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Airbus 380 To Have Linux In Every Seat
jpatokal writes "Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th, and a surprise awaits in the seat of every passenger: their personal Linux PC, running Red Hat. In addition to running the in-flight entertainment, passengers can also use a full copy of StarOffice, and there's a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse. Screen size is 10.6" (1280x768) in economy, 15.4" in business and a whopping 23" in first class (along with free noise-canceling headphones). The system is already available on current B777-300ER planes and will also be outfitted on the upcoming B787 Dreamliners."
Hope they secure these well. With all the business travelers it would be a great place to drop a rootkit. From the article it sounds like each seat actually has a thin client, which would in effect reinstall the OS after each user/flight which is good from a security standpoint. But with access to a keyboard and USB hub, it still sounds a bit more vulnerable to abuse than a standard kiosk.
Of course it's possible, and that's how Linux-based embedded systems work. Your /home/$USERNAME can be created in RAM and deleted (recreated from a skeleton) after you log out (or the system restarted.) There is nothing else writeable on the whole box. This is necessary in embedded systems to prevent Flash wearing out, and to ensure reliability. Same needs here.
I've flown Delta on a 757 and seen Linux reboot, too (I think we lost power while waiting for an open runway slot to take off from). But the system in the summary sounds much different; the Delta system didn't have StarOffice, it just had TV, movies, moving maps, etc. Basically read-only, except for paying for the in-flight movies.
Enjoy a few pics here. Incidentally "Song airlines" were the first ones Delta put these on. Song went out of business (there's a Frontline episode you can watch about it) and the Song planes were turned back into Delta planes. Now all the Delta planes are scheduled to have the inflight video stuff too.
I just returned to the Netherlands this morning, flew from Las Vegas.
Delta indeed uses red-hat linux on their 'seat in front of you consoles'
Also loading some modules which taint the kernel (according to the message I saw)
I think it had to do with AAC.
Nothing against Linux on planes, BUT please, have someone on-board to service the
system or let it be serviced from the ground. As our flight from Las Vegas to New York
only showed red hat reboots continually during the flight, all the time. seemed like
Linux did boot with some ramdisk checksum errors, but it booted, but when the X layer
came on this triggered another reboot.
I'm a unix guy all the way, and they told me I could not have access to the plane's
media 'mainframe' or I would have had a look to see what was wrong. All I saw was that
the whole right side economy side of the plane was left with a rebooting red-hat distribution
showing a cute penguin in its left corner...
The whole time... 5 hours long...
This was NOT a good commercial. I wish it had been.
The whole system worked perfectly when I was flying to San Francisco two weeks ago!
I will work to elevate you, just enough to bring you down
You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Strobes don't consume kilowatts. Batteries must supply all flight instrumentation for at least 30 minutes for certification. Deicing is almost all bleed air powered. Engines need no system power to run, even with FADEC. The airplane will not fall like a rock with a total electrical failure. APU's will start just fine without any truck, at all. Gear is hydraulic, not electric. There are a few electrics controlling it, but they have mechanical overrides that allow the flight crew to drop the gear and flaps without electrics.