then, > 'til hell freezes over) for 32-bit systems. > > > > It would be a shame if we came down to the wire and had forgotten > something > > > > Syd > > ---- > > http://www.uc.edu/~alsobrsp > > > > "How do you know you're having fun > > if there's no one watching you have it." > > Douglas Adams > > finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key! > > Actually 32 bits will get us thru to 2037 but that only means that the number of seconds since midnight Dec 31, 1970 can be accumulated in a 32-bit variable without rollover to zero. That does NOT necessarily mean that programs (including the linux kernel, libc, etc.) that use that 32-bits do so correctly.
The biggest problems seem to me to be with the thousands of applications that use dates. Even if the kernel and libraries work properly, that doesn't mean a given program uses time properly. An easy example: struct tm from time.h has the "year" field defined as the number of years since 1900 and is Y2K compliant since for the year 2000 it contains decimal 100. There could be an application out there that currently works but will crash in 2000 because incorrect assumptions were made about the range of "year" and say an array index is computed incorrectly. Clearly, bad things can happen when a program corrupts its stack or otherwise accesses memory outside the bounds of the array. I've read that bad things will happen to Windows95 at the midnight rollover Dec 31, 1999 but only if it's running! Duh, bad things can always happen when Windows95 is running. But seriously, I guess if you stop the machine _before_ midnight and restart _after_ midnight then all's well. Who knows what lurking out there in *nix that will go whacko when the rollover occurs. With all the attention that this problem is getting in some circles, it would be a major coup if somehow Debian packages could individually and collectively be certified Y2K compliant and a Y2K compliant Debian release prepared. IMHO no other linux distribution, "commercial" or otherwise, has the level of control available with Debian. Comments? --Bob -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
