Slashdot Mirror
Panicking In Morse Code
An anonymous reader writes "When an i386 running Linux panics, a function in the kernel called 'panic_blink' causes the system's LEDs to blink. Andrew Rodland recently posted a creative patch to turn that steady blink into a useful message in morse code!"
Reminds me of what the internet was like back in 1968.
Note: this is a parody.
tcd004
When my system says "Someone set up us the bomb!" in morse code when my harddrive failes! ;)
Maybe one day the blinky lights could be put into pixels and then a type of visual pop up error message. On second thought morse code is much more fun!
my win xp crashes daily :S, it's own updates rendered it ususable once, and forced me to re-install w/o them!
Reece,
Subtle trolling is much more effective.
I do security
and that message is...
(sos) =)
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
You know why your dad wore short pants?
So when his ship sank he could walk to shore!!
Personal Website
10 comments and the site's down. Did anyone grab a copy before we killed the site?
The storys only been up a few minutes, and its already been slashdotted..
on the SE or SE30 (SE i think), when there is a hard drive problem, the drive light blinks SOS...the 'O' is a little drawn out, but it's readable.
Server /.'ed in morse code
Personal Website
Down already...
Quickly! Someone translate the blinking lights on the box and post the story for us!!!
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
...of Wolfenstein 3D.
If you translated the beeping in various levels of the third episode, it was a message in Morse Code telling you to defeat Hitler!
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Please install Windows on a 386? C:\Windows C:\Windows\Run C:\PC\Crawl!!
Want to impress ME?
Use the LED's on your laptop to give yourself the output of your decrypting of your grandfather's 45 year old messages about the location of secret Nazi/Japanese gold caches in the Philipines, while you are being Van-Eck phreaked in a jail cell.
Extra bonus: Doing all this while next door to a priest who is intimidating you from "getting the job done".
-Donut
... Linux panics ...
WHAT? Oh bloody hell, Linux actually panics??? Someone shoot me
Life sucks.
All PCs do this. Its called th POST - Power On Self Test. If there is an error, and the BIOS cant initialize the video system, it beeps. Dfferent beeps mean different things, some for video, some for RAM, and other errors.
Personally I've run into 1 kernel panic in the 3 years i've been running linux. and it was my fault. Now if someone could create a patch for xp, i'd be much more likely to see this morse code stuff =)
Logik
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
I can't do that dave
I'm melting ....
beam me up, scotty
feed me
I wonder if there is a morse code to voice coverter device out there? that would be a neat module to have to plug in as a peripheral
of course, if the code goes fast enough, you can gain the ability to recognise whole words as a sort of warble.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You're paraphrasing Richard Feyman:
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's
not why we do it. --Richard Feynman.
Although this is a neat and creative idea, I think that a better way to diagnose a sick computer would be a standard for a set of diagnostic LEDs or even a small LCD panel as part of the next motherboard standard.
Some manufacturers of motherboards and whole systems already do this, but it's far from standard, and is typically only useful for POST errors. A full standard would allow O/Ses, as well as the BIOS to access the output device (be it LEDs or an LCD) and display a standard code for whatever the error is, which the user could then look up in the manual, or on the web.
My other sig is funny!
Except that those of us who don't have monitors attached to view the "pop up error message" can actually find a legitamite use for this.
Post codes have not gone anywhere. Some motherboards even have "talking BIOS" which is kind of freaky. Of course POST codes don't work once you're in the OS. It's up to the OS to tell you you have a problem then. Thus morse code is perfect for a box acting as a firewall or small server with not monitor attached. Eh?
The Morse Code Alphabet
Linux: Panicking In Morse Code Submitted by Jeremy on Saturday, July 20, 2002 - 08:12
/* Tell the user who may be running in X and not see the console that we have
Digging through the source code of a recent kernel, in the file 'linux/drivers/char/pc_keyb.c', above the definition for the function 'panic_blink', one reads the following comment:
panic'ed. This is to distingush panics from "real" lockups.
