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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

#121

I see a lot of people asking "How could this possibly happen?" It turns out that there's a common failure mode that makes it past almost every unit test suite: a lack of disk space. Running out of disk space pops up time and again. I've often wondered why software fails so often in this situation. But it's because the basic components of the system start to break -- things like "Call with temporary file" stop working…

Could also be out of memory errors which are also tricky. Linux's OoM killer just picks something at random and terminates it. If you're lucky is something your app doesn't need but if you're unlucky and you're not paying close attention to syslogs, you're in for a fun time trying to figure out why your app just stopped for no logged reason.

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

#122
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?

At the very least, if it touches anything that impacts the driving… maybe?

It’s a 3 ton (+) machine with people paying attention less each passing day. It should be taken very seriously.

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

#123

Do car companies outsource their software to fiverr or something? Every single car I rent lately is a buggy piece of shit.

Ugh. I rented a Ford Explorer recently, and somehow they managed to screw up Applr Carplay. I'm in a place I don't know very well, navigating using Apple Maps via Carplay, and my GPS location goes for a wander. Just wanders off so that the navigation gets way confused trying to route me to my designation, because the current location is miles and miles off from where we are. So I unplug my phone and suddenly my GPS location is back to the correct location. HowTF did that even happen?

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

#124

I see a lot of people asking "How could this possibly happen?" It turns out that there's a common failure mode that makes it past almost every unit test suite: a lack of disk space. Running out of disk space pops up time and again. I've often wondered why software fails so often in this situation. But it's because the basic components of the system start to break -- things like "Call with temporary file" stop working…

Btrfs have (had?) interesting failure mode for this scenario, because this is Copy On Write file system it need to allocate new block to modify metadata, when you are out of space, you cannot do that anymore. You might end up in scenario where your filesystem is full but you cannot delete anything because this required allocating new metadata block and your drive is full

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

#125
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this happened to me, although it took 10 years. Free replacement, and the car still worked fine.

It's still a major embedded engineering oversight on their part. We had fallback developed for such cases in $5 embedded devices. Calling out Tesla as a model for excellent software is insulting to SW that's actually quality. What Tesla SW has and others lack, is a great "wow" factor, which consumers who don't get to see how the sausage is made, mistakenly associate with 'quality' because it behaves like their iPad,…

Yeah, it's also a mistake they made 10 years ago.

Tesla is very good at automotive software engineering.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A/B boot is old, good, and proven, but what do you do when you have dozens of separate microcontrollers, each governing a semi-independent subsystem, all running their own software that needs its own updates? It would make sense from safety/reliability PoV when a crash/bug in a slightly less critical system (like adjusting mirrors) does not affect a slightly more critical system (like indicators). What do you do when…

I don't think "more smart = less reliable" is inevitable. The goal should be designing it in a way that failure of the more smart features does not spill to critical functionality. Or that you can use it in a degraded state sort of like fly by wire planes do. I have no car design experience, but here is my 5-minute idea: For starters, you build a basic car. It drives, it has basic indicators, it has ABS, etc. It has…

That's not how vehicles are designed for many reasons. For one, there's no option where critical components aren't designed with updateability in mind. It's simply a fact of life that code has bugs, and the only way to fix those bugs is updates. It's valid to feel that that those updates should applied at a dealership where the system can be tested afterwards, but that has a lot of implications of its own.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a major embedded engineering oversight on their part. We had fallback developed for such cases in $5 embedded devices. Calling out Tesla as a model for excellent software is insulting to SW that's actually quality. What Tesla SW has and others lack, is a great "wow" factor, which consumers who don't get to see how the sausage is made, mistakenly associate with 'quality' because it behaves like their iPad,…

Yeah, it's also a mistake they made 10 years ago. Tesla is very good at automotive software engineering.

>Yeah, it's also a mistake they made 10 years ago.

You're making it sound like that mistake was an "I spilled my coffee on you boo-boo" and not a terrible engineering decision that should not have passed anyone with actual experience in the embedded industry, let alone a team. If this is the kind of engineering oversights that ends up in Tesla SW, only God knows what else they have lurking in there that hasn't yet reared its ugly head.

>Tesla is very good at automotive software engineering.

Citation needed. Repeating something doesn't make it true.

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla knows what it’s doing. Not these guys.

They know so well that there was a report yesterday showing how tesla’s a low quality vehicle. Behind the dacia.

The report regarding TUV inspections?

Do you do understand that failing those inspections doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the car, right? Tires, wiper blades, or even rust on rotors (due to only using regenerative braking) will cause a fail.

Having owned Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, Porsche, Range Rover, my Teslas have been the most reliable vehicles I’ve ever owned.

Not a single mechanical issue over 4 cars and hundreds of thousands of miles.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "more smart = less reliable" is inevitable. The goal should be designing it in a way that failure of the more smart features does not spill to critical functionality. Or that you can use it in a degraded state sort of like fly by wire planes do. I have no car design experience, but here is my 5-minute idea: For starters, you build a basic car. It drives, it has basic indicators, it has ABS, etc. It has…

That's not how vehicles are designed for many reasons. For one, there's no option where critical components aren't designed with updateability in mind. It's simply a fact of life that code has bugs, and the only way to fix those bugs is updates. It's valid to feel that that those updates should applied at a dealership where the system can be tested afterwards, but that has a lot of implications of its own.

You simply do not understand the point of extracting "basic car" from "smart car".

The point isn't that the software will have no bugs.

The point is that the basic car will have much less software and much more basic software and that it is much easier to test and ensure this software is in working condition.

Also, it is absolutely not true that the basic software has to be updateable. With care, basic functionality can absolutely be completely finished.

Imagine you have been in the market with ABS controller for a decade or more. It has really simple functionality, it should be possible to just bake it and never touch it again. Or maybe a controller that takes care of basic battery protection. Or motor ESC. When the components are simple enough and well defined enough, it should be possible to "finish" the software to a state where it never again needs to be updated. Or updated only in exceptional circumstances.

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

#130
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this happened to me, although it took 10 years. Free replacement, and the car still worked fine.

It's still a major embedded engineering oversight on their part. We had fallback developed for such cases in $5 embedded devices. Calling out Tesla as a model for excellent software is insulting to SW that's actually quality. What Tesla SW has and others lack, is a great "wow" factor, which consumers who don't get to see how the sausage is made, mistakenly associate with 'quality' because it behaves like their iPad,…

You don’t appear to be arguing in good faith. It was a minor issue they had 10 years ago that was fixed.

Tesla obviously has excellent software, but I’m interested in what you’d consider to be excellent software, and which companies would meet your absurd and non-sensical expectations.

Please name some companies that meet your standards.

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