Just 12 years remain before a fundamental limit in timekeeping threatens to disrupt unprepared computer systems; Y2K38 is the new Y2K, and open-source contributors are aiming to create actionable warnings.

Known as a Faulty Date Logic, which is a lot more common in computer systems than people may think, openSUSE is actively surfacing and fixing these issues through early testing, toolchain improvements and community-driven coordination to ensure software remains reliable well beyond 2038.

At 03:14:07 UTC on Jan. 19, 2038, the UNIX Epoch will exceed the maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer; 2,147,483,647, or 0x7fffffff. Beyond that point, systems that still rely on 32-bit representations of time risk rolling over into invalid dates, triggering failures that range from subtle data corruption to outright crashes.

While most see this as an issue for 32-bit platforms such as i586 or armv7, there are some exposures with modern 64-bit systems as covered in an openSUSE Conference talk some years ago.

Y2K38 is close enough to force action and recent testing by openSUSE developers demonstrates that the risk is immediate and tangible. By advancing a build system’s clock into the year 2038, numerous packages failed to compile or pass their test suites. Affected software in the tests included version control tools, editors, compilers, Python libraries, desktop toolkits and system components.

In some cases, basic system behavior like uptime reporting was disrupted.

Several of these failures have been corrected, but breakages in these tests show how deeply embedded 32-bit time assumptions exist.

Each new feature or refactoring carries the risk of reintroducing the problem if developers default to using int or long instead of safer types such as time_t, int64_t or long long.

The problem extends beyond applications. Commonly used protocols, including SOAP/XML-RPC and SNMP, encode timestamps using 32-bit values. Implementations must therefore take extra care to handle dates beyond 2038 without breaking interoperability.

Testing itself remains challenging. Tooling improvements are being explored as a next step for these adjustments. Discussions are underway about adding compiler warnings when code performs unsafe conversions between 32-bit integers and time-related types.

Leap 16 is 2038 safe as it comes with 32-bit (ia32) support disabled by default, but the tests show that changes in future minor releases will need to be made for affected 64-bit pieces.

Developers interested in the topic can engage with the openSUSE Factory mailing list or with the discussion on Reddit discussion about the topic.

DirtyGlassEye hat dem Pool ein Foto hinzugefügt:

The mundane routine of life can hit hard real fast. Waking up in the same residence, walking the same street to the same office building (the secret is your job being your passion/hobby), rinse and repeat for the next rat race and then barely having any of those spoils for anything besides bills and other necessities. But it's only a sad existence if you decide it is.
Not too far from Yoyogi Crossing I got this street shot. Interestingly, this street changed quite a bit over the years, shots from 2021 and 2023 on this side of the train trestle look very different from this (for one, less signs on the right). The sunlight hit the street at a good spot, but as always, that stupid white sky plagued my very existence once again. Honestly, what do I gotta do to not have haze/overcast?
I guess I shouldn't complain cause I ended up being influenced by that to make this muted shot, because frankly, I had no clue what I could do to make this photo stand out otherwise. So I thought I'd pull a groundhog day and make it look like a time loop, albeit not a very happy one, in editing. Not a great reflection of Tokyo, but in my defense, not the best spot to show Tokyo's greatest strengths either. It's just a decent composition.