If it was LILO people would really lose their shit.
BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame
Generally a system crash is a private affair, but the BT Tower, one of London's tallest landmarks, spent much of the weekend displaying a Windows error message in a very public fashion. The building, originally known as the Post Office Tower, is famed for both its revolving top floor and, more recently, for the banks of LEDs …
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 08:45 GMT Flak
Physical security is better?
Well, that depends...
I had the pleasure of visiting a BT exchange one summer day a couple of years ago and while the front entrance had all the usual security processes enforced and in place, the main room (on the ground floor) had wide open doors at the side of the building - with no BT (Openreach) staff visible. We were in for about half an hour and never saw one soul.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 09:13 GMT Lee D
Would have been fixed by not just having whatever the Windows machine chose to display on its primary monitor just splatted on a massive banner in the center of London, actually.
Sure, make the control software run on whatever OS, but at minimum have it output whatever was on the secondary monitor and configure it never to show anything else on that secondary monitor or - even better - literally only have the software output to the screen interface directly. So Windows doesn't see it as a monitor, try to use it as a monitor, or accidentally display whatever error messages or whatever the technician is doing to the world.
Then when the Windows thing *doesn't* work, at worst you get a blank display because it's not being instructed to display anything. And it won't display anything until the OS is up and working, the software is loaded, the software communicates with the screen, and explicitly tells it what to display.
The suggestion that there's some HDMI/VGA connection somewhere and that HUGE display just blindly stretches/scales it and splats it straight on the billboard? I'd be asking for my money back if that was the case.
Hell, even an RPi can output a specific chosen display separately over an electronic interface that has *nothing* to do with what OS it's using, what display manager is running, what console messages are showing, or anything else.
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Wednesday 10th April 2019 10:05 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
"The suggestion that there's some HDMI/VGA connection somewhere and that HUGE display just blindly stretches/scales it and splats it straight on the billboard? I'd be asking for my money back if that was the case."
that obviously is the case , the way round it then is to plug that into a secondary monitor that is activated when various checks are done.
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Wednesday 10th April 2019 10:09 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
Would have been fixed by correctly configuring the windows bootloader with a couple of bcdedit commands and a basic ping test to monitor it...school boy errors.
Not really , if its stuck there because of hard disk failure , it still would play out like it did.
possibly some other machine pinging it would have sent an alert , but , you know , a giant tower in the middle of london was also broadcasting the error in lettters the size of a house *is* an alert!
I doubt BTs response would have been any faster is sombedoy got an email...
Also , a +ve ping just ensures the machine is awake - it could still be displaying any bullshit, so that test only covers one scenario
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Monday 15th April 2019 14:01 GMT Updraft102
Re: "A technical issue"
Except that this is the Windows OS selection screen, not GRUB. Windows refuses to acknowledge that there are other OSes besides Windows, so the best you're going to get is a choice of Windows installations. Windows is arrogant that way, willfully stomping all over bootloaders whenever it wants and refusing to acknowledge EXT volumes as even existing (it doesn't have to know how to read them to at least recognize them for what they are, but it just refers to them as unallocated space). Linux is a far better neighbor.
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Monday 8th April 2019 21:52 GMT Shadow Systems
Wait until it gets hacked.
Can you imagine the fun a script kiddie would have if they got control over the sign?
What kinds of messages would they enter to amuse, confuse, annoy, horrify, or otherwise attract attention?
"Yo noobz! U suxorz! LOL", "Santa = Satan", or a blinking animation of the Goat.cx Guy?
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 05:05 GMT jake
Re: Wait until it gets hacked.
Several years back, when Hwy 121 between Sonoma & Napa was a construction zone, I witnessed one of those programmable road signs on a trailer scrolling "DANGER! Badgers and Hedgehogs crossing!"
Yes, I know how to do it (the control box is almost never locked). No, it wasn't me.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 11:20 GMT A.P. Veening
Re: Wait until it gets hacked.
And now as a clickable link: hackers play hardcore porn film through billboard for five minutes.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 11:12 GMT Captain Scarlet
Re: Use the right tool for the job
As a Windows User I would wonder why such screens arent powered by a specific program such as LCDC (Aww its considered Legacy now). Using a primary display is just bound to cause problems.
