Didn't Windows 95 do this too?!?

[darkling@mstdn.social]

@cinebox @cstross (Of course, I've got the number wrong... that'd be 2.5 seconds at 100 Hz, or ¼s at 1kHz. The method still worked, even if I can't get that detail right.)

[rootwyrm@weird.autos]

@etchedpixels @cstross nope and nope. I'd have to go dredging archives, but Linux has fucked up multiple, multiple times. Because there's multiple timers.
Also systemd has been the root of several incidents because it is the work of complete idiots.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

@benjistokman @cstross Ah. That would explain it not affecting laptops in practice.

[nske@ravenation.club]

@cstross The System 7 Macs we used back then were doing well if they got to 49 minutes.

[oclsc@mstdn.ca]

@cstross Such bugs are far older than that.

The place I studied as an undergrad had a PDP-10 for campus-wide time sharing. ca. 1979 official IT staff (not that they were called that) moved most of their effort to getting new VAXes going as replacements. As part of that, they cancelled the weekly downtime to run diagnostics on the PDP-10.

That revealed a long-standing bug in TOP-10: some internal counter (I forget what, can't have been simple uptime in clock ticks on a system with 36-bit words) overflowed after about a month of uptime, causing havoc.

I forget whether DEC supplied a fix, IT staff (or us students helping keep the -10 running) rolled our own, or we just scheduled monthly reboots.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@nske I *never* managed to get a Windows 95/98/98SE/ME machine to stay up for more than 36 hours without crashing hard. There's a reason I migrated to Linux back in the kernel 1.2 era (then onto Mac OSX back when it was warmed-over NeXTStep rather than whatever bizarre horror show it has evolved into today, where I remain, trapped by apathy).

[hairyvisionary@fosstodon.org]

@cstross Huh. I have got a 2008 Mac Mini running Lion (10.7) on my desk. It is reporting an uptime of 493 days 16:27. It's on the network enough to share filesystems with an adjacent newer 2020 Mini running 15.7.5, as in I just connected to it and can see the files.

[alister@hachyderm.io]

@darkling @cstross Yep, though AIR (and with some old posts that back up the numbers) the lore was that Linux crashed after 497 days - for the same reason as Windows - but that the 497 days issue was found before any windows machine had successfully made it to 49.7...

[edavies@functional.cafe]

@cstross https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycle_51_days_stale_data

[chigaze@cosocial.ca]

@cstross This is definitely not every Mac. We have a number of Macs running as servers with way more uptime than that. Plus I'd definitely have noticed if our FileMaker server that I manage was dying every month and half. Also the media server in my basement has way more uptime than that.

Edit: Seeing reports it may be Tahoe only.

[dpnash@c.im]

@jwz @cstross

Yeah, that’s more like my experience — sample size of one here, but it’s an M1 Mac Mini that stays up for months without anything like this happening. It only goes down when I turn it off to physically move it, which is uncommon.

[cyberspice@oldbytes.space]

@cstross There must be an accidental work around because I’ve never hit it!

[hairyvisionary@fosstodon.org]

@cstross First-gen white MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6 (named "Tape Monitor 2" because ripping records and tapes is its primary purpose) needs a reboot every three months or so to sort out some weirdness with audio (a Griffin iMic and old version of Audacity are also involved)

[cyberspice@oldbytes.space]

@benjistokman @mattblaze @cstross Ah that’s probably why I have never seen it. My devices go to sleep but have wake on LAN.

[cyberspice@oldbytes.space]

@TimWardCam @cstross Many years ago I had a set top box which would crash regularly in the middle of the night so I used a time switch to restart it at like 04:00. Amusingly I’ve worked on a lot of STBs and Smart TVs since then and they nearly all have a middle of the night “maintenance slot” when they check for updates etc. Restarting bits of the stack is quite common!

[oddhack@mstdn.social]

@oclsc @cstross TIMEVX:: forever! (I may boot up a VMS emulator and see if mined still compiles on it, someday).

[oclsc@mstdn.ca]

@oddhack @cstross I was happy to leave VMS behind when I left California. I wish I could do the same with Linux and return to something that really feels like Unix, but that doesn't exist any more.

Need to find time to assemble, at long last, my PiDP-11 and run 7/e on it.

[dheadshot@mastodon.social]

@cstross
Can we crash macOS by creating a folder called "con" inside another folder called "con" as well?

*Windows 95 peels off mask* "And I would have got away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling security researchers!"

[oddhack@mstdn.social]

@oclsc @cstross Free/OpenBSD do not count?

[tclark@mstdn.social]

@cstross I've had multiple uptime durations in excess of 90 days on my current Mac mini....