Next Week's Kernel Summit Will Try To Take On The 2038 Problem

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 13 August 2014 at 11:08 PM EDT. 17 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
Taking place next week is the Linux Kernel Summit in Chicago alongside the 2014 LinuxCon North America. We'll be providing live coverage next week while one of the early kernel summit sessions already being discussed online is a goal of trying to further the Linux solution to the year 2038 problem.

For those out of the loop, the Year 2038 problem is the issue whereby time values stored in signed 32-bit integers as the Unix time-stamp will wrap around. On 19 January 2038 is when this time issue will happen for 32-bit ints. Those unfamiliar with this situation can read Wikipedia. Linux has already worked towards working around this issue, but more is still to be accomplished.

John Stultz is planning for a Kernel Summit discussion concerning the 2038 problem for how 32-bit Linux can come up with a solution, after NetBSD and OpenBSD already switched their time_t sizes. While some BSDs have not cared about backwards compatibility after adjusting their time variables, with Linux it's certainly a must and in maintaining user-space compatibility.

Developers wishing to learn more about the details to Stultz's propsal for Linux addressing the 2038 problem can read this mailing list post.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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