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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

#161

Post by torstenvl »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #152
shiroiuma wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have been built for decades without needing any updates at all. Microcontrollers were first put in cars in the 1970s, for fuel injection control, and later for ABS and SRS. No one ever got a software update for their ABS controller in the 1990s. They've been happily running non-updateable code for many decades now, and all of a sudden you think it's normal to update embedded software? No, it really isn't. If the…

Those systems had bugs like anything else, they were just never addressed if the customer didn't bring their vehicle back to a dealership. Have you dealt with code from the 70s-90s before? The codebases I've worked with from that time period were rife with bugs and quality issues we wouldn't consider remotely acceptable today.

I am struggling to understand what it is you're trying to communicate. The original point is that it's quite clear that motor vehicles can physically operate without software, and so therefore smart automotive systems should use graceful degradation in order to avoid situations such as in the OP.

Are you disagreeing that a motor vehicle can operate without software? Or are you disagreeing that a vehicle should continue to operate when smart features are unavailable?

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

#163

Post by ahahahahah »

rpmisms wrote: post #56
iknowstuff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is. Failed updates are non-destructive, they also have an RTOS gateway isolating entertainment software from the software needed to drive the vehicle. https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/reverse-engine... And this is their decade old architecture. If you watch some cybertruck videos you’ll see it is much more elegant now.

Tesla is very very good at software engineering. They still need to find the balance in their software and process engineering, though.

Yeah, they have some truly breathtaking software controlling the automatic wipers. It's like a true ai, probably competitive with a 6 month or so old child. The automatic high beams are up there with the pinnacle of software engineering as well.

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

#164

Post by stwr »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #68
iknowstuff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is. Failed updates are non-destructive, they also have an RTOS gateway isolating entertainment software from the software needed to drive the vehicle. https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/reverse-engine... And this is their decade old architecture. If you watch some cybertruck videos you’ll see it is much more elegant now.

This isn't a tesla-specific thing or even something they innovated. The earliest cars with data networks had this. It's also not something Tesla does better; numerous security researchers have bypassed that gateway. Since you bring up Tesla: used to be that Tesla control units would fail after a certain number of drive time hours because they did so much logging to the flash chips they'd wear them out. In a vehicle w…

Genuine question, in that scenario what should you write the logs to if you wanted to keep the files locally on the car?

I understand EMMC/Flash is a bad idea, but what is the better approach, a HDD/SSD?

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

#165

Post by hulitu »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #129
AlotOfReading wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> With care, basic functionality can absolutely be completely finished.

Yes, but not in SW.

"Even the perfect program still has bugs".

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

#166

Post by RecycledEle »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #60

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…

Out of disk space errors is why we need larger disks.

I get annoyed at people who put in the smallest possible disk, when a disk 4x larger would cost another $10.

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

#167

Post by rpmisms »

ahahahahah wrote: post #163
rpmisms wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is very very good at software engineering. They still need to find the balance in their software and process engineering, though.

Yeah, they have some truly breathtaking software controlling the automatic wipers. It's like a true ai, probably competitive with a 6 month or so old child. The automatic high beams are up there with the pinnacle of software engineering as well.

I've heard a lot about how bad they are, but I've just never noticed either doing anything but their job.

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

#168

Post by RecycledEle »

chillingeffect wrote: post #108

Fwiw there are dozens or perhaps 100s of microcontrollers on cars, usually sharing a small number of comms networks. Not all have the luxury of flash space for dual-boot. It's possible an error on one can affect a large number of others. It should be better, but it's more complex than a single firmware image.

> Fwiw there are dozens or perhaps 100s of microcontrollers on cars, usually sharing a small number of comms networks. Not all have the luxury of flash space for dual-boot.

The auto maker needs to use micro controllers with larger flash memories, or write simpler code.

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

#169

Post by karmakaze »

Ever since using computers and waiting for PC/Windows to boot up, I've dreaded software coming to general utility hardware. Unfortunately the ills and lack of quality software is permeating things that doesn't need it. At the very least, separate the core function of driving from everything else (entertainment, navigation, etc).

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

#170

Post by AlotOfReading »

torstenvl wrote: post #161
AlotOfReading wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those systems had bugs like anything else, they were just never addressed if the customer didn't bring their vehicle back to a dealership. Have you dealt with code from the 70s-90s before? The codebases I've worked with from that time period were rife with bugs and quality issues we wouldn't consider remotely acceptable today.

I am struggling to understand what it is you're trying to communicate. The original point is that it's quite clear that motor vehicles can physically operate without software, and so therefore smart automotive systems should use graceful degradation in order to avoid situations such as in the OP. Are you disagreeing that a motor vehicle can operate without software? Or are you disagreeing that a vehicle should contin…

My point is that software is essentially required to build the "basic car" they propose, and all software components potentially need updates. There are valid arguments both ways whether they only happen at dealerships or also OTA or some third way, but they need to happen regardless.

One example where software is practically required is the backup camera. Would you prefer a series of lenses and mirrors?

None of that should be taken to imply that a vehicle should stop operating under any remotely normal circumstances. The situation pictured should not happen to customers.

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