Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 20:11:08 +0100 (CET) From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: Bob Pekarske <pekarske_bob@burr-brown.com> Cc: pekarske_bob@u2.bbrown.com, freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Y2K Message-ID: <XFMail.981229201108.asmodai@wxs.nl> In-Reply-To: <36879149.6418@burr-brown.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 28-Dec-98 Bob Pekarske wrote:
> I have been trying for years to convince my management to take FreeBSD
> seriously as an platform in our business. It has also been my misfortune
> to be assigned to our Y2K project. I must say that I am VERY
> disappointed in the FreeBSD Y2K compliance page and its compliance
> statement. I emplore you to take this issue more seriously, if only to
> be consistant with all of your competitors in the corporate server
> market. Take a look at the HP Y2K page, or cisco's. (Both sell
> unix-based products.)
Uh huh and both of those web pages are from commercial vendors.
> The clock is the least of your problems. And the clock is not the basis
> for the original Y2K bug.
It ain't? As soon as the programmers started to trim the YYYY to the last two
digits BIOS makers incorporated this. Nowadays the BIOSes are 2000 compliant
(again?) due to some tricks and some having being completely rewritten.
> You also distribute a bundle of shell applications with the core
> distribution. Any one of them could access the time conversion functions
> and work with a two digit date. You need to verify they do not.
>
> Will "ls" sort by date correctly? Will "find -mtime" filter correctly?
Why shouldn't they? They will display the years in the right order:
4 drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 4096 May 25 1998 lib
1 drwxr-xr-x 10 root wheel 512 May 25 1998 libdata
^^^^
Add a year after 1998 and it will get filtered/listed behind it.
> Your "known fixes" sections includes make, ftpd, dns, etc., all
> functions that a corporate user would consider part of the OS. You need
> to address them seriously. If the answer is they all work correctly,
> GREAT! But please don't leave your site the way it is now. My fellows in
> industry CANNOT take it seriously, and we will not test it for you. My
> management will simply say "I told you that was an unsupported OS.
> Convert to a real system before 2000."
OK, how long have ye known Unix systems? Unix, as soon as it became 32-bit has
been 2000 compliant from start, the problem with Unix starts when we hit the
2038, also known as the end of the epoch because of the 32-bit limitation. By
that time we are over to 64-bit at least. So the only problem with FreeBSD lies
in the userland tools. The kernel has been compliant ever since versions from 4.4
BSD and before. However the Project has explicitly stated over and over again in
these mailinglists that from version 2.2.7|8 and onwards we are 2000 compliant.
Hmmm, and I wonder what yer management deems a real OS? Windows 98? That had a
Millennial bug from launch... Most of the problem with 2000 lie with userland
tools.
sidenote: my company depends on our FreeBSD boxen for Internet mail, firewalls,
and nameservers. And we are one of the biggest national networks in the
Netherlands. I pity yer fellows' lack of faith in free software.
---
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven Life is the only Pain
asmodai(at)wxs.nl we endeavour...
Network/Security Specialist <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>;
BSD & picoBSD: The Power to Serve <http://www.freebsd.org>;
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?XFMail.981229201108.asmodai>