Warning: BaseCamp not year 2038 compliant. Risk of Database corruption

[FrankB]

Second warning: Before you try any of this make sure you have backed up your BaseCamp database. It's very likely that it gets corrupted!

It is very likely due to the .GDB database format that BaseCamp uses that BaseCamp is not year 2038 compliant. It gets even worse, this can cause Database corruption and consequently you may loose your data.
It is to be expected that BaseCamp for Mac has the same limitation, but I am unable to verify that.

What is year 2038 compliancy?
'Older' software may only use 4 bytes to store a date and time. Because the limited range of 4 bytes, this may cause an overflow on January 19, 2038.
This page explains it better: https://inventivehq.com/blog/year-2038- ... -explained

What is the symptom?
Upon closing BaseCamp you may get this dialog.

BC Error.jpg (55.1 KiB) Viewed 933 times

What can cause it?
For example setting a departure date after January 19, 2038. January 19 is still OK, January 20 will make BC crash.
Other scenario's may also cause it. In general watch out with dates after January 19, 2038.

Notes:
- I'm at UTC +1. It could be that in a different TimeZone the exact date & time are different
- What may be confusing is that you can import a GPX with such a date, change the departure date of a via point to such a date, recalculate the route and even export to GPX. That all works well. The error only shows when closing BC, and the data needs to be saved in the DB.

schedule.jpg (78.52 KiB) Viewed 933 times

We still have 12 years to go?
Indeed, but accidentally typing the wrong date can also cause it. As I found out!

What is the damage?
It appears to be an error when saving data to the DB. The DB is thus in an unpredictable state. When restarting BC you will get an option to FIX. That does NOT always work.

Fix.jpg (16.32 KiB) Viewed 933 times

How to recover?
If you have a backup of the DB, restore that.
You can force BC to recreate the DB by simply deleting/renaming the folder.
The default location is %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\GARMIN\BaseCamp

What should we do?

Watch out when entering dates!

Create backups. That is generally a good advice, but especially in this case. You can use any method that you're confident with and works. But please try it, before you rely on it. For example by backing up and restoring the DB to a different computer.

The normal BaseCamp functions also work.

backup.jpg (18.86 KiB) Viewed 933 times

The good news is that we have 12 years to find an alternative to BC

Frank

[lkraus]

Basecamp development ended before July 2017. It will probably will stop working long before 2038 due to hardware or operating system incompatibility.

I'll probably be too darn old to care.

[khunpaul]

I wonder whether Mapsource has the same issue? I only use it very rarely for a couple of specific reasons. I had also been wondering whether BC and MS will still work seamlessly on Windows 11?

[Oop North John]

I had also been wondering whether BC and MS will still work seamlessly on Windows 11?

Basecamp works ok on my Windows 11 laptop.

Garmin, for the XT2, pushes you towards Tread, so I'd not be expecting them to do any work on Basecamp.

[FrankB]

I wonder whether Mapsource has the same issue? I only use it very rarely for a couple of specific reasons. I had also been wondering whether BC and MS will still work seamlessly on Windows 11?

Mapsource is NOT affected. For 2 reasons. 1st" It ignores the departure date 2nd: It doesn't work with a complete library. Just the GDB/GPX you opened. So if it should go wrong, then only the file you are working on is affected.

Mapsource and BaseCamp both work just as good on Windows 11 as on previous versions 10, 8, 7 etc.

[FrankB]

Basecamp development ended before July 2017. It will probably will stop working long before 2038 due to hardware or operating system incompatibility.

I'll probably be too darn old to care.

My concern is NOT that BC will stop working on 2038. As said, we have 12 years to find alternatives.
My concern is that you can lose your complete BC library, JUST by entering a date > 2038 NOW.