Linux and Year 2000
- Does the Linux OS suffer from the Year 2000 bug ?
- The Linux operating system and libraries like all Unix and Unixlike
platforms does not store the data in a simplistic field by field fashion but
stores it as an incremental count of seconds since the beginning of 1970. The
current size of that counter is good until 2038. By then we will be using 64
bit counters which are good until the probable end of the universe.
- So I need not worry ?
- The operating system is only one layer of the chain of dependant parts. Many
application programs convert dates between the counter format are more traditional
styles of representation. A library bug or an application doing this wrongly will
still misbehave in the year 2000 even if the operating platform and other
applications behave.
Secondly the Linux OS reads the time at boot up from the CMOS clock chips of the machine. Not all of these devices correctly handle year 2000. You are advised to test each platform individually to ensure that your hardware clock behaves correctly as it changes from 1999 to 2000 and that it also is aware that year 2000 is a leap year.
- Vendors with Year 2000 statements
- Debian
- Red Hat
- SuSE
- Red Hat
- Vendors with independent Y2K certifications
- Caldera
- Red Hat (.pdf)
- Red Hat (.pdf)
- Vendors with seperate Y2K upgrade kits
- Debian Y2K for Slink
- Vendor support documents
- Red
Hat
- What programs are known to be problematic
- The obsolete version 4 of the Linux C library has some situations in which
the year 2000 is displayed as "100". All modern library versions (5.3.12,
5.4.38, glibc 2.x) behave correctly when tested.
Commonly shipped components known to have problems are:
Program Version Safe Version Apache 1.1.x 1.2.x CVS <=1.9> 1.10 date GNU date (sh utils 1.1.6) dqs All versions None yet elm Elm 2.4 Elm 2.5 logrotate RedHat 4.1 RedHat 5.0 Minicom Minicom <= 1.81 1.82 NIST Nist nist.pl 1.12 Pine Pine <4.0 Pine 4.0+ TCL/TK 7.x, see link 8.x Timetool TimeTool < 2.5-3 2.5-3 wu.ftpd 2.4 beta 2.4 beta 15+
- Other information sources
- These are useful pointers to Y2K status and testing of some other packages used with Linux
These pages are intended to give general Linux Y2K information. They are not a substitute for in house testing and evaluation, nor for checking vendor pages and information sets directly.
Linux product vendors and others are encouraged to submit fault reports and update information to Alan Cox.
