fail on subsequent runs. Much smaller (order of magnitude) numbers seem ok, and I haven't identified a specific bad number. In a loop, 800000000 seems ok, while 900000000 exhibits intermittant failure. Assuming that holds true, we could set the max timeout to about 25 years (which should suffice for any practical purpose), but that seems like an odd value to choose unless it can be somehow explained and rationalized.
May be related to January 19, 2038, aka time_t(0x7FFFFFFF) ? Now, the diff is 831284152. Petr