Heh, I meant UNSIGNED 32bit. And yes, telecom equipment has a very long lifetime. We still have customers with telco switches that were made/installed in the 80's.
And the equipment I support was designed in 2004, and last made in 2020 (as we could not get some components anymore), and likely will be used until the equipment it's hooked on to dies. > -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Eggert <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, July 13, 2026 11:55 PM > To: Robert Elz <[email protected]>; Rune Torgersen <[email protected]> > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [tz] Re: Installing new tzdata on old system > > On 7/13/26 18:54, Robert Elz via tz wrote: > > There are still more than 11 years until 2038, computing equipment > > rarely is planned to last a lot longer than that > > Depends on the application area, but if you're selling medical devices, > aerospace or military gear, industrial automation controllers, > networking or telecom infrastructure, etc., you'd better be Y2038-safe > already. Rune is still supporting telecom gear designed two decades ago. > > I too was puzzled by Rune's "most of our custom software uses signed > 32bit for time, so might keep ticking for a while", as obviously signed > 32-bit time_t stops working in 2038. But even if custom software uses > unsigned 32-bit timestamps, it'll be problematic to run it atop that old > kernel.
