Crashed Linux

Everyone is familiar with blue-screening kiosks and travel information displays, but this one was pretty new to me. The route display on this Air Algerie Airbus a330 was visibly experiencing some disk issues. (They rebooted the aircraft in midair, everything was fine after).

Still, the thought of flying around in something that is controlled by Redmonds' finest scares me even more :-)

[Note after 53000 views: No, this is not a normal Linux boot sequence. See the original sized version for the gory details. Also it got stuck here for a long time (~10 mins) until they restarted the app. And as some pointed out below, I doubt very much that up until this point off-the shelf OS'es are used for anything mission critical. Duh.]

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Comments

dnh500 says:

never seen linux crash in public before. nice photo
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

RedWolves says:

You should add this to the Computer Errors Group.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

mooseb0y says:

If I had to guess, that would be a shot of the kernel booting, rather than a kernel panic. Kernel panic messages spit out a TON of information to help with debugging.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

milliped says:

@Mooseboy: It hung there for at least twenty minutes, telling that svc got a pile of "bad directions". In a normal boot sequence, you would get your OK's and FAILEDs on the right.
See full size for errory goodness. Full bug reports may go to either Airbus or Air Algeria :-)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

hapholiday says:

Redmond's finest?
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

jolivierld says:

Redmond's Finest = Windows!
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

linuxfault says:

Send this to: www.thisisbroken.com/ !
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

oritex_agentur says:

I think this is just the entertainment system rebooting. Not the whole airplane system...
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

kimka says:

Yeah, it doesnt look like a Linux crash, just simple reboot of plane entertainment system.

I had same reboot done just for my personal screen when flying with Virgin Atlantic, they thought it will fix my not responding keypad..
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

soulscreme_2000 says:

That's not a crash. That's a problem with the kernel. User error, not OS error. Windows still blows. Though it doesn't give confidence in the people running our airlines.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

rt5435we [deleted] says:

lmao :D
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Tom Karpik says:

Soulscreme_2000: You Linux apologists are funny. It's a Linux crash. Deal with it.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Dan Manning says:

That is one of the coolest things ever. I wish Linux was even considered a useable OS in the States. Just about everything here uses Robbie Gates' Monster (XP)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

mattclare says:

It probably wasn't a crash, and probably only needed some application or service restarted. BUT, when your regular job is handing out coffee and helping people down ramps the on/off trick is the best solution.

Chalk it up as a Linux crash - it stopped working, didn't it?
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

jonkeating says:

Tom Karpik:

What is a "crash" then. If a hard drive has issues, is it an OS Crash. Perhaps you are unware that computers are software and hardware working together. If some of the hardware is flakey, it will make the software unable to run or not run properly. According to you, an error in the hard drive is a software crash... hmm very funny.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

ctrlER says:

Its not a LINUX OS crash, see the "exec", that means some app is being executed, and that app crashed. Its like, humm, MS Word crashing, it doesnt mean that Windows, the OS, crashed. It seams the app is SVC.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

ebrandel says:

Oh noes!! TEH LINUX IS PERFECTO!
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

linuxpunk81 says:

Its because Europeans shouldnt be allowed technology of any kind.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

evanx says:

All computers crash. Usually because of hardware-induced problems. But they didn't "reboot the aircraft" only the inflight entertainment system you stupido
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

borntobedown says:

Glad they're using Linux at least.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

ikirigin says:

There is something called Capability Maturity Model (CMM) that is commonly used in avionics. Any system that could actually kill someone is usually level-5.
Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Mod el

Despite the horrible movies they choose for flights, I don't think they could kill anyone :-D
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

nicklinus says:

may not have crashed it may have just been booting up.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

my moustache says:

ha!

i was on a similar aer lingus a330 just a few weeks ago, but we had seat-back monitors.

i wonder if they also run linux.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

sellit697 says:

I assure you that only the entertainment system runs Linux; it has absolutely no real connection to the Flight Management Systems whatsoever; other than it may receive data broadcast over a network. The operating systems running the Flight Management System are for the most part proprietary, and have to comply with several avionics systems standards.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

swapan says:

See the set of instructions:
...
. /tmp/httpserver_def.sh
start_xnet
exec
the last one causes the svc:... hangup.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Emptythought says:

the dumbass arguements in this comment thread are cracking me up.

nice picture, btw
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

zhatka [deleted] says:

I love it. They rebooted the plane in mid-air. All the makings for a python sketch. "Well the book says CTRL+ALT+DELETE?"
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

jedeye459 says:

I would rather watch linux boot than some of the on flight entertainment.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

London Dude says:

That is exactly the screen that I saw at school the other day. All the computers in this particular room run on windows XP but I guess this was coming from one of the servers
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

viivelafete says:

:)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Xeelee says:

I second jedeye459.

