Windows Upgrade, FAA Error Cause LAX Shutdown 862
fname writes "The recent shutdown of LAX due to an FAA radio outage was apparently caused by a Windows 2000 integration flaw, possibility related to an old Windows 95 bug. An article at the LA Times claims that the outage was caused by human error, as the system will automatically shut down after 49.7 days (related to this Windows 95 flaw?), and a technician didn't reboot the system monthly as he should have. This happened after an upgrade from Unix to Windows. I don't think blame should be assigned to the technician who missed the task; rather, it seems a gross oversight for the FAA to guarantee that such a critical system will crash after only one missed maintenance task. Who's really at fault?"
Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay... a Win95 bug leads to the LAX shutdown because the *same* bug was later found in Win2k? Yup, closed source is the answer, Mr. Gates. I hereby repent my sins of Open Source Freedom and agree that security by obscurity is the answer!
a technician didn't reboot the system monthly as he should have
You have to love a system that requires downtime as part of uptime. How many Linux users have this problem? (Please press the Start button to shut down (stop) the computer.)
Anyone want to clue them in to scheduled jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
We use a similar system to reboot all of our NT servers every weekend to help prevent crashes during the week (doesn't work of course, but still).
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
I Hate to Say It (Score:2, Insightful)
It's M$'s fault. Why do I hate to say it? Because it'll just be seen as more anti-MS crap from another
All I have to say is if the shoe fits, wear it.
In this individual case a PHB made a decision to scrap the old, stable OS to a new, known-to-be-unstable OS. That screams PHB.
Heh (Score:4, Insightful)
upgrade from Unix to Windows
AKA, "The PHB Special"
Of course, the guy who was supposed to reboot the box will get all the blame. Shit rolls downhill.
humans rule (Score:4, Insightful)
"Not I," says the referee,
"Don't point your finger at me.
I could've stopped it in the eighth
An' maybe kept him from his fate,
But the crowd would've booed, I'm sure,
At not gettin' their money's worth.
It's too bad he had to go,
But there was a pressure on me too, you know.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."
- Bob Dylan, "Who Killed Davey Moore?" [bobdylan.com]
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:3, Insightful)
Before the torrent of "windows sucks" posts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quick addition: it seems that the fault does not belong entirely to windows, but rather a combination of the software running on it and the system architecture.
With that said, Windows could stand to improve a lot. It has too many bugs, too many flaws, and so on. And it definitely does not have a stable, secure, reliable base. So don't expect it to.
Now even the submitters aren't reading the article (Score:2, Insightful)
possibility related to an old Windows 95 bug
From the Article.
The shutdown is intended to keep the system from becoming overloaded with data and potentially giving controllers wrong information about flights, according to a software analyst cited by the LA Times.
The shutdown is not a crash but a scheduled event to bring the servers down to flush data.
So it does not seem to be a problem with Windows (Ok now I get marked as troll) but with the FAA's own software.
Re:Why not automate it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Would it not worry you to know that the ATC were relying on a computer that reboots itself so often?
Re:A hit for the other team... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft isn't the only one to have issues like that. But it has been patched and there should have been more than enough time for the FAA to test and deploy the patch on the few legacy machines running Windows 95.
I simply blame the FAA for wasting money away every year, billions are sunk into the system, but rarely does anything come out of it, Lockheed can deploy a complete new system to every airport for the amount of money that is being dumped into the old TRACONs and towers for MX.
Re:A hit for the other team... (Score:3, Insightful)
An error is scored against a player if the player is determined to have been negligent in their position according to the rules. If someone hits a line drive right past the first baseman, it's still a hit. If the first baseman catches it, then drops it instead of making a tag, it's an error.
If multiple players are negligent, then multiple errors are scored. We've all seen "blooper" videos where there are cascading errors; one guy drops a catch, throws it to the next guy who drops it in turn, etc.
This is what happened here; it's not a hit, it's a cascade of errors. Everyone is to blame, because they all did something stupid. That doesn't make it "OK," it doesn't make any particular party less at fault.
I don't think this contradicts what you're saying here, I just wanted to emphasize the point. ;-)
Re:Check out this little pile of bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe there's some kind of failover to a backup system (Which they also forgot to reboot)?
Re:Ahh yes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Check the date on that news.com article linked in the main story -- it's from March of 1999. The bug is that old, and as I recall the fix didn't take that long to get out.
