Linux 4.18 Continues Prepping For The Year 2038

The Linux kernel has already been prepping for years for Year 2038 and that work is still ongoing with the in-development Linux 4.18 kernel.

For those unfamiliar with the Year 2038 problem, that is when systems using a signed 32-bit integer for storing the time since 1 January 1970, as is standard for the Unix time-stamp, will wrap around. That obviously will cause many systems to be confused. The Linux kernel across its around 20 million lines of code has been working to address the "Y2038" problem but it's no easy task with the around twenty million lines of code to the Linux kernel.

With this week's opening of the Linux 4.18 kernel merge window comes the latest updates. This latest round of updates include work on addressing the COMPAT interfaces for this problem consolidating some SySV IPC UAPI headers, converting other code to using the COMPAT_32BIT_TIME mechanism, and other code cleanups as part of this lengthy process.