Any idea of what app they're using for the actual media reproduction? Just the fact that Airbus is using linux makes it a better company.

Even if they screw it up and need to reboot.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Xeelee says:

Oh right, and perhaps it'd be better if you reedited the part that says:
(They rebooted the aircraft in midair, everything was fine after).

Makes for scary headlines, and we all know how stupid some 'journalists' are.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

mikeraz says:

Good work with the camera. The in flight entertainment system on a recent Northwest flight (Portland to Narita) also rebooted on me and I wasn't as quick as you were. I spent the rest of the flight trying to get it to repeat with no success.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

milliped says:

@Mikeraz: I had the time, as I mentioned earlier it hung for quite a while. When they got round to restart the app, it worked without glitches for the rest of the flight.

@everyone else: Seems I got slashdotted or so? My usual audience tends to be ahh... somewhat smaller :-)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

blorman says:

windows version here:

ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2006/03/dark_spots_ at_3.html
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

newartriotgirl says:

yay you've been dugg! :)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

pik0 says:

BS!! That's what Linux looks like when it's booting...
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

His_Eminence99 says:

ikirigin: CMM refers to the maturity of the software organization...the place that writes to software. The wiki article says that in the first sentence. Safety critical flight systems are governed in the US by DO-178B, the de-facto standard. Level A is for catastrophic failures, all the way down to level E, no-effect errors. Engine control software, level A, in flight mapping software, probably level E. See www.lynuxworks.com/solutions/milaero/do-178b. php3
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

j.michael says:

That's a boot screen, not a crash.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Dean Forbes says:

how the f**k does a photo get almost 35,000 views? talk about a crash.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

dineshcyanam says:

@Dean Forbes: cos its been dugg!!!
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Dean Forbes says:

whatever that means
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

jak119 says:

I'm suprised that the plane actually used linux and not windows or mac os x. Dear Dean Forbes, check out digg.com
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

harishpillay says:

FYI, all inflight entertainment systems run Linux and have been doing so for the last 7 or so years. These systems are made by Panasonic Avionics and Thales Avionics, with the former holding about 70% of the market share.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Julien 'feTzu' Bono says:

use gentoo :)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

joeyness says:

Wow they have transsexual flight attendants these days. The future is finally here.
Flight attendant history:
-Hot Chicks
-Chicks
-Homosexuals
-Transsexuals
-??????
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

yazidoff says:

Is that a batch job?
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

macewan says:

comes from svc.c, don't use gentoo as you'll be compiling for years on end - go with Ubuntu - we have naked people standard in our wallpaper

;-)
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

methos789 says:

and so that bugzilla exists? / ¿y para que existe bugzilla?
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

fearmattdotcom says:

zomg!!!!! LINUX NEVAR CRASHEZORS! JOO IS LYING!

I can't believe some of these people. If this was Windows, everyone would be claiming that it sucked. But the same standard doesn't apply to Linux, apparently. It is allowed to crash whenever, but will never catch any flack.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

elcarbonite says:

Song also uses Linux on their 757s.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

adrstudios says:

i saw this happen on my flight too. here are some more pictures of it, and some of the actual entertainment system:
www.flickr.com/photos/19967084@N00/sets/72057 594088545108/
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

AkumAPRIME says:

Things crash, it happens. Even airplanes.
Haha, Dean Forbes will learn about the Digg now!
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Ozone9999, Duke and Sarge says:

Most of this conversation is way over my head....and I have never flown Air Algers....but I like the shot. The internet and most of the software out there is a mess and it is a wonder that anything works.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

jovivebo says:

I have seen this once before, but not on the plane, in the airport itself. I believe it was Milan Malpensa where a screen announing the departures had crashed. It was also running Linux.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

rti2ckoni says:

Jee, people...

First of all, this is a picture of system booting, not crashing.

Second, the description says they were experiencing disk problems, meaning probably physical problems. Do you know an OS that would work fine in this situation?

Third, the system worked fine after the reboot. Would that defenitely be the case with Windows?

Fourth, so it crashed once, big deal. That makes the ratio 1:10^6 now, or something. I can live with that.

Grow up, you all, jumping on this lonely evidence, like a Clinton Monica issue :)

Cheers!
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

nhippi says:

Everyone claiming it's the booting not crashing is kinda right but missing the point.

It wouldn't be booted midflight if there had not been a crash already.

