Make a custom bumper sticker! | Repent, For The End Is 1 x 10^9 Seconds Nigh!

Though it wasn't much talked about, an unknown, but definitely sizeable number of web servers running older models of AOLServer freaked out and entered a persistent vegitative state on 2006-05-12 21:25 GMT. Why? It was a billion seconds prior to 2038-01-19 03:14:08 GMT, when the original 32-bit Unix time clock runs out of fingers to count on. As Unix maven William Porquet explains it:

Unix and Unix-like operating systems [[[[Ed: And that's, like, a lot]]] do not calculate time in the Gregorian calendar, they simply count time in seconds since their arbitrary "birthday", GMT 00:00:00, Thursday, January 1, 1970 C.E. The industry-wide practice is to use a 32-bit variable for this number (32-bit signed time_t). Imagine an odometer with 32 wheels, each marked to count from 0 and 1 (for base-2 counting), with the end wheel used to indicate a positive or negative integer. The largest possible value for this integer is 2**31-1 = 2,147,483,647 (over two billion). 2,147,483,647 seconds after Unix's birthday corresponds to GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038. One second later, many Unix systems will revert to their birth date (like an odometer rollover from 999999 to 000000). Because the end bit indicating positive/negative integer may flip over, some systems may revert the date to 20:45:52, Friday, December 13, 1901 (which corresponds to GMT 00:00:00 Thursday, January 1, 1970 minus 2**31 seconds). Hence the media may nickname this the "Friday the Thirteenth Bug". I have read unconfirmed reports that the rollover could even result in a system time of December 32, 1969 on some legacy systems!

So what's May 12, 2006 got to do with it? It seems AOLserver 3.4.2-and-lower likes to check its daily planner and see what it's doing for, oh, the next 31-years-and-change. When it got to the page with the end of the world on it, its brain exploded — gaze not into the abyss, y'know?

It probably wasn't the biggest computer-related pain in the ass in the world that day: Not a lot of people use AOLserver. Version 3.4.2 is five years old, and most admins long ago upgraded to 4.0 (where the clock doesn't run out until after the sun does). Also, many of the vulnerable 3.4.x boxes were fortuitously configured to avoid the fatal date check.

But the Unix clock is essential to most operating systems. Any that calculate future time in a manner similar to AOLserver could likewise flip out any moment the magic number hits. What if the hadn't occurred in a little-used AOL product, but the Tomcat web container (serving yours truly and damn near everyone else)? Not to mention that we've got less than a billion seconds to get cracking before the motherload hits the fan on 1/19/38. Knowledgeable hackers like Porquet believe the likely impact could dwarf the worst-case fears of the Y2K bug (Ah, yes, remember that one):

I believe the year 2038 problem will more likely result in air traffic control disasters, life-support systems failure, and power grid meltdown than the year 2000 problem. The year 2000 problems often involved higher-level application programs, disrupting inventory control, credit card payments, pension plans, and the like. The 2038 problem may well cause more serious problems because it involves the basic system timekeeping functions from which most other time and date information is derived.

Here's the AOLServer email thread of sysadmins trying to figure out what the hell happened to their machines, and then how to patch 'em back together. Reads kinda like Chrichton without the oil company talking points.

And here's a list of critical dates of potential calendar meltdown between now and the Y 2^1E80 (When, because there are only 1^1E80 observerable particles in the universe, writing the date in ones and zeros is now impossible).

Time keeps on slippin-slippin-slippin-slippin-slippin-slippin-slippin-slippin-sli----

Repent, For The End Is 1 x 10^9 Seconds Nigh!

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Follow links in the comments and you're on your own.

09:06:23PM: 09-22-06

says Mark:

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