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In-Flight Reboot?
steelem writes "The Washington Post is running a story about how the F-22 Raptor's software requires in-flight reboots. Apparently the 2 million line software project is 93% done. Knowing most projects I've been on, it'll stay that way for another few years."
Hi there soldier! You seem to have lost power to both engines secondary to a software malfunction, over hostile territory. Would you like me to help you reboot Windows?
Would it be too trollish to say this brings a whole new meaning to "The Blue Screen of Death"? Yeah, I thought so too.
Software like this should be able to reboot midflight without a hitch.
Flight control software has been rebootable on the fly since the earliest days of the space program.
> the 'let's go kill people' software
Yeah, but the pilot ain't the one that it's supposed to kill.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Now, admittedly, it's critical software. This is the 'let's go kill people' software."
Man, I need to get a new job.
this is a sig.
I've said it a hundred times and I will say it again. Software is getting way to complex for human management in developing bug-free code.
Life is not for the lazy.
Control: Destroy that incoming cruise missile. ETA 35 seconds.
Pilot: Got Radar Lock
Pilot: Hang on - just got to reboot. Will be ready in 36 seconds...
"Some systems are obviously more important than others; it probably doesn't matter if the target identification system fails for a few seconds." Unless you're on the wrong end of the target id system. We have enough 'friendly fire'(although who cares how 'friendly' it is when you're dead?) problems already. I don't care what OS it's using, it needs to be fixed.
It disturbs me that you are disturbed by the military talking about killing people. What exactly do you think the military does? Maybe they will make it open source and you can add some code for feeding orphans.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
The software required to run the Raptor is insanely complicated. The plane itself was ambitious, but the contorl systems are the real innovation. Give these guys a break. The fact that the thing flies at all is amazing. The fact that it does everything it was designed to do is unbelievable. So there are a few bugs to work out. That's how it goes. We're not talking about "normal" programming problems here- this is Real Life stuff.
> and would be totally unacceptable if it were say, a navigation computer on a 737 with a hundred civilians on-board.
AFAIK, civilian flight systems are three times redundant. Written by three different isolated teams in three different programming paradigms, from three different cultures to avoid similar faults due to "contamination" by other teams, or simlar faults due to similar paradigms.
(Airbus 340 (3M LOC), Boeing 777 are said to have employed such techniques)
And IRC, they don't fly with at least two redundant fully functional systems.
It makes me wonder why the military has less stringent requirements.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Haven't read the article (typically of slashdot), but I do remember that the Apollo 11 computer nearly caused the first lunar landing to fail because it kept rebooting in-flight. Due to a configuration error that occurred shortly before flight, the computer repeatedly ran out of memory, but the software was designed so that the computer could reboot without catastrophe.
You can read more here.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
That's a training issue. Pilots need to learn that "cannot identify target" means *wait*, not *shoot now*.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Is this really Slashdot? :-)
In order to make the planes more maneuverable, they need to make them less stable. A simply analogy would be a school bus is more stable & less maneuverable than a bicycle. I have read that flying a modern fighter aircraft without computers would be like steering a bicycle backwards while sitting on the hood of a car at 60 miles an hour.
Very unstable yet very maneuverable.
Told to me by a pilot, I can't verify via a quick google.
this sig deleted by another sig
[_] Take off
[*] Land
[ok](cancel)
You must reboot your computer for the new settings to take effect...
Sure, it's considered unsportmanlike to shoot someone with the ";)
-l
Better him than Clippy. Which would you rather hear? "Peanuts, peanuts, peanuts!" or "It looks like you're barfing! Would you like some tips on ways to hold your bag?"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The article stated that the reboots were for subsystems, not the fly-by-wire systems or the navigational system. The main problems have been in the sensor-weapon integration. This is one reason why the plane is not yet in full-scale production.
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
I work as a pilot for a regional airline. And I can tell you that "rebooting" (we rather call it resetting) a computer during flight happens, causes no havoc whatsoever, and is well over 2 minutes. The operation is pretty straightforfard: whenever the "flight warning computer", which is watching all the rest, detects a failure in a computer : -Either it is _very_ important, and then you have sufficient redundancy to just leave it so (and you don't want to re-use a computer that failed once on something critical...in case the next failure goes undetected !) -Or you are on the ground with time on your hands, or in flight and it is some secondary stuff: you just pull the circuit breaker for that computer, count 2 minutes, then put it back on. The computer is then usually usable within a minute. For mission-critical system, such as flight control computers, which control the autopilot, everything is tripled. If two agree and one disagrees, the odd one is declared faulty. On such failures, the crew is often not advised while in flight, as there is nothing to be done. The failure is declared by the flight warning computer after landing, for the benefit of maintenance. Obviously, you can't take off again in that situation. And if the failure happens before takeoff, the rules are different: in case of a failure, and if the reset is ineffective, you check the remaining equipement against the minilum equipement list, which tells you if the remaining redundancy is sufficient or not. It can allow you to take off, sometimes with restrictions, or forbid the flight. As a rule, redundacy is such that the fault of a single computer or system (even an engine) is not a problem. Nice to know, isn't it ? ;-)