Could in theory send the panic message as morse, but that is left as an
exercise for the reader. */
Andrew Rodland stumbled across this comment, and as he explains, "not being the kind to step down from a challenge (unless it's just really hard), I decided to write morse code output code." His patch against Linux kernel version 2.4.19-rc1-ac1 (plus preempt) actually modifies the kernel to report a panic in morse code! Andrew also submitted a small sample module for generating test panics.
From: Andrew Rodland
To: linux-kernel AT vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH -ac] Panicking in morse code
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 01:13:00 -0400
No, it's not 1 April.
I was researching panic_blink() for someone who needed a little help,
when I noticed the comment above the function definition, not being the
kind to step down from a challenge (unless it's just really hard), I
decided to write morse code output code.
The option panicblink= has been hijacked to be a simple bitfield:
bit 1 : blink LEDs
bit 2 : sound the PC speaker.
the blinking option depends only on pc_keyb.c. the pcspeaker option
depends on kb_mksound() actually doing something. At the moment, both of
these mean i386. The call to panic_blink() in panic() is still guarded
by an i386 #ifdef, anyway, for the moment. The default is to blink only,
because I figured the beeps would be too annoying. Opinions?
It recognizes letters, and digits, and treats everything else as a
space. The timings are tunable by #defines. It repeats the message
indefinitely. And it should only bloat the kernel by a few hundred
bytes, although if someone wants to wrap this in its own config option,
well, that's good too.
Anyway, here's the patch. It's against linux-2.4.19-rc1-ac1+preempt, but
I suspect it applies against all recent -ac. If 2.5 has this, it will
hopefully apply with some fuzz against that, too. I don't have a tree.
Four dits!
Two dits!
Dah!
Windows! Windows! Rah Rah Rah!
dah = -
We had a server that would start playing some kind of song immediately on power up. Couldn't figure out why. Boss thought it was a virus. Eventually figured out it was designed to do that when it overheated.
Then there's the "wait fifteen minutes, and then you hear 11 beeps, and that tells you it's a memory problem, but only if you leave the computer on for 15 minutes, and stay in the same room." problem.
My Dell has a set of 4 LEDs on the back of the case that do the same thing... they light up in various configurations indicating trouble codes.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
...to bring Linux on the Desktop
Really
Perhaps a more useful hack would have been to have the blinky lights signal SOS when a server is being slashdotted. They could have checked it out when submitting this story.
Here's some more ideas:
1. Blinky lights go crazy when portsentry reports block yet another attempt at port 80 (best learn how to replace worn out blinky lights first);
2. Blinky lights make pretty patterns depending on up time of machine (Oops, now I'm flamebait since Windows users will never see pretty blinky lights);
3. Blinky lights go wild whenever a human female is within 10 feet of machine (unlike the machine's owner who may or may not notice, depending on the task at hand -- oy, did I really say that?);
I love blinky lights and thank the gods every day that I don't have adverse reactions to them. Now if I can just find a female who doesn't cause adverse reactions, I'm doing good!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I donwloaded a winamp plugin that would flash the LEDs with the oscilliscope(sp). Anyway, I thought it was pretty neat untill I tried being productive with it turned on. Turns out that it actually just switches the caps/num lock on and off. So in the middle of my text, i'd Get TExt LiKE THIs. It was neat, but annoying if I planned on typing.
My other sig is an import.
Just checking. I can't believe no one's mentioned the part in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon where Randy "prints" out the "message" (trying to avoid a spoiler) on his laptop's LED.
Here's an LED controller program inspired by that bit in the book.
c-hack.com |
Ummmmmmmmmm........ isn't that what serial is for?
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Google will also find you morse code tutorials :)
If I didn't know better I'd say that's what Compaq's, or was it old ALRs (remember them?) did when hardware wasn't right.
A string of varying beeps. This was years ago, don't know if any recent hardware still does it.
Tech support: Hold the phone close to the system board so I can hear it.