If LAX was trying to upgrade to/integrate win2k with ancient, unpatched Win95 systems, its no wonder that they're having problems . .
-Q
Don't be so hasty to blame the OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I know it's violation of /. policy to actually read a referenced article. My bad. But, according to the software.silicon.com article:
This sounds to me like more of a problem with the application, not the OS. The "system" crashed after 49.7 days, which is about 4 million seconds, which is about 4 billion milliseconds, which is (obviously) MAX_ULONG. I suspect the application is using a ULONG to store a timeout value and got pissed-off when it rolled over.
Re:A hit for the other team... (Score:3, Insightful)
Only one error can be scored per base advanced by the runner, and if the runner took first by a "hit" before the errant throw, then there is only one "error" for his advancement to second. If two players crash into each other and the ball drops, it's usually a hit because it's hard to say either would have been able to make the catch "with normal effort" which is the real standard for an error.
windows update anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't want to spoil a nice MS bashing session, but I think the bug was in the ported application, not in the OS - probably someone used the wrong data type to hold timestamps somewhere within the program (win95 had the same bug) - I've seen win2k last more than 47 days without reboots...
depends (Score:2, Insightful)
If they advertised a consumer OS as an OS suitable for mission critical applications . . . then this flaw should not be in the software. It's could the software companies fault for agressively marketing their product where it should not be.
Maybe we should throw some blame to the PHB who ordered the switch. Purhaps there was no hard sell from MS, and a PHB saw a product brochure and got a hard on to switch.
I see your point though, the tech knew about the problem and failed to do his job.
I guess my question is, should the problem have been addressed before now, or is it common practice to wait for a catastrophic success like this to occur before addressing the problem ?
No proof the old system was stable. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, Windows 95 in particular and Windows in general is often less stable than modern counterparts. But an upgrade from an old, obsolete UNIX to a new Windows system could have had significant benefits and made a lot of sense at the time. Without the full information behind the decision, how can you judge whether the decision was bad or not?
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
All right, I cannot throw the first stone here. I can raise my hand as a AIX C programmer back in the day...
We inherited a huge ball of spaghetti wire, nasty stuff that had memory leaks. Rather than taking the time to fix it, the powers that be determined it was better to keep working on new features rather than hash out the issues. At first it happened once a quarter, then once a month, and as time ticked by a weekly 'fix' to recycle the server. Lord knows I added to the mix as well, as they picked 'cheap' and 'build it fast' (not to be confused with running fast), skipping the entire do it right. That is how it happens... stuff gets rushed before its time. OSS is more immune than the typical commercial gig, but anytime a deadline comes without enough time to finish something is going to give. Downtime is just duct tape.
An urban legend... (Score:2, Insightful)
.. is what I'm going to consider this for the time being. I've seen it reported everywhere, but it's just too absurd to take at face value.
Re:Anyone want to clue them in to scheduled jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's obvious you have never toured an ARTCC (Air Route Trafic Control Center). The system that is being replaced was barely hanging together by voodoo and chicken wire. It was designed back in the 60's to handle maybe 1/10th the current capacity. It is in dire need of replacement.
That said, I'm not convinced Windows (or Linux for that matter) is an appropriate OS for an application that practically defines the phrase "mission critical".
Re:Why 49.7 days? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2K is based on NT kernel (Score:5, Insightful)
now the bug was present in both codebases, but fixed just in one.
that's at least how the article and the writeup make it sound like.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
dear microsoft,
the above question was posed in a line of your advertisements well, after spending an hour and a half on a plane on the runway in oakland, and another hour on the runway in l.a. (sunday night), i think i have the answer. i want to go home. sounds like a simple enough request, or so i thought.
but here is what i really want: i would like you (microsoft, inc.), to stop selling your products to mission critical and infrastructure operations until such a time as they are ready to do so. when my desktop computer at work crashes (admittedly a rare occurance nowadays), i am inconvenienced. when hundreds of thousands of travellers in airports across the world are delayed because one of the busiest airports in the world is shut down due to a 10 year old known bug in your operating systems that has not been fixed, that is simply not acceptable. i realize that buyers of software and IT systems are easily suckered or bribed into using your systems, that is why i am appealing directly to you. please exit this market before we are forced to legislate you out.
thanks,
pc
Re:If it's in the job description... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are joking, right? The majority of accidents happen due to human error. This is supposed to be mission critical software (and there's more than just money at stake). Yet, it relies on needless human intervention once a month! This is simply unacceptable for a piece of software in such a position. The main blame lies in the hands of the comany that provided it, the person who decided to switch to it and the person who decided to bring the new system online and remove the old one despite this flaw. The tecnician is almost irrelevent, since this happening was an inevitibility. It would have happened sooner or later because the system left room in there for human error to happen.
