🚀 go-pugleaf

Przemek Klosowski wrote:
> 
> The only place where you might run into trouble is because computer
> hardware clock maintains the 2-digit date, so that loading the system
> clock on bootup from the hardware clock would result in a 1900 date in
> year 2000. This is easy to fix; simply, getting years 00 to 90 from
> the
> stupid hardware clock will result in adding 2000, not 1900, to the
> year, and we are good for 90 more years. Since Linux didn't exist
> before
> 1990, it is not going to cause problems :^)

This is not as easy as it sounds. Someone associated with the ACM did
a study of "freeware" (and even many copyleft) packages and found that
there were quite a few that assumed the 20th century when using
functions
like localtime(3). This is not only a problem with Linux/Unix, but 
the Microsoft-based operating systems, too

There is a problem with Linux and ALL systems if the hardware clock
does not properly report the time correctly on reboot. In an informal
study on a 486 with a bad BIOS, the following happened:

	+ cron stopped working because it got "confused" by the bad
	  time value.
	+ NIS stopped working.
	+ The system will never sync properly with an NTP host. The
	  testers did not examine why this failed.
	+ Programs that use the time value as a signed long (which is
	  what time_t is) will not compare correctly. The testers did
	  figure out that the time was being set to the epoch (1/1/70)
	  plus the internal clock's offset.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of "analysis" with the study.
The testers did not have the time. However, they did find that Linux was
fairly Y2K compliant, as long as the apps are Y2K compliant. Linux, like
all x86-based operating systems, have problems when the BIOS does not
accuratly report the system clock time on reboot.

Recently, a federal contractor had a problem with a Pentium-based system
whose BIOS was not Y2K compliant. It shut down the project for 3 1/2 
months before they found that the BIOS was the problem. Once they
swapped
the ROMs, the problems were solved! This system was running a version of
UNIX.

Moral: No x86-based system is Y2K compliant, regardless of the
precautions
made in software, if the BIOS is not!

Moral (2): If you are using a system manufactured prior to 1998, make
sure
you check the BIOS first! The federal contractor mentioned above was
using
a well known vendor's 150MHz Pentium-based system bought during the
summer
of 1997.

scott barman
barman@ix.netcom.com