Linux Easter Egg - Hidden Dates in the Linux Kernel

In order to prevent the reboot() system call being
called inadvertently, you must pass it a pair of magic values in the first two parameters. The first magic value is 0xfee1dead. The second magic value
is one of:

$ grep LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC include/linux/*.h
include/linux/reboot.h:#define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC1 0xfee1dead
include/linux/reboot.h:#define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC2 672274793
include/linux/reboot.h:#define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC2A 85072278
include/linux/reboot.h:#define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC2B 369367448
include/linux/reboot.h:#define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC2C 537993216

These are dates of significance to Linus; hint
you can use perl to convert them into dates:

$ perl -e 'print localtime(672274793). "\n";'
Sun Apr 21 18:59:53 1991

This is the date that Linus first started writing Linux. The significance of other dates is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)

User Rating:	6.8 6.8/10 with 26 votes
Contributed By:	Anonymous on 06-04-2005
Reviewed By:	sars, David Wolf

Special Requirements: copy of the Linux source, grep, perl

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Comments

jimee writes:

These numbers are not timestamps in seconds since epoch. You have to convert them in hexadecimal to read a DDMMYYYY: $ printf "%x\n" 672274793 28121969 28/12/1969 is Linus' birthdate.

38 of 72 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes

koira writes:

I figured them out, but I won't tell. It is a neat exercise, and I learned a new command line command, printf. I figured I would give a hint. The second date is not May 12, 1996. I looked for about 15 mins before I figured it out. Even wikipedia has nothing for May 12, 1996. When you convert 85072278 to hex, you get a number starting with 5. Add a 0 to the beginning of that number. This is a pretty cool easter egg. I had fun.

38 of 72 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes

d1337r writes:

koira, it is in European format (DD/MM/YYYY), not in American one. So it is not May 12, 1996, but December 5, 1996 :-)

38 of 72 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes

jsantos writes:

Here are the answers. 0x672274793=28121969 28/12/1969 is when Linus Torvalds was born. These are Linus' daughters' birthdays: 0x85072278=5121996 5/12/1996 is when Patricia Miranda was born. 0x367369448=16041998 16/04/1998 is when Daniela Yolanda was born. 0x537993216=20122000 20/12/2000 is when Celeste Amanda was born.

38 of 72 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes

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