And yet, you still don't blame a company which ships mission critical software which leaves such a huge hole open for human errors. I hope our nuclear power plants are running on better designed stuff.
Who's really at fault? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why 49.7 days? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liability. (Score:3, Insightful)
If duct tape a wing to an airplane and then the wing falls off and the plane crashes, you don't sue the duct tape maker. You sue the idiot who decided to use the duct tape.
The grossly negligent party in this situation, is the contractor who built a real-life system on top of Windows. And the FAA idiots who didn't spot this glaring flaw in the proposal. Microsoft shouldn't have to pay a cent.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, init 6 is counter-intuitive. I remember that it actually did confuse me a bit the first time I heard of it. Does that mean we need to remove or change it? Nah, let 'em use `shutdown -r` or `alias restart="init 6"`. But just don't be an apologist for Linux, it just makes "us" look hypocritical.
Re:Anyone want to clue them in to scheduled jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
It makes sense on paper. It doesn't work out when the human element "screws the pooch" (they rarely show you that slide in the powerpoint, do they?!)
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
"shutdown -r now" also works (r stands for reboot). To shut down, use -h (for halt).
Personally i use sudo reboot because I would never login as root for security/safety reasons.
Re:Wait, I know this one.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another mouse wiggler bites the dust.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Might I suggest this wonderful little tool. Poweroff [webattack.com]. It's the only tool I know of which seems to be able to reliable reboot widows boxes, even when they are crippled due to worms and/or memory leaks. It can even close running apps. Also, you get get it to work over the network with a magic packet, in case Terminal Server crashes or is too slow to use.
The main article should get flagged as troll/flamebait due to the phrase upgrade from Unix to Windows. That wasn't an upgrade, that (as we now know) it was a disaster waiting to happen. Wait until the worm of the month comes through and shuts it down. When will people learn to use the RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB! If it has to run 24x7 forever, don't put it on Windows. Geez...
What failed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see what the OS has to do with this. It could have been written for *NIX, OS/2, or any other OS. The lessons are two:
Don't deploy flawed software.
Make sure redundant systems work.
As an aside, since we don't know what the backup was, we could hypothetically say that it was the UNIX system that previously was primary that was relegated to backup duty. In that case, it would be a failure of Windows and UNIX at the same time. So, is it that UNIX sucks and is worthless for any important systems, or is it that the people that screwed this up would have screwed up something, no matter what OS they were working with?
Re:Please mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Particularly when it's not a "previous version" at all but a completely different Operating System.
Windows 95 and Windows NT (2000/XP/2003) are not the same OS. They're completely different. They share a common API and that's about it. Blaming this on "Windows 95" makes about as much sense as blaming an application bug under FreeBSD 5.x bug on Slackware 1.0.
Re:And the lesson is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the PHB at the office where my wife works said after announcing that the IT guy was to be laid off and not replaced: "I don't see why we need an IT guy-- we never have any computer problems" (cluebat time!)
Re:Anyone want to clue them in to scheduled jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet I could get you a replacement board for an IBM RT PC. I gave some Model 135s to a guy I used to work with, and I bet he's still got them or knows who has them. Since there's nothing better than a 135 I can't imagine you'd evince any significant dismay over that idea. There's a lot of that kind of crap running around assorted towns where IBM's got offices, like Austin - which is where I got them. I had AOS 4.3 and BSD-4.3-lite... More or less the same thing really.
Er anyway back to the point, you don't replace an old workhorse with a new POS. You get a newer workhorse than the last workhorse, and maybe not even a new one. I'd rather go dig up some Sparcstation 10s with supersparcs in them to replace (for example) your RT PC. Running SunOS or perhaps netbsd, you should be able to port your software from BSD. If you are running AIX on your RT, maybe you'd be better off with an old RS6k, they're available very cheaply. Hell, I once sold a 603e laptop RS6k (thinkpad power series) to a guy for like nine hundred bucks or so. That little bastard would make a better server than your average wintel box, given it was SCSI, assuming that you were replacing an antique.
