pissnet is now three years older than it was yesterday (a server connected with a clock set in 2019 and reset the timestamp of #opers (and several other channels) from Fri Apr 2 02:26:38 2021 to Tue Jan 1 00:03:52 2019)

@noisytoot That's an interesting failure mode/bug.

@lispi314 Usually UnrealIRCd would refuse allow a server with a clock that's too far off to link, but in this case I think what happened was the clock was set to 2019 when the server started, a local user connected and joined some channels during that time, and then the clock was synced with NTP and the server managed to connect, but it still reset the timestamp on those channels because the user had created them with an older timestamp (by joining them when the clock was set to 2019) and the older timestamp wins.

I'm slightly surprised that this never happened before (or maybe it did and was fixed and I forgot about it). Unfortunately there's no way to fix the channel creation time without kicking all users and recreating the channel (you can set it back, but never forward, because the older timestamp wins), and even then if a server netsplits with the current 2019 timestamp, and during the time it's disconnected we manage to set it back to 2021, when that server comes back it will just reset it back to 2019.

@lispi314 this is why it's important for IRC servers (on a network with more than one server) to have accurate clocks