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From: Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>
Reply-To: landley@trommello.org
To: Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com>,
       "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Subject: Re: New nanosecond stat patch for 2.5.44
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 20:35:47 -0500
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On Sunday 27 October 2002 19:23, Chris Friesen wrote:
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > We probably need to revamp struct stat anyway, to support a larger
> > dev_t, and possibly a larger ino_t (we should account for 64-bit ino_t
> > at least if we have to redesign the structure.)  At that point I would
> > really like to advocate for int64_t ts_sec and uint32_t ts_nsec and
> > quite possibly a int32_t ts_taidelta to deal with leap seconds... I'd
> > personally like struct timespec to look like the above everywhere.
>
> For filesystems can we get away with just the 64-bit nanoseconds?  By my
> calculations that gives something like 584 years--do we need to worry
> about files older than that?

1) The hard drive is only about 50 years old, so there aren't any files older 
than that at the moment:
http://www.mdhc.scu.edu/100th/reyjohnson.htm

2) This thing is unlikely to be a problem in our lifetimes, our 
grandchildren's lifetimes, or our great grandchildren's lifetimes (barring 
unforseen advances in active telomere reconstruction and a regenerative 
interpretation of DNA that somehow looks at it as a blueprint rather than a 
recipe).

3) If any current hardware or software is still in use in the year 2554, it 
will be seriously overdue for an upgrade.

Rob

-- 
http://penguicon.sf.net - Terry Pratchett, Eric Raymond, Pete Abrams, Illiad, 
CmdrTaco, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and caffienated jello.  Well why not?
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