911 Calls Linux

This morning, we found an excellent piece in our in-box about how a 911 call center in Utah has switched all of its workstations over to Linux. If anyone needs 24/7 reliability, it's the people at the other end of 911, and apparently they're now getting it, thanks to Linux-using, Slashdot-reading Officer Sherman Stebbins of the St. George, Utah Police Department, who tells us how he did it below.

911 Calls Linux - For Reliable Service

In January 1998 I began testing linux for our 911 Center here in St. George Utah. We are the 911 Center for the South west corner of Utah. In November of 1998 Testing was complete with great success. I implemented Linux as the workstation for our 911 Center using RedHat 5.2 and AfterStep as the windows manager. These workstations get worked on 24 hrs a day seven days a week and run several apps on screen.

Some of the apps that we run our Eterm to connect to the main HP Server, X3270 for our State computer connection, WordPerfect for different reports the dispatchers create, and some custom apps I have written in C.

Our WordPerfect was given to us Mike Cowpland CEO of Corel. The WordPerfect 8 has worked perfectly. Thanks Mike.

Our uptime has been over 200 DAYS. This doesn't even come close to the reboot once a day with the Microsoft OS. I could give several horror stories of when the dispatcher is in the middle of a hot call, then had to reboot.

Linux has done so well, that I have unplugged the reset buttons and disabled the power switch. This was done to prevent finger glitch when they have to restart the NT box our radios work from (I just wish Motorola would switch over), that sits next to the linux box. Linux is the main console that the 911 Dispatcher works from, and has held up better than any I have ever seen. Linux has been doing great in the server end, but I have heard it's not very good at the client end. NOT TRUE. My installation time for the first pc was 45 minutes for full install with apps. By the time I got to the last set it was 30 minutes for full install. As a client it has worked great.

The only shutdowns have been from one power supply failure, and a kernel update for each. The workstations are still running great.

Officer Sherman Stebbins
St. George Police Department
e-mail [e-mail]

A suggestion to prevent this kind of nonsense

Roblimo,

To prevent this kind of sowing of doubt, may I suggest each story have a small link next to it entitled "verification" or something similar, that would take the curious or doubtful to a web page summarizing the verification process in much the same way you just did? For links to other news sites this probably isn't necessary, though it might still be a nice touch to have the same kind of link, pointing to that new site's journalistic "standards" page (if they have one).

Clearly this kind of stunning success for Linux is rubbing some folks the wrong way -- wonder why. :-)

Rebooting for installs...

Okay, for those of you who've read this already, this is my semi-regular rant on Windows, installing apps, and shared libraries. If you've read it already, skip it.

>Yes, you need to reboot much more when
>installing or changing software than Linux, but
>you can always say no and stop and restart the
>service. (Same basic prinicple on Linux)

No. These are very different issues. When it comes to shared libraries, Windows has dropped the ball. Shared libraries mean that some other application (perhaps even the OS) may use them and have them locked. When you are asked to reboot, it is because some shared libraries couldnot be copied because they were locked. These shared libraries will not get copied until you reboot. More concerning, however, is the uninstall. If the uninstall can't delete something (say X.DLL), it marks it for deletion at next reboot, and asks if you want to reboot. If you say no, and go install something else in the meantime, which happens to try to install X.DLL, things will be happy until you reboot, when X.DLL is deleted (as the uninstaller told it to do).

Linux deals with updating shared libraries, partially as a result of naming conventions, and partially as a result of filesystem capabilities.

In Windows, if a program is using a particular shared library, you cannot remove that library file from the filesystem. It is locked. Under Linux, what is locked are the inodes. It is irrelevant whether or not the file has a filename linked to it. When I use the unlink() system call (there's a reason there's no delete_file() sys call), we unlink the file name from the inodes storing the file, preventing more apps from opening it. Only when the file's usage count drops to 0 is it removed from the fs. This means that I can create a new file, with the same name as the one I just unlinked, without affecting the performance of any applications using the original file. I can replace shared libraries without having to stop the application using the shared library.

Further, most Linux applications don't install new shared libraries when they install themselves. It would be seen as very poor practice for some little app to install a new version of glibc as part of its own installation. Yet, we accept this as normal in the NT world.

Even better, Linux allows multiple versions of a library to coexist on a system, using version numbers. Under Windows, you can't even get Microsoft's own ODBC 3.51 to coexist with ODBC 4.0.

"Office.. i think i can hear someone....."

Just imagine a World w/out Linux...
Possilbe scenario on a NT or 95/98 network for 911.. (god forbid they should use TAPI..)


officer-"Hello 991."
person-"help me please... i can hear someone in my house..."
officer-"hold on... ok i have your location ."
person-"PLEASE hurry i can heAr them coming!!!"
Officer-"oh *hit.. blue screen crash.. Just hold on a sec ok?"
person-"AHHHHW!HH!Hhaawaw!H!HH! ......"
officer-"hello? hello? .. crap."

hehe


"Y'all come back Y'a Hear!?!?"

RMS++?

I think this is an interesting extension to the
Free Software philosophy that has driven our cause. That free software not only enriches our lives but also saves them is indeed something to be proud of -- and has shown me, for one, that
Free Software can mean much more than I had previously imagined.

why???