That was funny.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
dadadit didadit dit didah dah dadaditditdadah dadahdidit dit didahdit dadadah dadidadit dadadah dadah dadah dit dadit dah dididit didah dahdit dadidit didit dah didadadadadit dididit didah didadidit didadit dit didah dadidit dadidadah dididit didadidit didah dididit didididit dadidit dadadah dah dad dit dadidit didadidadidah
[translation:
great, zero comments and it's already slashdotted. ]
Well, apparently morse code is lame...(stupid lameness filter)
Black and grey are both shades of white.
The kerneltrap.org server's led's are furiously flashing:
[imagine 'slashdotted' in morse here]
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Morse != Junk! Damn you lameness filter!!
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I remember the Amiga had this along with the "Guru meditation" numbers :)
:'(
*weeps* the memories
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
This is a good page for the morse code and common abbreviations used by HAM (amateur radio) operators. You could always have your computer die with QSB? (are my signals fading?)...
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
.- .... .... .... ....
(Think Kevin from Home Alone panicing.)
called lame for using lots of caps, so here's a whole sentance without caps. bleh.
also called lame for excessive junk characters. double bleh.
also warned because it took less than 20 seconds to post. how many different slashdot errors can one get in a single 2 line post? yeesh.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
well, i'm not sure how long it'll last, but i thought since it seemed to only work on and off, i made a mirror on a free hosted site, (i'm cheap, i know,) but better than nothin :),
:)
Http://endlessjourney.netfirms.com
Reece,
PS. this is a great idea, all PC's should be able to do morse code
All your funny are belong to a year and a half ago!
Someone set up us the dead horse!
You have no chance to be funny make your time!
Karma: Non-Heinous
To be honest, i don't have top of the line hardware, but it's far from shit,, and as far as M$ is concerned, they really don't want us to set windows up past the point of what colours it is,,,
I love it! Now I'm gonna have to find out how to use all of my LED's for other purposes. Anyone have any ideas on how to use my CD-ROM LED to show ethernet utilizaion?
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
As to the question of flashing the LED because Morse on the speaker might be too annoying, I say go for the speaker. Those who do know Morse know it by sound, not by individual dots and dashes, and seeing it on an LED is a very different thing than listening to it. If the system has panicked I'm already annoyed, beeping isn't going to be a problem. Just the opposite, if I'm nearby but not looking at the computer I want the beeping to get my attention to the problem.
And here's the really stupid question: What is this blinking system LED he's talking about???? I have a power LED on my PC, but it's not software controlled. Some PC's used to have a "turbo" LED, but that's been phased out. I sure hope he's not using the hard disk LED. Is he using a Keyboard LED or am I missing something really obvious here?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
As an old army telgraphist and hamradio operator I would prefer morse to be sent via the PC speaker instead of some LED's. A human can attain much higher reception speed by using his eara as opposed to using his eys.
//Pingo
Since I myself is capable of morse ear reception much faster than normal people are able to speak, I would really like to have a morse interface to my Linux boxes.
Imagine also to get rid of the keyboard and use a simple morse key as input device. Ahhh nirvana at last.
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
I've mirrored the comment page and the patch
here for your pleasure.
I remember doing this on a embedded FORTH-system in the 80-ies. The only way to communicate with the board when the RS232 was gone was a little piezo-beeper.
A quick trip to Google found me the CGI Morse Code Translator, which translates "server slashdotted" to:
:)
(Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.)
slashdot sucks
dot dot dah dot dot dah dot dah dot dah dot dah dot dah dot dot
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
My server has a dumb terminal connected to one of its serial ports. It is a single-line model with an integrated keyboard. I set the cron daemon to send a message to it, with abbreviations that tell me if anything is wrong. The kernel could also do such a thing.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
As opposed to Windows, where you get error messages like "An invalid page fault has occurred in module KERNEL.DLL at: " and then a page and a half of hex. By which time, your system and anything you were working on is completely buggered.
At least on a bunch of the HP Netserver models we've used - LX Pro, LH3, LH4, etc. They seemed to have dropped it on the smaller 2U and 1U models like the 1000 and 2000 due to lack of space or something.
