From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826 Description of problem: Is 2.4.9-34 kernel safe for jiffies rollover after 497days from system boot? I want to make sure if 2.4.9-34 kernel handles jiffies rollover after 497 days from boot. Kernel developer Tim Schmielau from Germany apply some "jiffies fix" on 2.4.19-pre2 or later. I think this is critical patches for those users who want to run linux server more than 500 days. I request you will port these fixes into 2.4.9-3x for RH7.1. This bug fix is "required" for those who wants to use RedHat linux for their important mission. http://www.physik3.uni-rostock.de/tim/kernel/2.4/ regards,
we believe the kernel to be safe against the wrap. Yes it will wrap but should not have any negative sideeffects the patch you point at is for making jiffies 64 bit so that it wouldn't wrap (which is a different approach .)
Hello, The link that I gave you IS 63bit jiffies patch. I know it. It suppose to merge into 2.5 kernel, but currently pending. I have exchanged e-mail with TIM, the he wrote to me that he found jiffies bug in 2.4 kernel and apply the fix to 2.4.19-pre2 and later. At the same time, he created 63bit patch for enhancement on kernel 2.5. He hopes he will backport the patch just after it go into 2.5. This is an e-mail from Tim. So my request is, check his 2.4.19-pre fix regarding to current jiffies bux ,not 63bit enhancement, then port it to your RedHat 7.x kernel. Regards,
2.4.19-pre is a whole different kernel than 2.4.9 and it's not unlikely that new jiffies bugs were introduced and fixed between 2.4.9 and 2.4.19 The url you pointed at are not actual fixes. As I said, the core of the 2.4.9 kernel is assumed safe; we know there are some legacy drivers (old ISA cards) that might not be 100% safe but in general even such a wrap is not harmful in those cases. Anyway fixed in current erratum