Re: Nasty suprise with uptime

[george anzinger]

J Sloan wrote:
> 
> Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> > > and received a nasty surprise. The uptime, which had been 496+ days
> > > on Friday, was back down to a few hours. I was ready to lart somebody
> > > with great vigor when I realized the uptime counter had simply wrapped
> > > around.
> > >
> > > So, I thought to myself, at least the 2.4 kernels on our new boxes won't
> >
> > It wraps at 496 days. The drivers are aware of it and dont crash the box
> 
> Yes, and these boxes are still running fine - other
> than showing some processes that were started
> in the year 2003... but DAMN, what an eyesore -
> uptime ruined as far as anybody can tell, times
> and dates no longer making any sense.
> 
> So, is there an implicit Linux policy to upgrade
> the distro, or at least the kernel, every 496 days
> whether it needs it or not?

Time for a plug for the High-res-timers project.  We have expanded
jiffies to 64 bits.  It can be read as the CLOCK_MONOTONIC via the new
POSIX timers interface (part of high-res-timers).  Haven't fixed uptime
yet, but hay, I got 496 days to do it :)

Find our latest patch here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/high-res-timers/

George