NetBSD Year 2000 compliance

We have audited and (where necessary) corrected the following classes of code:

  • Programs which only accepted 2-digit year numbers have been corrected to accept 4-digit years as well.
  • Programs and library functions which accept 2-digit year numbers interpret years 00-68 to be prefixed with 20 (i.e. 2000-2068), per the recommendation of the Single Unix Specification.
  • Programs and library functions which output year numbers have been verified to output years past 1999 correctly.

To the best of our knowledge, NetBSD 1.3.1 and later are year 2000 compliant.

If you have any additional questions, you can send mail to . To report a year 2000 bug, please submit a problem report in the y2k category using send-pr(1) on your NetBSD system, or fill out our send-pr form on the web.

Please note that our auditing efforts do not guarantee that third party software run under NetBSD is year 2000 compliant. If you have concerns about this, please contact the author or vendor of such software separately.

Quick hints for year 2000 compliance tests

Here are some suggestions for testing your scripts and third party software for year 2000 compliance:

  • Back up your system first, if having "future" dates in logfiles or file system time stamps or such would cause you any trouble.
  • Disable any clock synchronization you have running (ntpd, timed, etc).
  • Manually set the system's clock to 1999-12-31 23:00:00.
  • Test your applications work through "midnight 1999".
  • Switch the machine off.
  • Test that the machine correctly boots in the new century. (Some PC BIOSes may have difficulties.)
  • Check that applications start up and function correctly. Pay particular attention to scripts that use 'date' with '%' formats; scripts using %Y should be fine, those using %y likely are not.
  • Set the date back, and restore any backups if necessary.

There are two other dates that are known to be problematic:

  • 9 September 1999

    Some programmers used 9-9-99 as an unreachable end condition, while in fact it is a valid date. We are now past this hurdle without any reported NetBSD problems.
  • 29 February 2000

    The first leap year. (or the last leap year of this century if you want to get too technical) which some incorrect algorithms do not correctly handle.

Please note that this is not intended to be a comprehensive set of instructions for testing year 2000 compliance. For mission critical systems, you should seek guidance from an expert.

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