GNU/Linux Y2K compliance?
• (ADB) Y2K compliance under GNU/Linux is a multi-level problem. • Applications. Check your application sources for routines that only operate on/test the last two digits of the year field/variable(s). Obviously the problem here is that 2000 > 1999, but 00 < 99. Unfortunately, poor programming practices are just as common and unavoidable as death and taxes... • Libraries. Libc5 and glibc are known to be Y2K compliant. Alan Cox mentioned that libc4 had some problems. • Kernel. The Linux kernel is y2k compliant. BTW the code snippet in the /arch/i386/kernel/time.c will force those non-y2k compliant RTC implementations to the correct date on 00:00:00 Jan 1, 2000. It's been there for quite some time, now, nice and quiet; added by Alan Modra circa 1994! • BIOS. On x86 PC machines, upon boot some BIOS's will wrap back to 1900, later versions will correctly wrap the RTC clock to 2000. This is a rather critical problem in embedded systems if they are not running Linux; if they are running Linu
