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Korean Air Mission Critical Systems Moved to Linux
securitas writes "ZDNet is reporting that Korean Air has decided to move its flight-crew scheduling and daily accounting systems to Linux running on an IBM mainframe, and 5000 users will access this information through their browsers starting in September.
"
Just wait until Code RedHat is released.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
if you are posting as AC, you could at least give us a juicy tidbit on how to win money with those things. like hold this button and then pull the lever at such and such a rate and then you'll get lucky sevens more often. sheesh, the quality of ac info nowadays is goin down the drain...
Slot machine Trivia! Many people say they don't like slot machines with "virtual reels" displayed on a computer screen because "that computer thing can cheat". They say they prefer the "mechanical" slot machines with real spinning reels. Well, guess what? Computers run all slot machines just the same and have since the 1970s (analog logic back then). The only difference is the ones with reels, are controlled by stepper motors and told to stop on the sybbols picked when the compuer finished playing that game a few seconds ago. The added randomized "spin time" and non-uniform stopping of the reels is just to please the player. The reels stop exactly where told to by the CPU.
I hope you don't mean that as a criticism. A slot machine is, after all, an entertainment device. If people are entertained by moving machinery, then it is a good thing that there exist slot machines with wheels in them. I can well understand that such a machine may offer a more complete sensory experience than a CRT, even if it is more limited in some of its capabilities. People like things that they can hold in their hands (or at least believe they could hold in their hands, given access to the innards). People are analog critters. There's a bitmap of a clock face with moving hands in the corner of my screen right now. I say, "Bravo!" to the game designers who put physical interfaces on electronic games. Keep up the good work!
My guess is that it isn't just a browser issue, but an App Server one. Remember that this is IBM, selling big iron with Linux. I'd bet that WebSphere will also play a pretty big role in that environment. That opens up a ton of interface possibilities.
I'm in korea right now. I took Korea air and I have to tell you they are awesome. Completely put to shame any other US airline I've taken. Check in took all of 10 minutes, FOR AN INTERNATION AL FLIGHT. Flight attendants were very nice, and the food was great (They got an award for their food, something they seem proud of). Anyway, they never had any screw ups, and I doubt they'd switch to Linux if they thought if would create problems. I didn't see any problems that needed fixing in the first place. I swear, they made a 12 hour flight bearable. Anyway, I guess I should be playing StarCraft like many other people in this PC room...
As far as I know, many airline/airport software is already written for unix.
My friend was an intern in a company about 3-4 years back and they were writing C programs for some kind of unix. The company name was a strange one so I don't remember it. I didn't ask what the unix version was either. So sorry about the undetailed post.
Korean Air Missile Crisis Moved on Linus.
I guess I should get some sleep...
-Dan
Too lazy to find a cute sig. Deal with it.
OSX air: you settle into your nice seat, having payed over the odds to get there. You then realise that BSDAir has been giving away seats next to you for free!
Believe it or not, lots of businesses still use some fairly arcane looking text mode interfaces.
Sometimes even running under some version of Windows or other. But you can't hook up a pile of terminals easily to a Windows machine...
Huh. Moderators are smoking crack again, that one was funny.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
Rubbermaid previously outsourced the same function and paid $6,000 per month. Watkins said he spent about 200 hours getting the Linux system up and running, but that it's now "pretty much self-sustaining." Rubbermaid purchased mainframe Linux for $180 from SuSE.
Rubbermaid's Watkins, a Microsoft-certified systems engineer, said Microsoft officials could talk about their own problems, rather than those of open source code. "Microsoft's NT was a good platform, but it had its share of problems," he said.
Talk about a feel-good article. KAL isn't really using it for much (What? Daily revenue isn't much?), but to see an airline using it is a really good moral boost. Reading about the other companies meant more to me, though. It's nice to read about actual successes- I read about the technical successes all the time. Hell of a way to start the day.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
And you know this how? References, please.
Excellent point here. I sure wouldn't want my mission critical running on a platform which seems to be bombarded on a weekly basis by trojans, viruses, seemingly unworkable or inflexible security patching procedures (my impression anyway). And look at the cost savings from a strictly cost/benefits point of view.
My two bits
--- tired of seeing port 80 scans in my syslog --
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
You can already... Linux is free.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Hmmn,well I might just point out that IBM feels differently and have been extremely successful in deploying Linux on their mainframes, Korean Airlines being a special situation considering the importance (mission critical) of these systems. Lets face it, Linux has moved into big league based on the collective intellect of the open source people who keep improving the kernel, and the corp world has finally realized that. Here is an operating system which has made it into the big league, and no new trojans on a weekly basis, to worry about either.
