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Spirit 'Will Be Perfect Again'
G. Holst writes "NASA technicians are preparing to wipe Spirit's flash memory clean of science and engineering files that have stymied its software. The fix, likely to be made Friday, could completely restore Spirit. "I think it will be perfect again," says the Mission Manager. Chalk this one up for earth!" There are numerous stories about Spirit and Mars: one describes being careful with rm -rf. Reader Tablizer sends in an interesting site: "I discovered Bill Momsen's website where he describes his experiences working on the first successful photographic mission to another planet: Mariner IV to Mars."
One has to wonder, is opportunity going to forego the same problems as spirit?.. As they are "identical" robots.. have steps been put in place to prevent the 2nd robot from "getting full".. I should certainly hope that we dont want this to happen again, as they might not be as lucky to regain it.
Apparently it was simply too many files and the FS ran out of inodes. Remember that they're constrained to a 256MB file system. It wouldn't surprise me if they used an 8 bit or 16 bit number for the inode count. (Ah, the joys of Vx(Doesn't)Works.)
On another note, does anyone know exactly what they're deleting here? While I understand that they need to get this mission underway, is there a chance they could lose valuable mission or navigational information?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Ok ok ok... chill out everyone... ;) ). In fact the whole system that they are using on the rover has flown quite a few times (VXWorks running on rad hardened PowerPCs with a VME bus for it's backbone).
VXWorks is not that bad (I use it on almost a daily basis). Every single OS has its problems. Before we all go and start calling VXWorks or Spirits software a crappy piece of code, you have to understand what goes into writing space qualified software.
This is not some thing you hack together over the weekend. In fact something you wrote for a space system over the weekend would be tested over a period of months and possibly even years depending on the criticality of the code. We're talking life critical system testing here. That means all paths for you code heads out there.
That said, even when you hit rubber to the road, there are always unexpected situations. Something that you didn't anticipate, a bug that made its way through under circumstance x. Hands up for everyone here who has written a complex bug free system right out of the gates. Anywone who just lifted their hand does not understand what a complex system is or a bug. Though stuff that flies tends to be pretty darn close to bug free.
We are dealing with many complex unknowns when we land something on another planet.
VXWorks is actually very popular with the space program. It's not perfect but neither is Linux (though someday it will be right
Trust me, the software running on the rover is not crappy. In fact, the fact they can bring it back to life like they did says a lot.