Debugging Behind the Iron Curtain (2010)

by e1ven • 8 years ago

97 19 8 years ago

virtuexru• 8 years ago

Having issues loading the text on this page. Seems to keep "blinking" out for me. Is there anyway we can get a printer friendly or text only version? Super interested in this article.

codeulike• 8 years ago

The same article is here: http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/crash_cows.html

cs02rm0• 8 years ago

https://pastebin.com/raw/NR0SzmiL

jzymbaluk• 8 years ago

I love reading these bug-hunting war stories, there's no breakpoint for radioactive cows in GDB! Another favorite of mine is the 500-mile email bug[1], if there's a bigger collection of these stories anywhere on the internet, I'd love to read them

[1] http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

bad_login• 8 years ago

https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories https://github.com/danluu/post-mortems

kiddico• 8 years ago

Well... I guess I didn't need to do much work this morning. Thanks for the links.

mav3r1ck• 8 years ago

Wow. I’ve discovered many bugs in my life. But none caused me to fear for my life.

There were often significant food shortages in the Soviet Union, and the government plan was to mix the meat from Chernobyl-area cattle with the uncontaminated meat from the rest of the country. This would lower the average radiation levels of the meat without wasting valuable resources. Upon discovering this, Sergei immediately filed immigration papers with any country that would listen. The computer crashes resolved themselves as radiation levels dropped over time.

tecleandor• 8 years ago

Check on the Therac-25 case, whis is particularly scary for me, having worked for 10 years on medical software (on the sysadmin side).

A race condition which killed people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation. Because of concurrent programming errors, it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were hundreds of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury.

rouxz• 8 years ago

archive.is banned in Russia. Haha, the Irony.

mtve2• 8 years ago

allow me to call the parent story bullshit.

abritinthebay3• 8 years ago

Why? The error seems reasonable (radiation can and could have flipped bits, I've done it on sensitive hardware with a camera flash).

Fins• 8 years ago

It is entirely plausible, though (no opinion whether this particular case is true, though). At least the radioactive cattle part of it.

speleo_engr• 8 years ago

I kind of doubt this story. What kind of radiation would you have from Chernobyl?

My understanding is that bit flips (SEEs) are typically caused by energetic particles like cosmic rays. To simulate upset damage on Earth, you typically need to decap the IC and go to a testing facility that directly hits the wafer with particles. It seems unlikely that somewhere near Chernobyl that there would be particles energetic enough that didn't get stopped by the IC packaging.

Gamma radiation gives total ionizing dose effects that degrade chips until the point they no longer work. Those shoot right through the chip packaging. But I don't think it typically causes upsets.

PoachedSausage• 8 years ago

Neutrons from the various fission products?

https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/ChipIR.aspx

Debugging Behind the Iron Curtain (2010)

Related Stories