by the editorial team

Saturday, January 19th 2008, will mark the 30 year countdown to the Y2K38 wraparound of regular 32-bit UNIX time. UNIX internal time is stored in a data structure using a long int, containing the number of seconds since 1970. On a 32-bit machine this value is sufficient to store time up to the 18th of January 2038. After this date 32-bit clocks will overflow and return false values.

Exposure to this bug is limited right now to 32-bit applications that rely on the time_t data type. Applications must also be calculating time 30 years in the future, so applications that run financial forecasts, or long-term mortgage interest calculations may be impacted by this limitation.

If an application that falls into this category, the immediate solution is to migrate that application to a 64-bit platform. When dealing with a 64-bit program, a time_t can hold a date and time in the future out to the year 292,000,000,000, eliminating this issue.

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Original link: http://www.redhatmagazine.com/20...