As a Windows User I also know Linux is perfectly fine to use, as practically everything uses some form of the kernel or code used in its ecosystem.
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Monday 8th April 2019 23:49 GMT Mike 16
Previously
Pittsburgh, PA, USA had a (somewhat) similar problem
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2009/07/12/A-Morse-Code-typo-lights-city-skyline/stories/200907120242
although it was not noticed for a while, being in Morse Code.
A bit closer to the mark, and for the Penguinistas: I got a new TV some time ago and was doing the channel scan which popped up a very odd "channel". No station ID, and the image seemed to be a "terminal" screen from some Linux installation, with a login: prompt. Of course this was on cable, back when _you_ selected which channel to watch, and the cable presented them all (or, all those in your bundle), rather than you politely asking for a given channel and being eventually served the selected channel (and your choice sold to a bunch of advertisers, but anyway...) Yeah, for a split second I did forget I was on cable rather than antenna, so wondered if this was a result of really bad Tempest compliance. I'm assuming that the head-end for my cable segment had an admin interface that used an otherwise free channel for its console. No idea where I was supposed to plug in the keyboard.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 01:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Soon-to-be-defunct operating system?
"Choose operating system to start or press TAB to select a tool: (Use arrow keys to highlight your choice and then press ENTER)."
I figure it was running a version of windows that booted over PXE and lost contact with the server. Something that shouldn't happen to a networking company. Not a good advert for the British Telegraph company.
“BT is running a soon-to-be-defunct operating system for its display isn't particularly worrying.“
Of course no one in their right mind would run vital infrastructure under any version of Windows. I doubt if it would make any difference what version of Windows. Replacing the defunct Windows Vista that replaced the the defunct Windows XP that replaced the defunct Windows 2000 that replaced the defunct Windows NT (that wasn't designed with the Internet in mind) isn't going to make much of a difference.
"A technical issue caused the infoband on the BT Tower to display an error message which has now been fixed"
Yes, the other day, I went to the doctor who told me I had an illness that needed fixing with medicine.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 15:13 GMT Norman Nescio
Re: MSDOSh
The one that always signals that my day just got much worse is:
grub>
grub rescue>
Is even worse.
From the grub prompt, from memory, I can find where the PC thinks its disks are, set the video mode, load the necessary modules (encrytion, lvm, various filesystems). set up the correct initrd and compressed kernel and light the blue touchpaper. You even get tab completion.
From 'grub rescue>'...[crickets]
...Well, not exactly, but no tab completion; and an even more stripped down experience. But it is still luxurious compared to an EFI shell. The days when I could type in the hex address of the base of boot ROM and hit Go are long gone.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 16:26 GMT doublelayer
Re: MSDOSh
Not that those aren't terrible, but I still have to say that I prefer those to the prompt that's just ">" and really is the basic sh shell on some thing that technically has a Linux or BSD kernel but does not intend to actually let me run anything. No, every command I type will be answered with "sh: command not found".
It's always enjoyable to ls some stuff because that's the only command they have. No other shells. No tab completion. No find, stat, or file. No editors, not even vi. You can of course ls the bin directories but that will just show you a bunch of executables that could be useful if the problem wasn't whatever it is, like all the networking utilities and some other executables that nobody knows what they do and just take a guess if man is available. I recently had a system like this where I couldn't even figure out who I was. I could tell that I wasn't root because it was denying me access to lots of stuff. Whoami and who were not found. ~ resolved to /. I eventually found touch and tried to create a file to see the owner, but although touch thought a file was created, ls did not agree. I did have plenty of tools to read a file (for a system with nothing else, it had both less and more), but I didn't have access to anything. I wonder if this was an April fools joke that I didn't find for a few days, but I don't think so.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 06:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Its headend/telecom tower, just surprised it wasn't XP or win95 or winCE (a name only bested by Win ME , a release named after a long term sickness), since headend is ran as a enclave and outside of normal rules, they are their own special little soldiers not to be questioned. Isolated network, high security physical access, <insert generic management term to excuse terrible shortcuts> :)
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 16:06 GMT Antonius_Prime
<insert generic management term to excuse terrible shortcuts>
"Best of the Best"
"Elite Task Force"
"Ninjas"
"Wizards"
"Product Champions"
Because calling them "a shower of incompetent air theives whose only purpose is to lower the stock price and property value while adding ballast to the AirCon" wouldn't make you a "go-getting, team-oriented, forward thinking, out-of-box focused team player"
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to burn this keyboard for having typed that and then try to cleanse my brain of the near fatal dose of buzzwords.
