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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.
"
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...
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...
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.
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
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...
Such installations are very good for customers who already have a mainframe: they save energy, floor space, and staff--and get mainframe-level reliability.
...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?"
Computer crash delays flights in Japan
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
I for one cant think of a darn thing thats as unreliable as windows
Airline schedules...
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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"
So that's why the ticket desk clerk does all that typing! They're writing shell scripts!
DCMonkey
To my knowledge, Windows was never used i mission-critical environments.
You missed the USS Yorktown, "scratch one flattop"...
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
at least they'll be more reliable now!
That statement is totally unfounded. You are assuming the scheduling software will be stable.
If the schedualing software crashes now, it'll be the same situation as before, but the crash is just going to look different and the OS is still going to be running (though uselessly) under it all.
Blue Screen or Core Dump, it's all the same.
Face it, Linux won't save you. Airlines are ALWAYS going to be late and you're all going crash down into a firey death. And that's what this is really about anyway. Your fates. Get over it. You're gator food, pal! You hear me? Sleeping with the fish! Slamming into a hillside! Tailspin! Dead! Just like the others!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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
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.
while true
/usr/local/bin/KAschedule
do
sleep 10
done
That's what I use for especially buggy software that randomly crashes, but needs to be available. Maybe a few tweaks to clean up any mess left over by the process that died, but this kind of script does the trick w/o needing any real use education other than "if it crashes, wait 15-20 seconds for a new one to open".
Everyone says this. But as I'm sure you know that doing anything STUPID like puting in s3cr33t c0d3z can get you busted and fuck up your life for the next 20 years (and actually longer since you will be banned for life from working in the gaming industry ever again), I'm certainly not going to risk that.
The games are truly random... well, as random as the random number generator, which does have to meet certain statistical requirements laid out by the control board. rand() will not cut it. They even worry about things like rand() % 10 favoring 0 thru 7 slightly more than 8 and 9 (assuming rand() returns 0-32767). The approved RNG is really fucking complicated, and relies on many unpredictable realtime events, such as network events, the time in microseconds when coins drop or when buttons are pressed.
And while a slot machine may not be a "mission critical" system, it certainly is considered a "financially critical" one by the people who buy our machines. Which is why Linux is ganing favor here.
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 guess they got fedup being owned by Chinese :-)