It's too bad there's not a standardized motherboard resource (built-in PCI device, etc)for LCD displays like this; OS and app vendors would then be able to utilize it out of the box.
The idiotic thing is the displays on our LH3s and LH4s didn't show much and were useless, even with the "interactive" buttons that let you cruise around like on a printer. If they could display system load, temperature, yadda yadda they would be be much more useful.
Of course we know the logical conclusion to LCD displays on the front of computers -- someobody will have to have a full-blown 6" color LCD display on the front of the machine...
Thanx to the people to worked on it...it is silliness like this that make Linux well worth the effort to learn, understand and play with!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you follow the link, you'll see that he implimented it for the PC speaker as well. (You can set this as an option.) Of course, that depends on the speaker driver being in a decent state during the panic.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
One of the cool things about Cobalt RaQ servers is the LCD on the front panel. There's a simple driver control program that can be used to spit out the text (or bit-graphics, apparently).
We have about 120 of these in our data center and we tech occasionally play practical jokes on or leave messages for one another on them. =)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Hey, I'm getting a message in morse code. Get my pencil, Let's see:
e r r o r - i n - m o r s e - c o d e - g e n e r z k b g h i l e r l b v c t q z
Doh!"
Table-ized A.I.
One of the (many) cool things that differentiate Macs from PC's is the way the report POST failures.
Depending on if the video driver was sane or not yet, you'd get an infamous "San Mac" display, followed by a few codes in hex describing what was wrong. If not, you'd get POST-coded beeps.
What was really cool were the "chimes of death". Each Mac model family had a specific sound that played when the POST test failed. These ranged from the opening to the Twilight Zone theme, to a drum crash, to the sound of glass breaking, to a full-on car crash. (You get get some of them here, but I KNOW there's a more comprehensive list with samples out there somewhere.)
Ahh, memories...
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
No, always have a stop bit. The highest on bit is the stop bit, and not played. This allows up to 7 bits of useful bits.
Infuriate left and right
Each Operating System displayed a different pattern, so sometimes you could walk up to a computer and immediately know what OS was running without touching it. This was a very useful skill for impressing the gullable.
RSTS - displayed a pattern that cycled from left to right.
DSM - displayed a pattern that went from the sides to the center.
RSX - I can't remember what this one did, can anyone else recall?
Finally a reason to learn morse code.
One time at Stellenbosch University more than 100 PCs in big student lab trapped simultaneously due to a TCP/IP stack problem. It's incredible what a racket that can generate...
-- Pieter
ETH Oberon: More than the sum of its modules. http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/
The patch has options for either or both. The speaker mode is disabled by default due to potential disruptiveness. :)
IBM RS/6000 boxes have a 16x2 character LCD panel on the processor box...
Unfortunately, they only provide an API to display a 12/16bit hex string (3/4 characters) on it.
What a waste!
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
I find this idea interesting - especially since only a few of the kernel hackers actually KNOW
morse code. AC and BP have ham licenses. Don't know about the rest of the hackers..
Have you compiled your kernel today??
There's a hardware company called "nCipher" who make hardware based encryption devices. These have a single LED on the back of the card. To indicate any error conditions, the error code is flashed via Morse on this LED.
Well, when heard audibly, it should be more like:
di-di-dit-dah-dah-dah-di-di-dit
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
The parent was (probably) referring to an invention in The Simpsons made by Homer. It was called the "Everything's Okay Alarm" and was very loud so long as everything was okay.
A company in Lynchburg Va has a patent on this. Most likly they don't even know it but their patent on a one wire control system describes a computer sending (and recieving) morse code as well as sending out warnings via morse code. The guy who "invented" it said he didn't even understand what the patent application said and he already had about twenty patents. The patent was supposed to be for using a single wire control system in places where you can't drill holes to run wires but turns out to be a patent on morse code. They guy whos name is on the patent said there was piror art that he knew of involving mechanical devices so its not a major issue but like so many other ideas, in theory you can't sell this one without a license.
