4 ms·
Debian in Space on ISS computers
- drmr 13y agoThe article says 'Gnu Debian Linux 6 (Stable)'. However Debian 6 is "oldstable" since May 6th (the article was written after the release). The new stable release is Debian 7 or 'Wheezy'. I wonder why NASA didn't pick Wheezy though. Then again, at the time of the decision the prospect of wheezy being released as stable was probably still a wet dream.
- dietrichepp 13y agoWheezy was released May 4. Given the cycle with which many major corporations upgrade their computers (e.g., Win XP -> Win 7), I would have been surprised if NASA had chosen Wheezy. I'm sure they have their own software to test, and they can always upgrade to Wheezy at their leisure and upgrade some time between now and May 2014 (when Squeeze support ends).
- snogglethorpe 13y agoapt-get upgrade ... innnnnnnnn spaaaaaacccccceee! I'll get me coat.
- giuseppeurso 13y agoSo it is may 2014 the end of Squeeze... Personally I wasn't aware of this...
- giuseppeurso 13y agoYes, but it was "stable" at the time they decided. And more, i think that they remained with Squeeze because of too much bureaucracy and policies to switch rapidly to Wheezy.
- jzawodn 13y agoNice. I'm working on an experiment that'll fly on the ISS next year, using 4 ARM processors. It will also be running debian: Linux stick1 2.6.39 #1 Mon Aug 15 19:04:09 PDT 2011 armv7l GNU/Linux And: root@stick1:/usr/share# cat /etc/issue.net Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 Should be interesting. :-)
- DavidSJ 13y agoWhat experiment? And is it flying on Dragon out of curiosity?
- jzawodn 13y agoIt's going to be testing 4 Gumstix modules on the external NanoRack platform. Here's the grant announcement: http://www.iss-casis.org/NewsEvents/PressReleases/tabid/111/ArticleID/61/ArtMID/586/CASIS-Announces-Grant-Awards-for-Materials-Science.aspx http://www.iss-casis.org/NewsEvents/PressReleases/tabid/111/... And, yes, I believe it'll be flying on Dragon.
- DavidSJ 13y agoCool! We'll do our best to get it there safely. :)
- voidlogic 13y agoDo you have to use radiation hardened components, shielding, and a multi-core compute and vote kind of system?
- jzawodn 13y agoThe watchdog circuit is built using radiation hard components, but aside from maybe light shielding on the micro SDCards we'll be flying the modules as-is. The goal is to characterize them in that environment and determine failure rates to see if it's reasonable to then build a fault-tolerant system (using voting, as you suggest) later on.
- voidlogic 13y agoVery cool, thanks. I'm envious of your assignment.