What this mostly is, its a sign of crappy engineering. Any professional emdedded Linux designer would disable boot messages from framebuffer, it slows down the boot considerably and spoils user experience...

The flipside is that nobody will ever notice Linux when imbedded Linux is implemented that way. Which is already done in far more many places than people realize.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

drkazino says:

Actually, we can blame Microsoft for this believe it or not.

Microsoft has educated the whole world that when something with a computer does not work properly, that happens often, rebooting the whole machine is the easiest way to fix the problem. This is standard knowledge base for Windows users. These people normally make the coffee and bring the sandwiches as someone else here pointed out.

Microsoft has brainwashed the average users in the world, "computers don't work all the time, reboot machine - this is normal for computers"
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

rom says:

Seen this before - Northwest trans-pacific flight. It is the entertainment system that is executing. Linux or Windows, the software developers should be fired! This shouldn't have happened in the first place...
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

ticklewall says:

This system is junk. I install this system from Matsushita, the parent company for Panisonic. Its a stock Red Hat 6.X that they load a couple of extra modules on for the hardware on the aircraft. Its slow, and crashes constantly. Its not the hardware, or Linux causing the problems, its the software guys that suck. We installed the pilot system for the FAA on our aircraft for the type certificate, and plackard every one inop as soon as it leaves. I even asked if we could remove the penguin so people wouldnt blame Linux when their entertainment crashes, but the developers gave me some crap about having to redo stability tests for six months if they do.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

grimes20002000 says:

Last month was in Memphis on a connecting to CA, had to go through security to get to our gate. It was middle of the afternoon, but their was a long line...kinda strange for Memphis. Anyway got up to the front and I see on the scanner station monitor the blue-screen o' death...this is 2006 and they were still running NT! Wish I had a picture but true story...
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

lapax says:

hmm.. it's booting up. doesn't necessarily mean it had crashed.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Lawrence Whittemore says:

what a not interessting photo
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

hackel says:

People should realise that the in-flight entertainment systems are generally installed by the airline, not the manufacturer (Airbus).

I was recently on a Northwest Airlines flight to London on an a330 when they had to reboot their entertainment system several times. It didn't show up on the passenger monitors, but the main console in the front clearly showed a WINDOWS 3.11 logo booting up. It was truely an awe-inspiring experience! I really should have grabbed a picture. Oh well, maybe next time.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

drewbic says:

this looks like a film still from a bad 70's suspense film. 70,000 views. that's amazing.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

Darth Panda [deleted] says:

The system is reporting RPC errors, probably caused by NFS (actual code in net/sunrpc/svc.c). See the value it gets (1650011963) and the error condition:

dir = ntohl(svc_getu32(argv));
(...)
if (dir != 0) /* direction != CALL */
goto err_bad_dir;

The script executes in debug mode. Reading environment variables from a file in /tmp doesn't look very robust as well.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

stereoo says:

can't understan how it could be the first on explore..
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

sharply_done says:

Ummm ... maybe it's the 78,000+ views that places it first in explore.

Just maybe.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

stereoo says:

right, but i can't find the beauty or the interest on this photo...
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

jovike says:

How can soulscreme_2000 deal with it? She doesn't have access to the aeroplane.
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

theillien says:

Would you like an aisle or Windows seat?
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

timon_be says:

LOL Illien ^^
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

JuanSolo ! says:

Kernel panic in the air.

Nice title for a movie isn't it :p
Posted 45 months ago. ( permalink )

racingsquirrel says:

I hope the navigation system is not connected to this one.
Posted 44 months ago. ( permalink )

Agent_K says:

I think the fact that a Windows crash isn't anything special (unless it's on a really huge screen), but a small linux crash is a spectacle says it all.
Posted 43 months ago. ( permalink )

mitsass says:

Our flight out of Atlanta last summer was dalayed for several hours, after four hours of waiting on a new computer board to be flown in and installed, at least 3 departures from the gate, and one rejected takeoff, our plane was directed back to the gate where the pilot decided to reboot the flight computer, which meant the entire plane was shut down for about a minute and a half, then booted on again, we then preceded to take off and enjoyed an uneventful flight.
Posted 41 months ago. ( permalink )

devasthead says:

It's an HD break.. i think..
Posted 41 months ago. ( permalink )

devasthead says:

Or can't mount NFS disk by server.. boh!
Posted 41 months ago. ( permalink )

murky says:

'I doubt very much that up until this point off-the shelf OS'es are used for anything mission critical. Duh.] '

I doubt very much if the in flight entertainment system is classed as 'Mission Critical' by the airline. Important for keeping the punters happy, yes, but not for keeping the plane in the air.
Posted 40 months ago. ( permalink )

benchodbosrino says:

Why don't you all stfu and grow a penis. This event happened a while ago. The flight is over and the plane is landed yet you're all still going on about one event in the flight (like I am too oO.) I couldn't care less if it was linux or DOS. Just do what you gotta do to get it working.