About 17 years ago when I was working for Gould computer systems I was working on an embedded communications controller for their supermini computers. I was writing the self test routines for the boot rom and the error handler routines in the main firmware. There were only two led's on the board and I was asked to somehow indicate failure modes on those led's. So I ended up blinking the error codes in MORSE on the leds! The blink rate was slow enough so you didn't need to know morse, just compare the blink patterns with those printed in the manual. But the hams working in the company figured it out!
Many years I had suggested using Morse Code instead of BIOS-beep error codes.
At the time, there were many different BIOSes out there, with their own different beep-code values. It seemed that morse code was already the most wide-spread binary communication system in use by humans.
Now, there's really only two BIOS manufactures you'll see out there, and there's an increasing trend of having more advnaced BIOSes (non-Intel systems) which output error messages in different ways, (on-screen, serial cable, etc) which limits the usefullness of that idea today.
So... Why not do the same thing with Linux? Output to the screen, serial port, or parallel ports (print it out!). If nothing else, it would allow automation of information gathering, rather than requiring someone be right there, to translate the dots and dashes to messages.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Two years ago there was an item on the television here in the Netherlands adout the last man that knew and used morse for radio contact.
This could me a good initiative for a whole new generation to learn morse.
What a way to keep the history alive!
Privacy is terrorism.
People who use Morse code definately know it by the sound - letters and words are recognized as units, much in the same way that people recognize whole words when they read.
Recently I overheard someone's pager, and heard the sounds "dididit dahdah dididit" which is "SMS" in Morse code. I don't know what kind of pager it was, but evidently the person had received an SMS (Short Message Service) text message, and the pager identified it with Morse.
Way OT.. just wanted to say that I wonder how many people are aware that when their cellphones receive a text message and beep loudly with "dit-dit-dit, dah-dah, dit-dit-dit" their cellphones are actually sending "SMS" in morse code -- SMS, "SMS", get it? :)
I commute in the masses making their way to and through NYC everyday, and I must hear that four times a day on the train.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Oh, well, if we're going to descend to ancient hardware blinkenlights stories... (which model PDP-11, BTW?)
The Burroughs B6700 (and similar models) was a 48-bit word (96-bit double) stack oriented mainframe. The main panel had an array of 12 by 16 lights showing the bits in the top two words (double words) in the current stack. At idle, those would light up with the Burroughs "B" logo.
Of course the challenge was to come up with code that would load those registers with some interesting pattern and keep it there long enough for the operators to notice.
-- Alastair
"When an i386 running Linux panics, a function in the kernel called 'panic_blink' causes the system's LEDs to blink. Andrew Rodland recently posted a creative patch to turn that steady blink into a useful message in morse code!"
It's the miracle of open source. If only Bill Gates opened the Windows source, Windows too could have morse code LEDs.
Go Linux!
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
For some hardware functions like that. A nice LCD screen, like IBM UNIX boxes have.. so that when your computer hangs for apparently no reason (like mine) you at least have a clue as to why (unlike mine). Just a nice little hex display or something.. *sigh*
I use the morse code message route frequently while debugging some multi-threaded code (to the annoyance of coworkers). Since I'm blessed with a good sense of pitch, I'll often encode information in the frequency as well as the text.
It has a couple of advantages -- you don't need to arrange to get a window open in a process that wouldn't normally use one and the extra time delay caused by sending the message can be instructive if you've accidentally coded some kind of synchronism bug. Besides, it's just plain fun -- and isn't that the whole point of writing code anyway?
theres one from mac hack that would make your dock icons bounce up and down in the dock with the music. Unfortunately it rapes the event que, making it difficult to even move the mouse to shut it off. useless but cool.
I want 2D games back.
Why not enable the morsing also on one of the LEDs? So instead of just blinking, the LED could morse the panic message optically, too. :-)
-- There is no place like $HOME.
AMEN
Morse code when Linux Panics? Wait!!! Why don't you dorks have it blink in encrypted morse code!
Thanks for the laugh El-Stupido!
I do not want just a web server, I want a nice scripting language too. The way that I see it, if it is my box, I do not need local security.