back to article Borky shark: A deserted airport and a Raspberry Pi feeling poorly at baggage claim. Welcome to 2020

Worried about The Rise Of The Machines in these troubled times? Cheer yourself up with another example of what computers get up to when humans aren't watching, courtesy of your self-isolated vultures at The Register. Today's computer behaving badly is of the fruity variety as a Raspberry Pi-powered digital sign had a crack at …

  1. Reginald Onway

    Diagnosis...

    Update supplied by Microsoft?

    1. m4r35n357 Bronze badge

      Re: Diagnosis...

      Total CPU bewilderment and kernel panic just over 3 seconds into boot. Either hardware failure on the board somewhere, or more likely, a dodgy power supply or connection IMO.

  2. richardcox13

    "Merely an automatic system. Ancient computers ranged in the long caves deep ion the bowels of the planet tick away the dark millennia. I think they take the occasional pot shot to relieve the monotony."

    ('nuff said.)

    1. Totally not a Cylon
      Terminator

      Who knew a bowl of Petunias was sentient?

      1. BebopWeBop

        Douglas Adams supected it.

        1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Agrajag knew for certain.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Angel

    Forgiven

    Completely forgiven because they are using an RPi.

    [Icon -> been dying to use this one at some point!]

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Well _this_ is news

    A Pi has crashed. In a standalone game thingy. I'm supposing it doesn't get updates, so it doesn't change. What can possibly have brought it to its knees ?

    Given that each CPU failed to launch (apparently it has two), the problem shouldn't have anything to do with associated hardware (like spinning rust that failed to respond). Looking at the messages, each CPU has a stack exception, and then fails to complete startup.

    So the question is : what threw a stack exception ?

    1. Yet Another Hierachial Anonynmous Coward

      Re: Well _this_ is news

      At least the Pi gives us a screen of useful diagnostics, and not just a bluescreen or "an error has occurred" type message. And we know it spent 3.88 seconds trying to get started, before it chilled and relaxed and ended its panic.

      Long Live the Pi !

      (I suspect a wobbly PSU - give it a cold hard restart and it may be happy once more)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Well _this_ is news

        > not just a bluescreen or "an error has occurred" type message.

        But it's a new shade of blue... and now it's got one of those fancy square bar codes things ... which just leads you to a webpage which says "an error has occurred" Great, that was worth accessing.

    2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Well _this_ is news

      Something filled a log file & ran out of space? SD card died (I've had two die so far)?

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: Well _this_ is news

      "what threw a stack exception ?"

      Mains power threw a wobbler at a most inopportune time would be my guess. (Source: Standard, non-filtered sockets at airports aren't exactly the cleanest power I've ever seen.)

  5. Steeev

    SD card gone bad probably. (I've mitigated this in the past by putting logs on a ramdisk.)

  6. Anonymous Tribble

    Not an old Pi

    Definitely not a BCM2835 based early Pi. The 2835 only had one ARM core, so you'd only see one raspberry at boot time. That picture is showing four raspberries, so a BCM2836/7 Pi 2 or later.

    1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Not an old Pi

      Definitely not a BCM2835 even though the message shown reports it as such.

      Such misreporting has caused much confusion for new Pi users who don't understand why their board claims to be something other than what they thought they had purchased. It has left some asking if they have been sold a fake or counterfeit item or a supplier had sent the wrong thing.

      The problem is apparently "a Linux issue" which the Raspberry Pi Foundation don't care enough about to fix themselves.

      1. Anonymous Tribble

        Re: Not an old Pi

        The problem is apparently "a Linux issue" which the Raspberry Pi Foundation don't care enough about to fix themselves.

        It was fixed in their version of the Linux kernel, but they are trying to keep the kernel as "vanilla" as possible now that Pi support has been added upstream.

        Unfortunately the upstream devs decided that all Raspberry Pis would be recognised as BCM2835 in order to identify the platform. Hopefully one day they will correct that.

  7. PM.

    Best wishes

    Best wishes of good health to this vulture and his/her offspring !