PS there's an operating system called Time, it doesn't do anything but count, never crashes just keeps going! It's great. One of the applications that run on this OS is called Life. Life does occasionally crash but you know what? It doesn't bring down the whole OS! Time just keeps going! Unlike you lot that appear to be stuck the past.
Posted 40 months ago. ( permalink )

Greg Copeland says:

It clearly is an application issue and is not Linux crashing. A kernel panic is clearly not visible. Application related errors (which may be originating from the kernel) clearly are visible which is not the same as a kernel crash. The bottom of the screen reads *something* (meaning close, but perhaps not exact) like:
export HTTPSERVER=120.1.6.1
export FILESERVER=120.1.6.1
export DVD_HOST=120.1.6.1
start_xnet
exec
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.
DVC: bad direction 1560011536, dropping request.

Based on comments above, it does appear to be NFS related errors. So the "DVC" becomes "svc: bad direction...." That probably means a networking failure or DVD server failure of some type.
Posted 40 months ago. ( permalink )

YamahaBrez says:

probably poor coding on the programmers part.... linux doesn't just crash for no apparent reason. your more likely to have hardware failure or bad programmers behind this mess. ive read about this though other places happening on the airbuses...
Posted 39 months ago. ( permalink )

Stewart Leiwakabessy says:

... And have a safe flight! *smiles*
Posted 38 months ago. ( permalink )

[PK] says:

GET A MAC!

Sorry.........
Posted 38 months ago. ( permalink )

mking213 says:

Its a FreeVO box for crying out loud. freevo.sourceforge.net/
Posted 38 months ago. ( permalink )

linux666 says:

i certainly would go with a different airline if dos was operating the plane and other microshit products. i hope that windows vista would never operate a plane i ride on in the future. if it was windows crashing, no one would pay much attention. windows crashing?? is that anything new? linux is known to be stable, so it gets a lot of attention for crashing. the airline company chose to use linux. did anyone file a bug report? its cool to see linux booting with the penguin. what is its purpose for the airplane? what about pkill cvs? what was the uptime for linux running that aircraft? it might have been pretty good.
Posted 37 months ago. ( permalink )

seila1428 says:

It's fantastic: Linux crashed! Impossible thing :-/
Posted 37 months ago. ( permalink )

jayKayEss says:

I've seen Linux booting on SAS's Airbus jets too. Personally I think it's awesome.
Posted 36 months ago. ( permalink )

ronilrd says:

The flight attendant probably press reset instead of play.
Posted 36 months ago. ( permalink )

TheJesusGod says:

That flight attendant is mighty ugly.
Posted 34 months ago. ( permalink )

yakathemain says:

As this blog shows, Linux Booting while humans crashing.
Pity Pity Oh so Pityfull
Posted 33 months ago. ( permalink )

mgcarley says:

Qantas has Linux on their long haul IFEs... I have some photos of it somewhere, but last year flying Sydney-Hong Kong we had trouble with the IFE for about the first ~3 hours... explanation from the flight attendant was that they had tried "booting all of the systems at the same time, so we will try booting different sections of the plane one at a time and then it will work"... weirdly, it did.

But most IFE interfaces are horrible... it would be really nice if they had decent media players that allowed you to skip to a different part of the movie if you so desired (since I had to restart my movie 3 or 4 times in the aforementioned flight, it was getting pretty tedious waiting for it to scroll through 15, 20, 30 minutes of movie to get to the bit I was watching...)
Posted 18 months ago. ( permalink )

mrfufinache says:

The IFE systems are independant from the avionics system on an airplane, the only OS that even close to windows or linux that I know of that's certified is lynxOS (http://www.lynuxworks.com/rtos/rtos-178.php) .

There's usually button that will disengage any autopilot if it starts handling weirdly, and there's probably a fuse panel somewhere on the airplane (probably the cockpit) where they can just physical take out the fuse incase that button doesn't work.
Posted 16 months ago. ( permalink )

loopkicks says:

ive seen this many times on my flights on united haha
Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink )

JonyTut says:

Can I use this pic in our Novosibirsk Linux User Group site?
Posted 7 months ago. ( permalink )

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