...Blame the API instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Three words:
Returns the number of milliseconds since the machine was last booted.
From reading the article, one would surmise that this function is used to assign a timestamp to a particular flight plan or other record. After the machine has been running for 49.7 days, the GetTickCount() function rolls over to zero, which could cause a whole plethora of problems. Almost certainly those problems would include things like corruption of data, lost records, old records showing up as new, application crashes, and, of course, swarms of locusts. The only fix is to reboot.
The developers cleverly noticed the potential disaster before it crashed any planes, and as a workaround, instituted a policy requiring the servers to be rebooted at monthly intervals. Failure to do so would result in the calamities described above.
So while the problem wasn't the old Win95 bug, it was the same crappy windows API that caused both. The POSIX-compliant gettimeofday() function uses a 64-bit structure and does not suffer from the same flaw, and can be relied upon for at least the next 30 years or so (which isn't amazing, but it's a lot better than 50 days).
Note that the FAA insists that they're currently implementing a better solution than "reboot every month". Better hurry, guys, you've only got 47.3 days left.
Since We're Being Tehcnical About the Answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider the fact that an entire airport was shut down, lives were disrupted, major economic harm was caused our airlines as a result of flights not getting out on time. LAX is a major hub that connects travelers throughout the country, it is conceivable traffic patterns throughout the U.S. were put out by this problem.
Think of it like a car bomb that went off without anyone dying, and you see my point.
M
Re:A few remarks (Score:3, Insightful)
If the fault was going to happen every 48 days, they should have scheduled a reboot for every 22 days at most. Just like everything else, it's insane to have a single point of failure like this.
If you know a machine needs to be rebooted regularly, there is no reason not to automate the process. Windows task scheduler should do the job quite well.
There's no reason the computer could not have reported an error, by whatever means, to an administrator when it detects it is operating in excess of it's design parameters. Send a barrage of e-mails, IMs, Faxes, SMS messages, etc. I can guarantee this life-or-death system would get somebody's attention, and it would be restarted as it should be.
Pilot or no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Crappy design, regardless of who is at fault.
Re:If it's in the job description... (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't run a fucking air traffic control system with a "one truck" vulnerability.
Exactly. If you find a bug that requires a restart before a 49.7 day timer runs out, you are indeed an idiot if you decide a restart once a month is good enough. At the very least I'd have tech down there on the 1st and 15th of the month, so they'd have to miss three scheduled restarts to cause this problem. Better yet, have two guys there every damn Wednsday at noon. If they both miss seven Wednsdays in a row, well, you got bigger problems than bad software. Whoever decided once a month was adequate needs to have his head handed to him.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:2, Insightful)
I wasn't apoligizing. It makes perfect sense to me.
Then agian, I have a calculator that you turn off by pressing the "ON" key.
Seriously tho...
Many devices have a single power button. You push it... thing comes on... push it again... thing turns off.
If anyone should apologize, it is the person that decided on "Start" for the button label.
And, in *nix... init 6 does just what it says it does.
It initializes run level six. Run level six can do anything you want it to do. It doesn't have to shut down the system.
So... WTF would I even have to apologize for? The fact that the parent associates it in his mind with shutting down?
It doesn't shut down... it initializes run level six. If you don't want it to shut down when you init 6... change it.
If you don't want to go to the "Start" button in Windows to shut down... well... that one is your problem. Not mine.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in the past 10 years I have had a number of clients who have had Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac systems that were critical to their day to day routine and they did nightly/weekly/monthly reboots as part of their maintenance.
I guess when you grow up and get out of high school, you will find that your linux box running as a DSL router is not a good example of a production server.
Fire the Department of the Interior's IT staff... (Score:5, Insightful)
The FAA is under the auspices of the US Department of the Interior, aren't they? You know, the same department that was ordered by a court to take ALL of their systems off line because they were apparently unable to secure them [washingtonpost.com]? TWICE [geotimes.org]? (No, wait, the latter link says THREE times, most recently March 2004...!)
Is there some secret plot to make them look bad, or is the Department of the Interior riddled with incompetence? I certainly don't feel real secure about the safety of our airlines right now - and it's got nothing to do with "terrorists"...
(Not to say that terrorism isn't a real concern, but I'm somewhat less worried that their intentional plots will slip through observation by the authorities than "accidental" screwed up software being deployed by the FAA...)
