Airport sign fails to boot, officers already on the scene

BORK!BORK!BORK! The sight of the police can make even the clearest conscience twitch. Perhaps the authorities have finally come to ask about that music track you copied 30 years ago. We're not saying the presence of the law sent this digital signage into a tizz, but you never know. Spotted by an eagle-eyed Register reader at a …

[Victor Ludorum]

Just a hunch

Having had a couple of issues with the expiring 2011 Secure Boot certificates and the 2023 certificates not installing cleanly, I'm wondering whether this could be the same thing...

[Bebu sa Ware]

The pollizei are …

hot on trail of the GRUB responsible.

_{I doubt the boot loader is actually caused this borkage.}

[Korev]

Re: The pollizei are …

Do these use a Phoenix Bios?

[coredump]

Seems like an appropriate caption would be something about the police issuing citations for running UEFI.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

What's worse

It's not that somebody is using an entire PC to run a 4 line x 20 char display

It's that the sign is almost certainly not showing any live data. It probably just says "name of airline" or "international departures"

Not only could the PC be replaced by a raspberryPi - it could be replaced by a blackboard

[just4this]

Re: What's worse

One computer outputs a signal. That signal is sent to multiple displays. There were likely more signs displaying the same.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: What's worse

These days probably not.

The cost of long runs of cable and conduit and HDMI boosters or more practically hdmi->cat5->hdmi transceivers all with approved smoke-free permanent installation grade cabling is probably more than a $200 Intel Nuc on the back of each display

[BartyFartsLast]

ohhh, shame

Missed a trick there, you could have had "Bork Bork, it's the sign of da police"

[MachDiamond]

Central ops

A "net" device could choke if the network is down. I can see how they might think that it's easier for updating to have no local data and run these things as dumb terminals.

[Overflowing Stack]

Sign of the times

[VicMortimer]

Phoenix pigs? I'm surprised they haven't already shot the sign.

[SDF_of_BC]

There is no booting in the red zone, there is only booting in the white zone

[Gavsky]

Excellent - you win the internet for today!

[Gavsky]

When it comes to airports, this sort of message isn't a big concern - aircraft excepted...

[Gene Cash]

Weird police URL

So apparently they're having such an issue retaining staff that they put the URL of the police academy on their cars, instead of perhaps a more general and useful one.

[Ken Shabby]

Terminal illness

[blu3b3rry]

Best guess

The EFI shell response complaining about "cannot find required map name" is normally because it can't find an EFI boot partition. Probably the storage medium has died.