If any one got BINGO out of those, have an internet cookie...
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 06:50 GMT pogul
Why is it even connected to the console drivers?
I've never understood why these electronic signs don't have a separate channel (of some sort) for signage vs admin. Surely there aren't that many lights in the grid, so presumably you don't need an nvidia card to drive that, so much as a simple controller connected via serial port or whatever.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 07:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why is it even connected to the console drivers?
Knowing that what you're seeing is the same as what others are seeing is worth the risk. We've all seen powerpoint jockeys who can see their presentation fine on their laptop but it's not coming out of the projector...
But a watchdog system that cuts power to the external display if something's not right wouldn't go amiss.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 12:08 GMT Christian Berger
Because Windows doesn't support that
Windows has no API for "second screens", and even if it had your signage software would have to support it. BTW ad companies allow their customers to send their ads in Adobe Flash so you need to have something that's compatible with the console.
On the other hand those LED displays are not (fully) custom designed and in order to be usefull for a large number of uses. Therefore they have standard SDI/HDMI/etc inputs in their controllers.
So yes, it makes sense for those to run of the standard video console, but no, except for some instances (ads delivered to you in Adobe Flash) you'd be better off with something like InfoBeamer.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 08:49 GMT STOP_FORTH
Re: Nearly a day
I occasionally used to visit the Tower on business between about 1980 and 2000. In keeping with BT's property policy of not knowing what was going on or why, the building was either bursting at the seams with equipment racks and staff or a virtually empty shell with a couple of small areas still in use. (This wasn't a unique feature of the Tower, other large BT buildings in London suffered from similar "feast and famine" episodes. Disposing of buildings is a more of a problem when they are still connected to huge, active cable ducts or have large microwave towers on their roof.)
Perhaps there is nobody there at the weekends at the moment?
Anyway, you shouldn't be looking at it, it's an Official Secret!
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 10:28 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Nearly a day
"BT's property policy of not knowing what was going on or why, the building was either bursting at the seams with equipment racks and staff or a virtually empty shell with a couple of small areas still in use."
Thanks. You've just revived a memory of a couple of us occupying the whole of a long office (it must have represented at least two street numbers) just along from the tower. We each constructed a working environment of several desks put together and were more or less within shouting distance of each other.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 08:44 GMT steviebuk
It's probably been..
...going for ages without needing a reboot. The day it craps out everyone goes
"Erm, does anyone actually know where the PC is that controls the display on the tower?"
"No. Dave did but he left years ago. I know he passed the info on to Mary his replacement but she also left over a year ago".
"Well someone needs to find it and reboot it as it's crashed"
Everyone goes out and looks "oh yeah :)"
Something similar may have happened at a theatre we supported a few years back. I never even knew the PC existed that was sat balancing in the cupboard for the display board in the lobby. And I'd been there at least 10 years.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 13:31 GMT Will Godfrey
Rule 1
No information is better than wrong information.
Rule 2: See rule 1
P.S. In another life our people made some information displays. Only when the program was running along nicely would it send a series of pulses via the parallel port (remember them). A little C/D/R/C board hanging on the display module itself set the enable line. The C/D bit was so a stuck Data High wasn't a problem.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 15:22 GMT Ilsa Loving
Or maybe...
Or maybe it was a matter of priorities? Having that screen is definitely visible, but it has zero operational impact to anything. It's purely marketing.
Assuming that BT techs were busy with real emergencies to deal with, I don't consider it at all an issue that it took them a day to look into it.
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Tuesday 9th April 2019 15:49 GMT anthonyhegedus
Re: Or maybe...
'Purely Marketing'? Not quite. It's also public perception. If it wasn't important, they wouldn't have put up the bloody thing in the first place. I imagine the perception among the general public is one of nothing too important, but the fact sticks in there that BT is associated with silly meaningless error messages on a display. The next time there's something silly and meaningless on a BT hoarding, it'll reinforce negative thoughts of the brand.
It's hugely important: It's a bloody big tower in the centre of a very big city with the words 'BT' on it and some utter nonsense scrolling underneath!
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