Re:"Upgrade"? (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on how bad their previous UNIX system was. Any operating system can be neglected into oblivion. Also, if they got all new hardware to run Windows 2000, when the old hardware might have been ten-year-old 50MHz SMP boxes, then upgrade would be the right term. It's unfortunate that they didn't decide to upgrade to faster UNIX boxes, but that's politics for you.
Lol, only on Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Boss: OK Tech, it's your job to see to it this computer is rebooted monthly.
Tech: Will do Boss!
*Time Passes, System Crashes*
Boss: The system crashed, why is that?
Tech: Well, it's because I didn't reboot the system like I should have.
Boss: Oh well, I guess it's not your fault, obviously I failed to realize maximum security synergy in my systems.
Wherever the submitter works, I wanna get a job there!
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
a) This could easily been done as a sheduled task in windows 2000.
b) This could have been done by their code, in windows 2000 and windows 95.
c) Windows 2000 does not require a reboot after 49.7 days. Maybe their software relied on gettickcount() or something.
The problem lays with the developers of the software, not microsoft.
Re:no such thing as a Windows 2000 49.7 day bug (Score:2, Insightful)
But this is slashdot so we won't let little things like facts get in the way of a good MS bashing session.
Re:no such thing as a Windows 2000 49.7 day bug (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. That would be like saying 'warning: you're taking a step, and might trip.'
Typing naught but 'GetTickCount()' into Google lands me right onto the MSDN page [microsoft.com] and clearly says:
and goes on to suggest alternative timing capabilities.
This was a major fuckup by the application programmers, incorrectly using a clearly defined API call.
Maitainance. (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you feel this way if the airplane that you were flying in missed it's engine overhaul time, the engined failed catastrophically and your plane crashed?
Critical System + Maitainance = Must Be Done.
The system was designed and setup in a particular manner. In fact, the reboot rule was added to the design of the system, so that this very thing would not happen.
Whoever's job it was to reboot the machine is at fault for not maintaining the system properly.
The discussion of whether the procedure of rebooting a machine every month is inane, is something different.
Why is it that.... (Score:2, Insightful)
If the system had been updated the problem would not have occurred. How is this a microsoft problem? They cannot force system maintenance.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your plane *WILL* land. It may be at a different airport, and sooner or later than planned, but you will get on the ground in one piece.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, the code used for mail serving is some of the most mature server code out there. This is far more reliable than say a Linux box set up with proprietary, closed src, business applications with their own bugs.
My feelings are the article may have mistakenly blamed Windows for a problem with one of the server applications running on it. It is not typical for even Win2k to hang unexpectedly when running good hardware and well-written code.
I say fuck it. There is no point in ever trying to defend logic when it stands in the way of the Microsoft bash-fests on
Just to clarify, I am not saying Windows servers can and will run as reliably as a properly configured BSD, Solaris, or Linux box. I am just trying state that Windows is reliable, if properly configured, but will probably not win an uptime competition. Big whoop. Reboot your shit during maintenance windows, regardless of OS, you run a much better chance of finding pending hardware failures. It is much better to powercycle that database server and get an error detecting the SCSI bus during a maintenance window than for it to happen at 5:30AM on a Monday or during your vacation.
Then again, I could be overly anal. I just like to avoid the reputations gained by those before me.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times. To avoid this automatic shutdown, technicians are required to restart the system manually every 30 days.
now, let's do a little math. the number of milliseconds in 49.7 days = (49.7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) = 4,294,080,000. recognize that number? that's right, it's 2^32 (actually, this is: 4,294,967,296, but it's pretty damn close). and why is that significant, you ask? because at 2^32, the unsigned int used by some versions of windows to keep the time since boot overflows back to zero, and bad things begin to happen.
is the problem microsoft's fault? goddamn right it is. in software that runs A MAJOR AIRPORT and controls the flight control and radar systems that affect thousands of lives in the air, an error like this just not an option. the people who put this system into production ought to be fired. i don't know what the right os for this task is. solaris? aix? vms? something with provable uptime and reliability, something that can deliver uptime of longer than a month and a half, that's for sure.
I'm sure Linux doesn't store time in an infinite bit counter either.
i don't recall advocating linux for the job. maybe it can do it, maybe not. and in regards to being free, when my life is on the line, they better spend every god-damn dollar they can to make sure that critical systems do not fail under any circumstances. microsoft was absolutely the wrong choice in this case.