My 2 bits
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
A good thing.. Although while I wouldnt elevate a system that pumps out itinieraries for flight crews to the level of "mission critical" (most pilots and flight crews know the times when and where they'll be flying often weeks in advance) its a step in the right direction. It takes projects like this to keep eyeballs focused in the right direction. Has anyone heard anything about what happened to Burlington Coat Factory, after they made the switch? How are they doing now?
Bowie J. Poag
AH yes but at least the ENTIRE system wont go down now will it? compared to a blue screen where you just are tempted to kick the crap out of the computer.. now all you have to do is run the program again, as I said, they'd have to learn what to do with a command prompt!
Well if we can convince our govenment that the Asains are ahead of us with OS tech, creating a "Linux gap!
:)
Here you can find some ads and posters that could help you convincing them.
(it's weird that they use WMV format to promote their Linux system, I can't open them....)
As an employee of IBM e-business, I am *extremely* glad to see this development. I joined IBM a year ago so I could do exactly that kind of work. Now I'm expecting to start working on a project developing a Linux-based enterprise network supportng an eventual 250,000 wireless webpad users at hundreds of locations.
:) Although it is cool winning the "toy contest" among my friends by saving the "I have a mainframe at home" for last.
In case anyone is wondering, the new mainframes are not the room-sized behemoths of old. If anyone has visited IBM at a recent LinuxWorld Expo, they would have seen one of the new z900's running hundreds or thousands of copies of Linux in a single 19" rack.
To facilitate learning how to do just this, I managed to track down one of the company's "mainframe-in-a-server" training units. It's called a P390, and it's a standard-sized OS/2 server with a real S/390 chip on an expansion card. I should expect to be able to run about 5 concurrent copies of Linux, however, not thousands
And finally, IBM is giving out free virtual machines on a mainframe. Visit www.ibm.com/linux for more information.
Intelligent Life on Earth
the _users_ AND the _sysadmins_ are just pissed off by this instable and poorly equipped OS (no embedded scripting language, not onboard tools, poor automation)
/. unfactual M$ bashing to a minumum...
.NET.
I have no opinion as to what OS was best for the arlines, but please let's keep the
No embedded scripting language: Windows Scripting Host (JScript or VBScript). Coming soon: C#, Perl and Python through
No onboard tools: MMC. Yes, MMC was a big resource hog in the DOT OH stages, but it's matured into a very reasonable solution for sysadmins. Plus, if you look at all the new tools (eg VisualStudio and others) coming out from M$, you'll notice that all of the configs (server and workstation) are moving to a standardized XML format which can be edited via script or manually.
Poor automation: Win2K is almost "over-automated"! There's so many fricken wizards that do stuff for you, that it's easy to get lazy and neglect building more optimized automations. Plus, most automation happens at the application level - "system automation" is generally an OS independant issue.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Just to let you know, Amiga Inc. actually have a product available again, in conjunction with Tao - it's a language independent VM architecture that can run on x86 among other things, both native and hosted under linux or windows. It's actually pretty well-designed, sortof a cross between what Java or .NET should have been and a unixy system, and has some pretty sweet features (including being a very fast Java environment). It doesn't really have all that much to do with the original Amiga design except for the name, though (and the virtual processor assembly is very similar to the (already quite C-like, with structs and so on) Amiga-style M68k/PPC macro assembly).
/is/ currently vapor - a non-apple PPC computer from merlancia. Even without the new Amiga OS, the merlancia box'd be nice, if only to put LinuxPPC on. PPC is so much nicer than x86, it's a shame it's tricky to find anything but apple mobos...
I've actually got the SDK sitting on my desk, so, for once, it's not complete vaporware (unfortunately I've got the windows-hosted version, which is utterly useless to me with my linux-only PC).
It's also the OS for a product that
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Remeber in the cold war arms race, when if the Russians had some technology the American government had to have it too (And vice versa.)? Well if we can convince our govenment that the Asains are ahead of us with OS tech, creating a "Linux gap!" Now all we have to do is convince them to move all government systems to Linux, Microsoft be damned!
Now if only they ever fixed that whole basselope-gap thing...
This is a Good Thing, for a lot of reasons. First, it's a decent-scale commercial deployment of Linux in an industry that isn't typically viewed as "tech" by Joe B. Consumer and Jane D. Executive. Next, it's a good example of making the *right* choice when it comes to stability and security, no matter the industry.
I've been a Windows developer for years (now reformed, 99% linux dev these days), and I used to work for CompUSA corporate. It was interesting standing around with a bunch of MS marketing execs in meetings in Dallas back then. We used to talk about operating systems, and how they couldn't believe any OS would have pose a significant "threat" to the Windows established customer base.
Piece by piece, proving 'em wrong
High-quality Linux web hosting for geeks and coders.
Folks, lets not get excited. Their real problem is preventing their pilots (most of them ex Air Force jocks) from crashing their planes. The seem to bring an airliner down more often than their software.
