The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Level 3 Diagnostics

Early in my career I worked on military flight data recorders, including the development of the software for the F-22's "black box". Those systems have SBIT, IBIT, PBIT and MBIT sub-systems were BIT is "built in test" and S = startup, I = initiated, P = periodic and M = maintenance. I remember making the Star Trek diagnostic joke myself when I was assigned the SBIT work.

Each BIT does varying level of testing based on it's runtime budget but there are a lot of very basic tests that don't make much sense until you see your first field report of some register bit "sticking". Its much better to ground a plane that can't add 1+1 than to find that out in mid- flight.

Hacker News comment

This comment (one out of many comments about testing critical software) really hit home, especially given the testing currently going on here in the Ft. Lauderdale Office of The Corporation (with the Monopolistic Phone Company, who's mantra seems to be “it's your fault we're not ready for testing!”). While I would love to order a Level 3 Diagnostic, alas, our software is not written with such diagnostics in mind (and given the difficulty we've seen from the other side it's clear their software isn't either).

In fact, I'm having a hard time even figuring out what a “Level 3 Diagnostic” would even mean in the compoent I wrote, much less every other component involved with “Project: Sippy- Cup.”

Reading up on SBIT, IBIT, PBIT and MBIT sub-systems, it seems that it's really only applied to avionics and possibly automotive computer systems. The closest thing to it is the POST that most PCs do when powered on, which seems to be the functional equivelent of SBIT. The rest, IBIT, PBITand MBIT, not so much.

Out of all the components in “Project: Sippy-Cup,” only mine has an explicit “health-check” function built in (which just basically says, “Yes, I'm running” and that's it) which is close to PBIT(from my understanding); everything else is queried for known data at fixed intervals. But diagnostics seem to be “search the logs and/or configuration for for anomalous behavior.”

Sigh.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.