Maximum uptime 497 days?

[Mark Terribile]

[Coming in late ...]

> On Mon, Jun 28, 2004 at 05:19:10PM +0400, Maxim Konovalov wrote:
> > On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, 12:39+0900, Rob wrote:
> > > By accident I happen to come across this remarkable limit of
> > > uptime registration for FreeBSD systems. After 497 days, the
> > > timer jumps to zero again.
> > >
> > > 497 days is less than a 1.5 years !
> > >
> > > Has this been fixed in newer versions of FreeBSD (stable and/or
> > > current) ? Or is there a hardware limitation (CPU?) that does
> > > not allow this?

Most system management/statistical things are built around the MIB (Management
Information Base) concept used by SNMP, etc.  These call for time to be kept
in 10,000ths of a second in a 32-bit unsigned counter.  That register rolls
over in about 497 days.  (Later versions of the base MIB add 64-bit counters,
but support isn't universal and software designs tend to prefer the original
counters.)

    Mark Terribile



		
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