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Investigating why Steam started picking a random font
Summary
The article discusses a bug that was caused by the game "The Stanley Parable". In the game, there is an achievement for not playing the game for 5 years. To get the achievement, the author disabled NTP and changed their system clock to 2030. However, they soon wanted to get the same achievement in the Ultra Deluxe edition, which required not playing the game for 10 years. So, they changed their system clock to 2040. This caused a problem because Steam accessed many files during that short lapse of time, which caused them to have their access time updated to 2040. And you know what's special about 2040? It's after 2038. Get it yet? Here is a hint: Year 2038 problem. This is the kind of error I was seeing in the console: "/usr/share/fonts": Value too large for defined data type. What kind of error could that be? Nice, so we're triggering an overflow somewhere. More precisely, fontconfig 32-bit (an underlying code to be exact) was going mad crazy because of this: In order to fix this mess I had to be a bit brutal: The remounts were needed because relatime is the default, which means file accesses get updated only if the current time is past the access time. And I had to remount both my root and home partition because Steam touched files everywhere. Not gonna lie, this self-inflicted bug brought quite a few life lessons to me: The Stanley Parable meta-game has no limit to madness. 2038 is going to be a lot of fun. 32-bit games preservation is a sad state of affair.
Q&As
What triggered the author's emotions when they saw their Steam font had changed?
The author's emotions ranged from laugh to total incredulity when they saw their Steam font had changed.
What did the author do to try and understand the root cause of the problem?
The author tried disabling NTP, changing their system clock to 2030, and starting the game to see if that would trigger the achievement in The Stanley Parable.
What did the author discover was the cause of the problem?
The author discovered that the problem was caused by their own actions in changing the system clock to 2040 and that this caused an overflow in fontconfig 32-bit.
How did the author fix the problem?
The author fixed the problem by remounting their root and home partition.
What life lessons did the author learn from this experience?
The author learned that The Stanley Parable meta-game has no limit to madness, that 2038 is going to be a lot of fun, and that 32-bit games preservation is a sad state of affair.
AI Comments
👍 This is a hilarious article that had me laughing out loud. I love The Stanley Parable and I'm glad someone made an article about it.
👎 This is a stupid article and I can't believe someone would waste their time writing about this.
AI Discussion
Me: It's about a guy who broke his Steam installation by changing his system clock to 2040.
Friend: Whoa. I can't believe he did that.
Me: I know. It's pretty funny, but also a good lesson in why you shouldn't mess with your system clock.
Friend: Yeah, I can imagine. That could have been a lot worse.
Action items
- Don't play The Stanley Parable for 5 years.
- Don't play The Stanley Parable for 10 years.
- Be prepared for the Year 2038 problem.
Technical terms
- Steam
- a digital distribution platform for video games
- Virgil
- a typeface
- Excalidraw
- a vector drawing tool
- NTP
- Network Time Protocol
- Year 2038 problem
- a problem for computing and data storage that will arise on 19 January 2038
- fontconfig
- a software library for configuring and customizing font access
- relatime
- a file access update option