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A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

cnn.com

21–30 of 402 posts

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#21
post #4

> In the overnight hours of Tuesday into Wednesday, FAA officials decided to shut down and reboot the main NOTAM system -- a significant decision, because the reboot can take about 90 minutes, according to the source. 90 minutes; this certainly appears to be an advertisement about Windows OS.

Forced upgrade on reboot, my personal favorite.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#22
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will always elect to be stuck on an Amtrak than stuck on a plane or in an airport. I'll take a book to the observation car and read next to the Mennonites doing their knitting and love every minute of it, no worries from me.

What is stopping you from doing that in an airport?

Can't take knitting needles past TSA.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#23
post #10

Quote from FAA: "Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file." UK news source The Independent is reporting that Nav Canada's NOTAM system also suffered an issue.[1] Speculation: corrupting input, either international or North American? E.G. UTF-8, SQL escape, CSV quoting. edit: Better reporting of Canada's issue from Canada's CBC (and frankly, better reporting about the US, too). [2] "In Can…

[deleted]

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#24
post #4

> In the overnight hours of Tuesday into Wednesday, FAA officials decided to shut down and reboot the main NOTAM system -- a significant decision, because the reboot can take about 90 minutes, according to the source. 90 minutes; this certainly appears to be an advertisement about Windows OS.

Or just a legacy UNIX with a lot of disks. I've seen PH-UX take over an hour to boot due to that.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#25
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will always elect to be stuck on an Amtrak than stuck on a plane or in an airport. I'll take a book to the observation car and read next to the Mennonites doing their knitting and love every minute of it, no worries from me.

What is stopping you from doing that in an airport?

The expectation of speed at the airport, because planes move fast, creates urgency for everyone. When you're on a ship or a train there's a time component to your expectations of travel. A delay in an airport feels worse than a delay at a train station or at a port.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#26

I wish to know what kind of system NOTAM runs on. An IBM 360 with tape backup?

You can see references to JMS, Solace, and Weblogic in various docs, like:

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/swim/users_forum/...

https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2021-10/NOTAM%20Mod%...

So probably Linux, though perhaps something else.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#27

I wonder if the corruption could have been caused by a cosmic ray bit flip. It would be funny to think that one single tiny subatomic particle knocked down our entire flight system.

Cosmic rays are a cop out but a good plot device. They're so rare, but one could write a bit flip into a script for a novel or a tv show as the solution to any computer mystery.

Aliens using cosmic ray generators to flip specific bits and set off nukes.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#28

I wonder if the corruption could have been caused by a cosmic ray bit flip. It would be funny to think that one single tiny subatomic particle knocked down our entire flight system.

Cosmic rays are a cop out but a good plot device. They're so rare, but one could write a bit flip into a script for a novel or a tv show as the solution to any computer mystery.

I really should have milked the "cosmic ray bitflip ate my homework" excuse in hindsight

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#29
post #22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is stopping you from doing that in an airport?

Can't take knitting needles past TSA.

Actually you can.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...

Final decision vests with the TSA agent at the desk.

But there are needles which are short metal/plastic parts, with a long flexible back (eg for circular knitting) which are very unlikely to cause an issue: the point is smaller than a pen.

Re: A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage – also found in backup system

#30
post #16
post #9

On a positive note, you could have been on Amtrak: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/amtrak-delayed-va-fl.h...

I will always elect to be stuck on an Amtrak than stuck on a plane or in an airport. I'll take a book to the observation car and read next to the Mennonites doing their knitting and love every minute of it, no worries from me.

If Amtraks were more luxurious, I might agree with you, but these days you might as well be riding Snowpiercer (and I don’t mean the good parts).
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