New Patches Posted For Addressing Year 2038 Problem In Linux File-Systems

Some patches from 2014 have been revived in hopes of addressing the Year 2038 problem for Linux file-systems.

For those out of the loop, the Year 2038 problem is the issue of the Unix time format no longer being able to fit in a signed 32-bit integer after 19 January 2038. After then, there will be an integer overflow; if this happens to be your first time hearing about the Year 2038 problem, see Wikipedia.

Anyhow, Deepa Dinamani has posted a fresh set of 15 patches that revive the work started by Arnd Bergmann for 64-bit timestamp support everywhere within the Linux file-system code.

These patches make the Linux file-systems use timespec64 everywhere rather than timespec, as not to be prone to the Year 2038 issue by using 64-bit time. More details on this work can be found via this patch series.