MTBF - what boggles my mind (Score:2, Insightful)
Forgetting all the talk about Microsoft and Win95/98 and the defect in the OS that has been well known for years and for which a patch has also been available for years [microsoft.com]....
If you have a system that has a known failure point at 49 days,when do you perform the mandatory reset?
For the failure that is described the scheduled reset must have been "every 30 days" which is, frankly, INSANE!
If they had scheduled a mandaory reset every 14 or 15 days, they would have had to have had three failures before disaster struck. As it seems, one failure was all it took.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:5, Insightful)
These things cost money. Migrating apps that use the old DB to the new one, testing, bugs introduced in the migration, etc. If it works most companies will stick with it and not risk spending large amounts of money for no 'gain' (in their mind).
I wanted to say stupid - I say ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:4, Insightful)
Click Me. Menu. Actions. Tasks. Open Here.
Any of those make more sense than "Start".
Which UNIX is that? (Score:3, Insightful)
In 25 years working with Unix systems, I've never seen that instruction. That must be because I've never worked with any Microsoft Unix system...
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Space Shuttle accidents and software bugs (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nice thing for a professor to advocate, but real world projects like the space shuttle do not have an infinite budget to accomplish the assigned task. Therefore, spending too much money on one aspect can mean that another is sacrificed and becomes the point of failure. Therefore, while being responsible for the part that never failed is an understandable source of pride, it may actually reveal a misallocation of resources.
Engineering is about spending the least amount of time and money to achieve the required quality. Nobody said anything about spending too little.
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:2, Insightful)
"The problem with the french is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur'" (G.W. Bush)
Re:Lol, only on Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
if i design a system in which someone has to press a button every 12 hours or the world blows up, would anyone want to use that system? no, you think? what if you could -order someone who works below you- to do it!?
that's just plain stupid management. the rebooting job is a waste of the tech's time (anyone competent could make it reboot automatically) and a completely unnecessary job (any competant operating system doesn't need to be rebooted every 30 days, or even every 3 years).
If the boss had scheduled maintanance (Windows Update, to get service pack 4) or had used an operating system that doesn't require that much maintanance to function correctly, the job wouldn't have needed to be performed.
the boss should be fired for general incompetence/negligence (since he had the responsibility to make the system stable), and the tech should be put to work carrying boxes or something (or just fired as well), since he isn't competent enough to put an automatic timer on the rebooting.
Incorrect. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you install an unpatched version of an OS, and leave it as such, it's your own dumb fault. If a patch is out that fixes the problem, then the problem doesn't exist as far as anyone with half a brain is concerned.
My apologies for the abrasive manner of the response, but patches are around for a reason: to fix known problems.
Patches, do ya have 'em?
Re:maintenance task (yyeahhh, rrriiiiighht) (Score:2, Insightful)
Every coin has two sides (Score:2, Insightful)
And if you don't want to go to the "Start" button in Windows to shut it down, you could always hit ctrl-alt-del and click shutdown. Or press the power button if you have power management enabled in the bios. I don't really see a fundamental difference between the two, it's just semantics really.
When I first started using Linux, one of the things that baffled me for hours until I could ask someone who knew Linux was how the heck do you rename a file?? I searched and searched for anything resembling a rename command and found nothing. It never occurred to me that you might use the move command to rename a file by essentially just "moving" the file to a new filename. That's at least as illogical (to me and every newbie I've ever known) as clicking Start to Shutdown for someone who isn't familiar with the idiosyncracies of a particular operating system.
you ass (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Repent, Sinners! (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it is the fault of those who selected a product with this problem to run an airport.
Re:Incorrect. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, yes, this may be true BUT Microsoft patches are _notorious_ for breaking as many, if not more, things than they fix. How long can a critical system such as this one stay down for "routine" maintenance? WHEN would the breaks introduced by the patches show up? In the middle of routing 20 or more airplanes in the airspace around LAX?
Although the specific bug had a patch, perhaps this was a case of "do we patch and pray OR do we reboot monthly?"
*shrug* Maybe the heads of the department overrode the IT personnel and instead of paying the money to patch and test they told them to just reboot the system? No, I didn't RTFA but who knows exactly what went down? The department heads are all in a CYA mode right now and the "truth" may never be known.