Title: Year 2000 Information for HP-UX

To automatically check your HP for Year 2000 compatibility, install HP's
patch PHCO 15521.  This patch is available from the HP Electronic Support
Center.  This patch provides a utility named 'y2koscheck' that
will analyze all the installed software and patches on your system
to determine if the patches from the HP-UX Year 2000 Operating System
Master Patch List, or their applicable replacements, are installed.
If you have not installed all the appropriate patches to make your
system Year 2000 compatible, the 'y2koscheck' utility will list
those patches you still need.

Install PHCO_15521 on your system using swinstall, and setting
the Source Depot Path to  /tmp/PHCO_15521.depot (replace "/tmp"
with the path to the patch on your system).  Once installed,
run the utility as follows:

% /usr/contrib/bin/y2koscheck -v

for a summary of the status of Year 2000 compatibility of your
HP workstation.



Hewlett-Packard's Plans for the Year 2000
-----------------------------------------
      
Thank you for your interest in learning how HP is addressing the Year 2000 as
a computing issue.  HP is prepared for the approaching millennium, and our
overall goal is to ensure that our customers make the Year-2000 transition as
smoothly as possible.  To this end, we have set in place several policies that
pertain to hardware and software.
     
*** HARDWARE ***
Because they were designed with a newer architecture than many mainframe 
computers currently in use, HP's PA-RISC-based servers are not affected by 
the Year 2000.
     
*** OPERATING SYSTEM ***
Complete Year-2000 functionality will be fully supported with HP-UX 10.30, 
currently scheduled to be available in Q2 1997.  Operationally, within the 
operating system, date-related commands will manipulate system date and time 
correctly within the current as well as the next century.  Subsequent releases 
of HP-UX will fully support the Year-2000 functionality in a similar fashion.  
Hewlett-Packard has recently released a series of patches that will ensure 
that HP-UX 10.01, 10.10, and 10.20 will also be Year-2000 safe.  This list of 
patches are appended to the end of this document.
     
*** SUBSYSTEMS ***
As you may know, Hewlett-Packard develops a broad variety of compilers,
utilities, and applications.  Examples of these include MC/ServiceGuard for
High Availability, Openview for systems management, and C++ for software
development.  Today, all of our languages (C, C++, COBOL, Fortran) are 
Year-2000 safe.  We are working with the independent software units within HP
to provide subsystems that take full advantage of HP-UX 10.30's Year-2000
functionality.  We expect that those utilities and applications that are not
Year-2000 ready by the time HP-UX 10.30 is released will be so by the end of
1997.  This investigation should be complete by the end of Q3 1997, at which 
time HP will be able to share the results.
     
*** THIRD-PARTY SOLUTIONS ***
As you may appreciate, HP cannot attest to the Year-2000 readiness of 
solutions from independent software vendors.  However, HP is putting together 
a program to educate and guide our partners in this area.  HP recommends that 
customers consult directly with these third-party vendors regarding their
Year-2000 readiness.
     
HP's strategy is to provide our customers with open, flexible Year-2000
solutions supporting multiple languages, platforms, and implementation 
approaches.  These solutions are based on HP's own products and services,
complemented with those of our partners.

===============================================================================

How HP-UX Calculates Time, with Respect to the Year 2000
--------------------------------------------------------

* Can HP infer that when a customer rolls to HP-UX 10.30 or to the 64-bit
  architecture Operating System, they won't need to tweak their applications
  to avoid the Year-2000 problems?

NO!  They may (and probably WILL) need to check their applications for Year-2000
compliance.  The objective of the 2000 Rollover Program in 10.30 is to ensure 
the HP-UX Operating System of becoming Year-2000 Safe (work beyond year 2000).
The scope of this program is at the core level.  It does NOT imply that all 
applications that run on HP-UX will be Year-2000 safe.  Here are some of the
reasons why:

  During the 2000 Rollover Program, it became clear that one of the major 
  problems with HP-UX was the misinterpretation of the date field by our code
  at the core level.  Thus, it is highly possible the same kind error lies in
  the application level code.

  Applications may have their own defined "date" data field.  These date
  fields, as well as all of their dependent applications, will have to be
  looked at in order to avoid the Year-2000 problem.

In order to determine if a particular application is Year-2000 safe or not, it
really needs to look at its own development, built on top of the core (applies 
to date-related applications only).  More development means an application is 
more likely to have problem with Year-2000, and vise versa.

For those with a curious mind, here is how HP-UX calculates time...

How HP-UX calculates time
-------------------------
HP-UX converts dates from applications to seconds, with 1970 as the starting
point (more specifically, January 1, 1970, 0:00:00).  In a 32-bit OS, this
means that the time counter is "maxed out" in year 2038, with 2037 as the
highest year HP-UX supports.

Presently, HP-UX will not always calculate dates after 2000 correctly.  This
shortcoming will be corrected in HP-UX 10.30.  However, because 10.30 is still 
32-bit, it is still subject to the 2037 time maximum.

Once HP-UX goes to 64-bit, this maximum time constraint goes away, because
the allowed time range increases by 2^32, a very large number.

I doubt by that time many of us will be around to notice.  

In summary 
----------
                                                --- HP-UX --- 
                                                 10.30 64-bit 
Calculates post-2000 dates correctly               y     y 
Handles dates 2037 and beyond                      n     y

NOTE: Releases previous to 10.30 will calculate post-2000 dates correctly 
      when the appropriate patches are installed.  See the end of this
      document for a list of these patches.

===============================================================================