Hmmm... I've traveled a lot in Europe (less in the US) and I'll tell you this -- the systems that they have, both at check-in as well as at the travel agencies, are less user-friendly and more arcane than linux. If they can be trained to use the current systems, they can be trained to type checkin_program_start or whatever at the bash prompt.
Not everyone who doesn't use linux is an idiot.
One thing I cannot understand... why would they access the information through a browser? I realize that browsers provide for a cheap interface, but its hardly conducive to real time information needs... not to mention the fact that I have come across no browser that is reliable. The "real time" bit can probaly be done by Java applets... but then if your doing that, why not just crate a stand alone client out of Java. My $0.02
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
That is freakin' classic. I needed a laugh this morning. Thanks.
fat_mike
idiot.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Such installations are very good for customers who already have a mainframe: they save energy, floor space, and staff--and get mainframe-level reliability.
A company called Ubitech, Makes an AFTN Message switch (a system that shuffles flightplans, met data, etc. arround) runs the system on linux
they sold it through a us company, Litton Denero (yes the same people responsible for the US Navy's NT destroyer)
installations include singapor, angola, st martin, and a few other countries.
...which went under many years back, though there are still some people sitting at the gate, waiting for a flight out. They loudly proclaim the greatness of Amiga Air to everyone passing by in the terminal, but everyone just ignores them.
Once in a while another airline takes interest in reviving Amiga Air** and the still-waiting passengers get very excited, but then the other airline's interest wanes, and the Amiga Air passengers remain stuck in the terminal, forever waiting.
* - Several years back, one of the comp.sys.* Usenet groups had a thread asking people to add to the "If OSes were airlines" post. Nobody chose Amiga up to the point that I discovered the thread, so I did. Many thought my post was funny. I have always wanted to get hold of a copy of it, but I can't seem to track it down on Google Groups. I have attempted to recreate it here. If anyone should stumble across the original, I'd love to know about it.
** - This is a reference to Gateway's (it was some major PC manufacturer, anyway, but I'm pretty sure it was Gateway) pondering an acquisition of the Amiga name and and technology and starting to make new, updated Amigas a few years ago. They eventually changed their corporate mind.
~Philly
Windows Air
...
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning
whatsoever.
Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.
UNIX Airways
Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of
plane they are supposed to be building.
Air DOS
Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't
need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Linux Air
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to
cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the
seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plan leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to
tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do WHAT with the seat?"
You set the mainframe up to run multiple instances of the OS and software and enable it to roll over to another instance if the one that you are currently using fails. Quit thinking in PC terms when talking about big iron. We use Alphas in mission critical system and there is never a reason for our system to go down because the software failed. If it does go down someone screwed up with the setup.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Computer crash delays flights in Japan
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
Well at least this way, you wont hear the airline people saying, " Well sir! We're sorry but we had a scheduling screwup because some sort of blue screen came up then the computer just crashed! Honest! Your flight is cancelled! ".. now you'll just hear " Your flight is on time sir! You can board in 5 minutes "
Ah gotta love them switching over to Linux, maybe now more airlines will see how they can avoid their scheduling computers crashing now.. I've seen too many computers at the check-in desk crashing but on the other hand, I'm pretty sure the check-in people wont know what the heck to do if they saw a command prompt.. "Uhh theres a word.. 'bash' with an pound sign next to it.. whats that mean?"
I suppose next they'll have to educate the masses on how to use Linux but hey, at least they'll be more reliable now!
"When asked about Mundie's warning of the risks associated with Linux, Laudati said: 'I'm not sure what he meant. Linux goes through a lot of testing before we use it.'"
If I had a dime for every occasion I've uttered similar words at a Microsoft press release, I could buy Linux an infinite number of times.
The ______ Agenda
i think many of you are missing the point. this article outlines linux being used in a high-profile mission-critical situation, and does not imply in any way the reason for doing so being due to ms os instability. no doubt an airline would have properly configured systems, adequate backups and work-arounds, should their tasks be 'mission critical'. from what i understood from the article, korean airlines has switched to linux to help online flight information services, which may be due to better perfomance in this particular situation with linux over other operating systems, including the unixes and windows, and/or more cost effective, or one of the other hundred reasons to choose between o/s.
That's an interesting point, and it's fiscally responsible, but isn't the point to have the program not screw up in the first place? The OS shouldn't crash, especially in a situation where the damage caused would be enough to file a size-able claim.
-TRiFIXION
Until recently, this requirement has kept code in gaming devices to at most a few hundred kilobytes of custom written code. Since the rise of Linux, gaming devices have finally been able to CHEAPLY gain much more functionality. And the regulatory bodies love the stability and open nature of Linux.
I should know. I write code for slots/poker/keno/etc. machines here in Las Vegas which are shipped worldwide. If you've ever gambled here or anywhere (indian casino, cruise ship, etc.), you've probably used my code, not knowing that it was Linux under there!