    ( and for the rest of the vultures , as well )

  8. SVV

    It might be a while before some of us pass that way again

    At least the system had been up and running. Just imagine what's going to happen when all the little systems that are down right now finally get started up again and wheeze reluctantly back to life. Licences expiring, automatic updates downloading : it will be a bonanza of bork. And we all know about the mysterious increased likelihood of systems breaking themselves the longer they remain untouched, even when no hardware component has failed............

    1. Boy Quiet

      Re: It might be a while before some of us pass that way again

      I’m not sure that’s always the case.

      From a hardware point of view the shock to a system is at power up.

      And even software For example I ran about ten windows 7 “machines” on vSphere on the “one task per machine” requirement. And unless a critical update forced a restart, some of those machines were never rebooted. In an 18 year period some of those machine never fell over. Probably the “one task per machine” is the clue.

  9. IGotOut Silver badge

    But...but...but...Linux!

    It NEVER fails!

    /sacrasmoff

    On a serious note, this is an ideal use for a PI.

    1. Dwarf

      Re: But...but...but...Linux!

      Linux may not, but hardware generally will and you cannot code around that particularly easily !

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: But...but...but...Linux!

        It probably wasn't hardware or software. It was probably power.

        1. Dwarf

          Re: But...but...but...Linux!

          @Jake

          I kind'a agree, but in general terms, a power issue is still a hardware issue - along the lines of it works better when its turned on..

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: But...but...but...Linux!

            True enough ... given large enough values of power supply, a RasPi would never see power glitches. However, it would kind of negate the smallness and cheapness factors, which are kind of the point, n'est-ce pas?

            1. AlbertH
              Boffin

              Re: But...but...but...Linux!

              A quick and relatively cheap fix has been provided by a couple of the makers of peripherals for the R-Pi. It is a "UPS" that uses NiMH cells and a simple monitoring circuit to charge the battery from the Pi PSU. My improvised version has allowed a "mission critical" Pi (actually just an Office Directory for a big office building I work in) to continue to run continuously for over three years despite brief power outages and dirty mains. It has a little, irritating beeper that sounds if the power is unplugged, and a sign that illuminates requesting that the power is reconnected! This overcomes the "cleaner unplugged it" problem!

  10. Antonius_Prime
    Trollface

    Surprised the byline didn't say

    "Welcome to the Borkage Claim"

    And maybe a little disappointed too...

    :D

    (Icon, for obvious reasons...)

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Surprised the byline didn't say

      Byline reminded me of a display in The Deep in Hull years ago. That was a borked WinNT or maybe W2K.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Techical support..

    Have you tried turning it off and on again?

    1. BebopWeBop

      Re: Techical support..

      That might work if log files are full (depending on how its boot sequence is configured of course)

      1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: Techical support..

        That might work if there's anyone there to do so.

  12. ItsMeDammit
    Devil

    All together now...

    Borky Shark, do do do do do, Borky Shark, do do do do do, Boooorky Shark.

    Mummy Shark, do do do do do...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All together now...

      Argh, beat me to it.

  13. Dwarf

    I blame the military

    They are all there

    Kernel Panic

    Major Problem

    General Failure

    1. MiguelC Silver badge

      Re: I blame the military

      Don't forget that General Failure is a close relative of General Protection Fault. They both come from a Bad Sector of town, and often engage in Illegal Function Calls.

      1. bpfh

        Re: I blame the military

        Certainly coming from a Bad Sector, as they keep reading my private files. At least my computer tells me General Failure Reading Disk.

    2. ItsMeDammit

      Re: I blame the military

      ... resolved satisfactorily by Corporal Punishment.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    After carefully analysing the output from the Pi I believe the problem is in relations to the Dump_Stack from 8010048 and I can determine from this that the Pi is actually fucked.

  15. djdel

    Not enough info

    Whatever the real problem was has already scrolled off the top. All that can be seen here is each CPU has been told to stop via interprocessor interrupt, and if that happens during boot then a stack dump is emitted.

  16. Sgt_Oddball
    Pint

    Ooooohh

    Thanks for reminding me about Faro - really ought to ask the family if they'd be up for the F festival again this year (here's to hoping it's still on). Think music festival held in a Portuguese castle complete with e-sports arena for to kill time before the music starts (even had a cresh for the kiddies so you could mooch off and and grab some beers in before it kicked out at 10).

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