[ntp:questions] ntpd sets clock to the year 1939
Richard B. gilbert
rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Tue Mar 27 12:17:49 UTC 2007
David J Taylor wrote:
> Richard B. gilbert wrote:
> []
>
>>It's hardly ever a problem since most systems have a hardware clock of
>>some sort that can supply a reasonable starting point. In 2007, I
>>don't think that 1970-is a reasonable starting point.
>
>
> Whilst I have some sympathy for that viewpoint, NTP should not today have
> that 30-year limitation (delighted to hear it is being extended).
>
> It is not a defect of the OS that it allows its real-time clock to be set
> /before/ the base time - 1970?
>
> David
>
>
The "30-year" limitation is really, I believe, 36 years. It's a
artifact of the data structures used by the current implementation; a
sixty-four bit word with the binary point in the middle is used to
represent the seconds and fractional seconds since 1-JAN-1970. This has
served us well for the last 20 years or so. I believe that the new
standard is going to call for a 128 bit word which should last a few
years longer. :-)
The fault, if any, is the way Unix keeps time. I believe it's a signed
32 bit integer keeping seconds since 1-JAN-1970. Digital's VMS used a
scheme that could represent any time from a base time in November 1857
through the next 30,000 years or so. Unix time, at least until
recently, would overflow in 2036.
More information about the questions
mailing list