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How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

clarkwakeland.com

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Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#31

Post by redleader55 »

anonzzzies wrote: post #4
perching_aix wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I wouldn't be stoked to run Linux on them either to be honest. But both are being done. Practicality rules I suppose.

Having sourcecode to everything would make me trust things more as at least we could fix things without calling MS. But what would you run? QNX? BSD?

If you ever count how many patches are in between stable point releases - eg. 6.10.5 to 6.10.6, you'll see having the source code is not enough. All of these patches are fixes for something or another, not features, but fixes.

If you look at an LTS branch, you'll see there are hundreds of point releases. Usually a point release is created once every 5-10 days. I interpret that to mean bugs were not found until many weeks after the LTS branch was cut. Obviously, not all of them affect you, but many patches apply important subsystems which affect you.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#32

Post by ssrc »

anonzzzies wrote: post #4
perching_aix wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I wouldn't be stoked to run Linux on them either to be honest. But both are being done. Practicality rules I suppose.

Having sourcecode to everything would make me trust things more as at least we could fix things without calling MS. But what would you run? QNX? BSD?

VxWorks, LynxOS or RTEMS. RTEMS is open source.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#33

Post by exe34 »

johnisgood wrote: post #8
withinboredom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you have the source code, doesn't mean you have the knowledge to fix it before you die.

No, but you can review the source code before (or at any point), whereas with Windows, you cannot even do that.

windows is source-available if you have deep enough pockets: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/enterprise-sour...

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#34

Post by cogman10 »

geepytee wrote: post #18
sharpshadow wrote: post #2

One must have balls of steel to run windows on a spaceship.

Genuine question, what would you use instead and why?

If I had barrels full of money to waste, probably a microkernel architecture like fuchsia [1]. The barrels full of money would be turning it into a real time OS. The benefit of such an OS is if there's a bug in the drivers, the kernel itself keeps on plugging along, it can dump and reload the misbehaving driver without crashing.

[1] https://fuchsia.dev/

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#36

Post by linebeck »

Author here: I should clarify the satellite is not running Windows. Instead, it’s running its own custom OS written in C called Flight Software (FSW) specifically designed for the satellite onboard computer.

Re-reading the post, I see how the title, my analogies, and poor attempts at humor would give the incorrect description of what’s happening with the satellite when it enters safemode. I’ll amend the post soon.

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll be better next time.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#37

Post by lpribis »

hypeatei wrote: post #10
sharpshadow wrote: post #2

One must have balls of steel to run windows on a spaceship.

Wonder if it's LTSC or the standard image with candy crush, windows store, and Xbox game app bloat?

Don't know if it's publically available, but MS makes Windows IoT which is a stripped down distro for embedded systems.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#39

Post by barbegal »

linebeck wrote: post #36

Author here: I should clarify the satellite is not running Windows. Instead, it’s running its own custom OS written in C called Flight Software (FSW) specifically designed for the satellite onboard computer. Re-reading the post, I see how the title, my analogies, and poor attempts at humor would give the incorrect description of what’s happening with the satellite when it enters safemode. I’ll amend the post soon. Th…

Could I ask you to clarify why avoiding safemode is so important? In a non satellite system safemode means everything is driven to a safe state which is fine during testing in the lab.

Also do you not run these tests in an even more simulated environment where there is only the flight computer and no real hardware at all?

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#40

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

exe34 wrote: post #11
anonzzzies wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but without it, you stand no chance at all.

windows is source-available if you have deep enough pockets: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/enterprise-sour...

Does Microsoft also provide you the tools to build it? I assume there are many Microsoft internal tools, libraries, etc required to compile anything of note. Presumably it has been dog fooded for so long it would be impossible to bootstrap without some number of binary artifacts in hand.
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