Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Today I'm grateful I'm using Linux - Global IT issues caused by Crowdstrike update causes BSOD on Windows (www.timesnownews.com)

submitted 4 months ago by Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml

188 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This isn't a gloat post. In fact, I was completely oblivious to this massive outage until I tried to check my bank balance and it wouldn't log in.

Apparently Visa Paywave, banks, some TV networks, EFTPOS, etc. have gone down. Flights have had to be cancelled as some airlines systems have also gone down. Gas stations and public transport systems inoperable. As well as numerous Windows systems and Microsoft services affected. (At least according to one of my local MSMs.)

Seems insane to me that one company's messed up update could cause so much global disruption and so many systems gone down :/ This is exactly why centralisation of services and large corporations gobbling up smaller companies and becoming behemoth services is so dangerous.

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[–] axzxc1236@lemm.ee 35 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (12 children)

I am born too late to understand what Y2K problem was, this (the result) might be what people thought could happen.

[–] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (8 children)

Kinda I guess. It was about clocks rolling over from 1999 to 2000 and causing a buffer overflow that would supposedly crash all systems everywhere causing the country to come to a hault.

[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 22 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Most old systems used two digits for years. The year would go from 99 to 0. Any software doing a date comparison will get a garbage result. If a task needs to be run every 5 minutes, what will the software do if that task was last run 99 years from now? It will not work properly.

Governments and businesses spent lots of money and time patching critical systems to handle the date change. The media made a circus out of it, but when the year rolled over, everything was fine.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 5 points 4 months ago

One program I tested went from (31,12,99) to (01,01,100). Its front end formatted the date and added the century, so it showed 1 January 2000 as 01/01/19100

That wasn't fixed. The fault didn't affect processing (the years were wrong but had the correct offset between them) and was only visible to internal users, and also that system was expected to be retired in 2004

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