DHCP lease times with a expiration beyond 2038 will wrap the date and show it in the 1900s

  • 7002026
  • 27-Nov-2008
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell DHCP Management Console
Novell DNS Management Console
Novell iManager 2.6
Novell iManager 2.7
Novell NetWare 6.5 Support Pack 7
Novell NetWare 6.5 Support Pack 8
Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES 2)

Situation

Both the DHCP/NetWare plugin for iManager and the java console (version from OES2SP1) have a year 2038 bug when dealing with DHCP lease times.  When making a manual, but non permanent address assignment that has an expiration date beyond 2038, the expiration date will wrap and show a date in the 1900's.

Resolution

This has been reported to engineering

Additional Information

The year 2038 problem (also known as "Unix Millennium bug", or "Y2K38" by analogy to the Y2K problem) may cause some computer software to fail before or in the year 2038. The problem affects all software and systems that store system time as a signed 32-bit integer, and interpret this number as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 January 1, 1970.[1] The latest time that can be represented this way is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. Times beyond this moment will "wrap around" and be stored internally as a negative number, which these systems will interpret as a date in 1901 rather than 2038. This will likely cause problems for users of these systems due to erroneous calculations.

Most 32-bit Unix-like systems store and manipulate time in this format, so this problem is often referred to as the "Unix Millennium Bug". However, any other non-Unix operating systems and software that store and manipulate time this way will be just as affected by this problem.
 
More information regarding this issue can be found on the Year 2038 WIKI