[TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Dave Horsfall]

UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20 
1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
		-- Andy Tannenbaum

Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US) seconds 
around 2000.

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Warner Losh]

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On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 2:35 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20
> 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
>                 -- Andy Tannenbaum
>
> Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US) seconds
> around 2000.
>

It's over a billion and a half today:
% date +%s
1541371441

Warner

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Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Andy Kosela]

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On Sunday, November 4, 2018, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 2:35 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
>> UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20
>> 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
>>                 -- Andy Tannenbaum
>>
>> Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US)
>> seconds
>> around 2000.
>>
>
> It's over a billion and a half today:
> % date +%s
> 1541371441
>
>
The interesting number happened also specifically on Feb 13, 2009 23:31:30
(UTC)

1234567890

--Andy

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Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Bakul Shah]

On Sun, 04 Nov 2018 15:44:37 -0700 Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 2:35 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
> > UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20
> > 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
> >                 -- Andy Tannenbaum
> >
> > Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US) seconds
> > around 2000.
> >
>
> It's over a billion and a half today:
> % date +%s
> 1541371441

Strictly speaking Unix wasn't born on Thu Jan 1 UTC 1970, right?
dmr says this in "The Evolution of the Unix Time-Sharing Sytem":

  Although it was not until well into 1970 that Brian
  Kernighan suggested the name `Unix,' in a somewhat
  treacherous pun on `Multics,' the operating system we know
  today was born.

I wonder if how many unix programmers were born on Thu Jan 1
UTC 1970.  Linus comes close.

Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Ken Thompson via TUHS]

unix time was originally measured in
ticks (60th of a second). alas, 2^32
only allows between 2 and 3 years.

so, we ran for 2 years and ended
up facing big problem in the 3rd.
our solution was to read all files
and all backup tapes and subtract
one year from all dates and move
the epoch up a year. we didnt mind
since dectapes (our backup tapes)
had to be rewritten to keep the bits
from rotting.

we did it again the next year and
when disaster was facing us on
the 4th year, we went to seconds.

it shows how much we bet on the
longevity of unix.


On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 4:42 PM, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Nov 2018 15:44:37 -0700 Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 2:35 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>>
>> > UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20
>> > 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
>> >                 -- Andy Tannenbaum
>> >
>> > Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US) seconds
>> > around 2000.
>> >
>>
>> It's over a billion and a half today:
>> % date +%s
>> 1541371441
>
> Strictly speaking Unix wasn't born on Thu Jan 1 UTC 1970, right?
> dmr says this in "The Evolution of the Unix Time-Sharing Sytem":
>
>   Although it was not until well into 1970 that Brian
>   Kernighan suggested the name `Unix,' in a somewhat
>   treacherous pun on `Multics,' the operating system we know
>   today was born.
>
> I wonder if how many unix programmers were born on Thu Jan 1
> UTC 1970.  Linus comes close.

Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Warren Toomey]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2018 at 07:16:35PM -0800, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote:
> so, we ran for 2 years and ended
> up facing big problem in the 3rd.
> our solution was to read all files
> and all backup tapes and subtract
> one year from all dates and move
> the epoch up a year. we didnt mind
> since dectapes (our backup tapes)
> had to be rewritten to keep the bits
> from rotting.
> 
> we did it again the next year and
> when disaster was facing us on
> the 4th year, we went to seconds.

This bit me when Dennis sent me an electronic copy of a DECtape from 
this timeframe. It took us quite a while to decide how to interpret
the timestamps. See:
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/1972_stuff/Readme
right down the bottom.

Cheers, Warren

Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Monday,  5 November 2018 at  7:52:03 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20
> 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
> 		-- Andy Tannenbaum
>
> Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US) seconds
> around 2000.

Yes, on 9 September 2001 (two days before *the* 11 September), and on
14 July last year it hit 1500000000 seconds:

  $ TZ=UTC date -r 1000000000
  Sun  9 Sep 2001 01:46:40 UTC
  $ TZ=UTC date -r 1500000000
  Fri 14 Jul 2017 02:40:00 UTC

Greg
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Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[WIlliam Cheswick]

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> On Nov 4, 2018, at 6:35 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Yes, on 9 September 2001

Sometime early in 2001 I looked this up and mentioned it to Ken.  As I recall, he
said it is Bonnie’s birthday.


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Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 5 Nov 2018, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20
> 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
> 		-- Andy Tannenbaum
>
> Hmmm...  According to my rough calculations, it hit a billion (US) seconds
> around 2000.

There were billion second parties around the world at the time.  Two days 
later all hell broke loose...

$ date -d @1000000000 -u
Sun Sep  9 01:46:40 UTC 2001

A few of my friends had a lunch to celebrate 1.5 billion seconds since the 
epoch in 2017 too.  Alas, I couldn't make it to lunch.  1.5 billion 
seconds was actually reached during the lunch thanks to our TZ:

$date -d @1500000000
Fri Jul 14 12:40:00 AEST 2017

Rob

Re: [TUHS] Unix half a billion seconds old in 1985

[Dave Horsfall]

OK, given it's so easy to plug in an arbitrary value (I'd forgotten about
the "-r" flag on date(1)), I'll drop this item; I was just amused that it 
was Andy Tannenbaum who pointed it out.

Oh, and I know that it's not really Unix's birthday, OK?  Sheesh...

-- Dave