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A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

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Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#111

Post by soganess »

superkuh wrote: post #66
otterley wrote: post #16

It’s a bit troubling that automakers (and, well, anyone who is building things that have mechanisms for software updates) aren’t making software updates failsafe. If you have multiple copies of the image on storage, and you take care not to touch the currently-running image, then a failed software update to the alternate image shouldn’t have any impact. Think of it like blue-green deployments on the cloud; and it’s w…

Anyone on the 'net back in the 1990s will remember the image macro, email forwards, and usenet posts about "If cars were made by software companies". It looks like they're finally coming true.

Except the price part. We have an inverse Miley Cyrus situation on our hands.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#112

Post by gpderetta »

stefan_ wrote: post #33
otterley wrote: post #16

It’s a bit troubling that automakers (and, well, anyone who is building things that have mechanisms for software updates) aren’t making software updates failsafe. If you have multiple copies of the image on storage, and you take care not to touch the currently-running image, then a failed software update to the alternate image shouldn’t have any impact. Think of it like blue-green deployments on the cloud; and it’s w…

I'm sure the infotainment system does, but that is not all that is being updated; you have many more processors in ECU, assistance systems and so on that are also sometimes getting fed new firmware over various wonky buses as part of an upgrade. In some instances there might even be multiple levels involved in the firmware distribution.

The real question is why would they be doing OTA upgrades of such critical systems.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#113

Post by inportb »

heywhatupboys wrote: post #27
markx2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My eldest daughter knows her way around cars, and she refuses to buy any car that has any sort of computer in it. She knows how to change this, repair that, fit whatever and is very happy doing that. But she also knows that as a female if she goes into any garage for a 'diagnostic' she will be overcharged. In fact even for something normal with a 'non-computer' car she will be overcharged. Cars without computers are…

any car builtin the last 100 years have electrical components. Any car built in the last 50 have "computers".

Even the camshaft-crankshaft system could be considered an analog computer that renders (in realtime) the positions of the valves based on the phase of the pistons. Any car with an internal combustion engine has "computers."

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#114

Post by Szpadel »

Let me try to play devil's advocate.

This screen is actually result of alternative boot in dual boot image, but it's not A/B system but system/recovery.

This is valid solution when there is not enough space to fit second full os in available storage. Recovery allows for repeating update of major system.

Another potential issue is that car is composed of multiple connected systems and one "main" computer, it will try to upgrade everything else to the one expected version that was tested with this release. Something failed in secondary module that does not support a/b systems (3rd party?)

Another possibility, update is composed of update and verification of secondary modules and verification is not passing, because update is passing there is not really good way to recover now, because maybe flash is now damaged.

edit: usually all components in car communicate using canbus (including software updates) this usually works in this way: You first switch device into flashing mode by sending speciall command, it will then jump to special mini application that will write new bytes to flash and finally you finalize to reboot. In case something in flashing went wrong and device is crash looping or stuck in infinite loop or in any other way is not able to finish boot, you cannot retry anymore because there is no way to put it again into flash mode as its not able to receive canbus messages anymore. If that is critical component the safest thing to do is prevent car from driving

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#115

Post by benj111 »

beau_g wrote: post #71
benj111 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the market has spoken. In the sense that a market is made up of buyers and sellers, and the sellers have decided to offer no other option yes. I think the issue is more of the design and ownership of these things. No one wants an update bricking their car. I doubt a lot of people here would object to a discrete subsystem where you could poll charge status, turn on heating etc.

You can buy many vehicles today dating all the way back to the turn of the last century. Here's some listings for steam cars if you insist on no electronics whatsoever https://www.steamcarnetwork.com/for-sale Whatever your line is in the sand for tech integration, you have many great options from before that point.

Except you're proposing a false dichotomy of no tech, and complete tech integration.

Would you also propose a calculator as a valid alternative to a locked down tablet/phone/pc that you can't install your own software on?

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#117

Post by norir »

andsoitis wrote: post #99
amelius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should have a law for this. In most countries, new vehicles need to be tested by govt agencies before they are allowed to hit the road. The same should hold after software updates. Ideally, the update should be done by independent agencies, so they can make sure the software is tested and they can properly inform the user (something which we already know companies don't always do). The way it is now, it is all too…

You want an agency to validate every single software updates to vehicles?

I actually think this isn't a bad idea. I really don't want an automaker treating consumer updates like a developer repeatedly pushing nearly empty commits to github to get ci green.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#118

Post by ProjectArcturis »

cs702 wrote: post #78

Very lame. My immediate question upon seeing the headline was: Which EV brand are we talking about? Evidently it's not Tesla, because if it had been, the headline would have mentioned it, no doubt. It's a Ford, in case you're wondering. Shame on Ford! Ford and all other automakers are learning the old-fashioned way that making truly great user-facing software is... harder , slower , and costlier than they expected.

Ford makes bad cars in general, so why would we expect them to make decent UI, let alone truly great?

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#119

Post by g_p »

variadix wrote: post #22
otterley wrote: post #16

It’s a bit troubling that automakers (and, well, anyone who is building things that have mechanisms for software updates) aren’t making software updates failsafe. If you have multiple copies of the image on storage, and you take care not to touch the currently-running image, then a failed software update to the alternate image shouldn’t have any impact. Think of it like blue-green deployments on the cloud; and it’s w…

My router has dual firmware partitions, the fact a car doesn’t is inexcusable

Absolutely. One fact I recall from many years ago (so I don't know how true it is now) is that auto makers were shipping 7 year old silicon (and thus board support packages for their software). The guys working on chips and CPUs were writing software and it wouldn't hit the road for 7 years.

This was why infotainment systems lagged the state of the art for so long - they were apparently shipping components that would have belonged in a smartphone from more than half a decade before.

In this case, I believe we had a few phones get A/B updates by Android 7, which was late 2016. Giving it a year or so to filter to more CPU chipsets, that would mean (if the old rule held true), we would expect to see A/B hitting new cars in the next year or two. This assumes auto makers are using enough of the Android BSP to get the bootloader with A/B (which isn't a given), and then that they use it!

Anyone with any experience of auto software know if the teams doing software are experienced and understand the platform side of things, or if it's a traditional front-end heavy "crunch release" type affair? I've seen some pretty poor quality infotainment systems in the past, so my assumption is inexperienced devs with limited platforms knowledge, focused on "get it working to ship it", but would be interesting to hear from anyone with experience of how this really goes down.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#120

Post by beau_g »

benj111 wrote: post #115
beau_g wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy many vehicles today dating all the way back to the turn of the last century. Here's some listings for steam cars if you insist on no electronics whatsoever https://www.steamcarnetwork.com/for-sale Whatever your line is in the sand for tech integration, you have many great options from before that point.

Except you're proposing a false dichotomy of no tech, and complete tech integration. Would you also propose a calculator as a valid alternative to a locked down tablet/phone/pc that you can't install your own software on?

I don't understand where you are trying to go with this - steam cars have the same primary feature as any other vehicle - longitudinal and lateral control to traverse asphalt bands across the country. They can be retrofitted with any modern convenience feature as that stuff does not need to be integrated into the propulsion system. The same can be said of any other vehicle made between then and now. Of course, nobody has retrofit an early 1900s vehicle with 12 impact sensors and multistage airbags, and no modern manufacturer has offered a steam powerplant, because nobody actually wants this. Products are sold on features, not principles. In the US, you can (and people do) build just about anything and drive it legally on the road, so if not a single person has created (whatever it is several people in this thread think should exist), it would be preposterous to think a manufacturer would do it.
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