Win2k would be as good choice as Linux IMHO. I run it now (with Service Pack 2 or something ;*), and it runs beautifully. The only problem I have is that I probably need to upgrade/patch IE too. IE doesn't seem stable out-of-the-box.
NT on the other hand shouldn't be touched with a long pole for anything critical. I use it at work, and long for the day we'll install Win2k.
I usually get any OS to crash horribly, due to all the configuration tweaking and installations I usually do. So that I like Win2k along with Linux count for something. I like to think so anyways. Maybe I'm biased, I really didn't expect much from Win2k before I tried it.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
First koala bear that says "I hate Quantum" gets it in the tits!
(Quantas/Rocky Horror ref)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not so suddenly, the words of warning from MS are appearing more and more feable.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well duh! Anything not a marsupial in Australia is either a Funnel-web or rabbit, or a human or a sheep. Koala "bears" are stoned on the leaves they eat, and will shit on you if you pick them up. And that about says it all.
Did you know that we have marsupials here in north america? Possums and maybe racoons. (I nominate them for Sapien Next if we bite the big one.) Dogs: a mile high statue of Elvis. Cats: A meter high statue of Elvis ("Yah, so?").
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So that's why the ticket desk clerk does all that typing! They're writing shell scripts!
DCMonkey
1. They are not bears. They are marsupials.
2. It's Qantas - it's an acronym for Queensland A Northern Territory Aerial Services.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
make that 'Queensland And Northern...'
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Looks like they're doing all their backend development in Java, and Linux is just a common and low cost platform to run it on.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Perhaps, but the licence for win2k will leave you bleading from parts elsewhere. Next, you find CodeRed MMXVI wipeing you bios and lighting your monitor on fire.
Seccondly lets pay attention folks, all these linux worms have pretty simple solutions. For example:
Step one: Get rid of redhat.
Step two: Get rid of bind. (or anything else you don't need.
My box has one open port on it: 22 (SSH2) that's it. Not even discard. Why bother. Lock it down so it won't lock up. OK!
This rant brought to you by Super Cow Corp.
Based on the number of L10n and r4m3n worms originating in Korea and hammering my firewall, if this thing is connected to the net they're likely to get nailed. Seems like there's a lot of unsecured machines in .kr and .cn.
ehintz
... a mission critical system, i wouldn't want all those random internet worms invading and generally screwing up stuff here and there... would i?
Airlines had started very early with IT (1950's !) and think big (averge : 50000 sets worlwide, even in deepest New Guinea). And the two big points are stability and cost !
Until recently, they were big mainframe users, because of stability and cost efficience. When the world got rid of the dumb terminals, airlines very relunctantly moved to PC's, but still connected to the mainframe. And they sticked to OS/2 because of its stability... And they still use it ! Windows NT just _starts_ to replace those sets, but the _users_ AND the _sysadmins_ are just pissed off by this instable and poorly equipped OS (no embedded scripting language, not onboard tools, poor automation) ! But the managers love it because it is full of colours, and the M$ marketing brochures are so shiny.
Those days wont last.
Linux based solution emerge everywhere in the airline industry. It is stable and very cost efficient. And with those cash problems that all the airlines are facing, the calculation is very simple (Linux CD for 1000 PC's = 20 USD, 1000 Licenses for Windows = well above 50000 USD). So the change is there and more coming. Within the next 2 or 3 years, just think when you are airborne : At least a dozen Linux boxes has been involved in your journey, whatever the airline... And mainframes with Linux are a big part of it.
karma capped
we all know that Linux is more difficult to crash than NT, but I wonder if the korean planes will now resist better than back in the 80's when attacked by MiGs....
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
I think they decided to use linux because 50% of all NT and win2k servers in Korea are Code RedII infected ;-)
Win2K doesn't run on real systems like S/390.
For the greater education need of the "masses," I would have preferred less ambitious talk in the article and more details about what they were moving away *from*. I know that MS was out there pushing very hard for their DataCenter implementation, but I know Sun was out there as well. The community has to get behind these wins big time, so others will consider it for their mid size needs as well, where Sun & Oracle make their killings.
This has been a long time coming, as Newsforge reported on this a month ago :)
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You don't see cool info like this every day.
And how did the flight crews know weeks in advance where and when they'd be flying? How did the airline know that they'd have a plane there (properly maintained--with a zillion things on their own check/replace/fix schedule), fueled and ready to go?
Hell, if I'd known that crew and planes weren't mission critical, I'd have started my own airline years ago! Mmm, Quantum Airlines. "You might already be there, with a live/dead cat."
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Even if everybody get patched for Code Red, I'm sure there are plenty more holes waiting for discovery.
I guess they got fedup being owned by Chinese :-)
Notice the use of the word IF in my post you fuckhead.