NOTE: this is NOT flamebait. It's an honest-to-goodness question

First let me say that I think it's great that Linux is getting this good exposure. My question is this: Why does everyone say it's a great article when somebody writes about NT's downtime, and how Linux is better than NT. However, if someone writes something positive about NT (or BSD, or anything that's NOT Linux), it's instantly labelled as "FUD" or "flamebait".
I think Linux is great and all, but it's not perfect (yet), we need to be fair in advocating it.

Re:hmmm.

Yes its real, Ive been an officer for over 12 yrs.
our Address is 200 E. 265 N. St. George Utah, if you want to see the 911 center and myself in person (if you don't believe). I take care of the 911 center network and Fatal accidents.

Sherm

If Microsoft ran 911...

Hello, and welcome to The Microsoft 911 Service - the most innovative 911 service ever! If you have a touch tone phone, please press 1 to speak with an operator, 2 to find out about new and exciting MS911 services, or 3 to find out more about MS911-98!

*beep*

Are you sure you want to speak with an operator?

*BEEEP!*

This operation could not be completed because an error of type -4019 occurred. Please standby, transferring you to the next available operator. Your expected wait time is: 493 minutes. Please have your MS-PIN and Certificate of..

*BEEP!* *BEEEEEEEEP!* *BEEEEEEEP!!*

... and thank you for using MS911!
*click*
NO CARRIER



--

Very neat indeed

Now here's a police officer that uses his training to choose the better path: Linux. As he proved, it served it's purpose when it was most needed, when someone needed desperate help.

Now if I was the one on the phone getting directions on how to revive or possibly save the family member/friends life I would not want directions on the dispatchers screen to suddenly be replaced by a blue screen. I don't think a GPF would do me any good then.

Just think of the many people relying on Windows to aid many citizens in everyday tasks. For example, I found this picture [207.240.121.247] quite amusing until I actually thought about it. How would I feel if I had to scramble around the airport at the last minute figuring out if my flight was delayed or not because of an error in the messaging system. Not that funny anymore.

Overall I think that Officer should be awarded something.. I don't know what, but maybe a gold penguin or something at the 1st Annual Linux Awards when they eventually are sponsored :)

Congrats to Officer Linux and the Sgt.,
Matthew
______________________________________

Re:why???

People are fed up with having mission-critical things blow up and BSOD all the time. Many people on /. have similar experiences. Granted, it's biased, but that doesn't negate the fact that the current crop of Microsoft offerings are woefully inadequate to the descriptions their sales department would have you believing.

Maybe if Microsoft was more honest with itself (and it's customers), and made a good-faith effort to improve the quality of it's products we wouldn't come down so hard on them.

Microsoft would have quite a few more friends here if they just came clean and said "we made a mistake, and here's what we're going to do to fix it", rather than spreading FUD around.

As the old saying goes, what goes around comes around.




--

Re:why???

One thing that you haven't learned about NT then is that you dont always have to reboot. Yes, you need to reboot much more when installing or changing software than Linux, but you can always say no and stop and restart the service. (Same basic prinicple on Linux) I also agree that NT is unstable when you are adding and removing alot of programs. This is due to Microsofts bad design and using a Single Registry instead of the Unix way of 100+ text files. However, it is the same as with Linux, that you have to know how to configure the machine in order for the programs to run properly and not crash. I have had Mail, File and Web servers that have seen uptimes around 1 year. I dont see this as an unstable operating system. The big thing with Linux and NT is that Linux is more stable RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. NT needs to be tweaked. BUT, they are BOTH Stable OS's when properly configured.

I know this will piss alot of people off....let the flames begin....

Story verification

I called the St. George Police Department through its published non-emergency phone number, verified Officer Stebbins' identity, and chatted with him personally (by phone) before posting the story. Note the emphasis on using a *published* phone number for initial contact. It is as easy to spoof a phone number as an e-mail address; all you have to do is claim you're giving out a "private line."

Without proper verification, this story would not have run. Period.

Robin "roblimo" Miller
[e-mail] [mailto]

Re:Discovering validity of news reports

I'm just adding a link to verification comment [slashdot.org] which was posted seconds after the previous comment. The /. editor did verify the information before creating the article.

Re:A suggestion to prevent this kind of nonsense

Or even something relatively minor like a credibility/validity index or something as part of the article's summary.. A few static/standard values such as:

1. Validated first-hand (by "author")
2. Validated by submitter
3. Validated by submitter (with author's doubts)
4. As posted elsewhere
5. Validated by web presence (thus with doubts)
6. Unverified
7. N/A (for things like funnies)

etc.

Re:why???

One reason is that Microsoft has a paid marketing department, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have a budget that looked like RedHat's market cap.

Wisely or not, many people here feel they are the unpaid Linux marketing department. To some degree I think this is true and a good thing. Like you though, I'd like to see more comments from people who have real world examples and deep experience in both systems, rather than people who are just cheerleading or bashing. To be fair, Microsoft is fairly repetitive and content-free too :).

The other thing you have to realize is that there really is a lot of anger at Microsoft. Being a user of their software since 1982 (DOS 1.0), I think it's fair for me to say that a lot of this anger is justified. If people feel calmer after a little venting, it may even be worth the bandwidth lost to noise.

I think this article is a good example of what I'd like to see more of. Even if its biased, its a real example, and it brings up something well worth thinking about -- the reliability of life critical software.

Jim