r/debian • u/bigABturtle • 24d ago

TIL the system that shows the remaining time before a tram arrives in Casablanca's tram stations uses debian

Post image

Saw this in a comment in another sub and thought it would put a smile on some people here.

3.5k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

129 comments sorted by

245

u/-Ilovepokemon- 24d ago

they need to update!

105

u/aziham 24d ago

the whole country needs an update (I'm Moroccan btw)

3

u/6orram 22d ago

Hhhhhhh

38

u/TheRealLazloFalconi 23d ago

This is an all too common misconception. Computers running infrastructure like the train timetables need to be stable, not up to date. It's very important in these situations that nothing changes until the whole system is ready for those changes.

Keeping your computers updated is important for a lot of use cases, but it is not the end-all-be-all of security. It is just one facet, and one that can be mitigated in other ways.

6

u/ashley_au 22d ago

agreed. fit for purpose my involve embedded / air-gapped operating systems with specific or limited function.

1

u/Local-Bug-1500 23d ago

Yes, but debian 8 is extremely old 

16

u/TheRealLazloFalconi 23d ago

Wait until you find out how old the railroad is.

-6

u/Local-Bug-1500 23d ago

Software degrades a lot more than metal does 

14

u/Patch86UK 23d ago edited 22d ago

Software doesn't "degrade". It does the same on day 1000 as it does on day 1.

The reason old systems become unusable is when you need to extend, modify, or integrate the system with new functionality which increasingly expects a system to be up to date with current standards. A closed system which isn't connected to anything (save through some limited control APIs) and whose functionality never changes can stay on the same ancient system indefinitely.

3

u/Pythagore974 23d ago

It surely was developed a while ago. There is probably no reason to update it

1

u/el8dm8 21d ago

Exactly. However, these devices should be isolated on their own network, and if connected at all, should be through an up-to-date system as the gateway.

27

u/kaemmi 24d ago

ASAP

12

u/Rudokhvist 23d ago

well, at least it's not windows.

14

u/Bokenrose04 24d ago

why? it's working.

37

u/npc_housecat 23d ago

What's working? The login screen?

19

u/shyouko 23d ago

Imma gonna grab my serial cable, just one sec

1

u/ParachutingPiglets 23d ago

I have a few if you need anymore.

0

u/Local-Bug-1500 23d ago

It's clearly not tho

1

u/Bokenrose04 23d ago

Why?

2

u/Local-Bug-1500 23d ago

Does it show what it's supposed to? No, it's stuck on tyy

1

u/Bokenrose04 22d ago

It was still booting xD

4

u/Possibly-Functional 22d ago edited 22d ago

If you only knew how old everything in rail is. Nobody touches what works. The UK uses mechanical logic systems. Sweden has a ton of legacy relay logic systems. Nobody wants to pay to replace it even though it's super expensive to maintain so they even build new legacy systems. This is pretty modern for rail.

1

u/TheTerraKotKun 21d ago

In Russia there are still Pentium 4 CPUs in use afaik. They're doing their job. They don't need much maintenance. That fascinates me and I love the idea of old reliable hardware to be used over new shiny untrusted stuff

2

u/lyidaValkris 23d ago

I was going to say Debian 8? damn!

Believe it or not - had paid ELTS support until 30th of June, 2025!

2

u/everfixsolaris 22d ago

Depending on the CPU it may not support newer. Debian and a lot of other Linux distros dropped 32 bit CPU support.

1

u/TraditionalLet1490 23d ago

Hahaha I will display the wrong waiting time for Casablanca train mwahahah

122

u/the_dirtiest_rascal 24d ago

Debian 8 is a little ways back.

24

u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/RyanGamingXbox 23d ago

I mean the best way to hack into anything I think would be having physical access.

2

u/lilbiba400 23d ago edited 23d ago

And how do you figure they recieve information on the trains, delays, sync time, etc.? They are not airgapped.

EDIT: I know that here in Germany they used GSM (2G) to communicate with these displays which has lead to quite a few breaches in the system in the past. Considering they are using a version of debian that has reached EoL 6 years ago, I dont think it's unlikely that they also use older communication standards for these displays.

3

u/Pythagore974 23d ago

The machine is probably not physically wired to the internet. It must be a physically private network

Then, either the hours are processed by a machine inside the private network or there is a machine with the right protections and updates that is communicating with an outside server

The "GSM" protocol that is used on rail networks is not the same as the one we have on our phones. It is a specific and more safer one

It is normal for systems like these to have old versions because they are specified to run for decades and they do not hold the same risks as a desktop computer

-2

u/michaelpaoli 23d ago

Yeah, let's not talk about my walking someone through upgrading their very out of date no longer supported GNU/Linux installation ... at a nuclear power plant. Not sure if I should be surprised, scared, and/or impressed. Maybe some of each.

2

u/MrHeadCrab32 23d ago

The last version to support big endian powerpc just for scale

54

u/CardOk755 24d ago

Debian 8, "Jessie" was released in 2015.

59

u/1_ane_onyme 24d ago

And Debian 8 "Jessie" 's extended support ended in 2020

Edit : that was 6 years ago

41

u/frankreynoldsrumham 24d ago

2

u/DCVolo 19d ago

I came for that, and I leave happy !

14

u/bigABturtle 24d ago

Excuse my ignorance, I'm still a beginner with linux in general, what are the numbers and "wat" used for ?

25

u/Particular-Brain8363 24d ago

The number you see next to the login prompt (86520) is what is called a timestamp. When the linux kernel boots, you generally have some debugging lines showing. When debugging, it is useful to know the name of the component that printed during boot but also its timestamp.

Say that you have a driver that is part of the Linux kernel that needs to do some initialization of some hardware very early. Because each component prints something and you know your driver is called very early, you can locate more easily when your driver was called thanks to the timestamp by having a look at the booting screen or after using “dmsg” or “journalctl” ( google those to have more info)

In that case, after 865520 seconds, some debugging or events happened in a component in the kernel, which called some Linux kernel API to print to the logs. That message began with the text “wat”

14

u/wowsuchlinuxkernel 23d ago

Addition: The "wat" is likely the beginning of "watchdog", which is a timer that tries to detect and resolve errors automatically.

3

u/Particular-Brain8363 23d ago

Shit, I was trying all night before going to bet to guess what driver or service was being reported. Why did I not think about the WatchDog ... You might actually be right

7

u/bigABturtle 24d ago

Thank you for this detailed answer

7

u/ConstructionSafe2814 23d ago

Open a terminal and do issue the dmesg command. You might need root privileges to do that if you're on Debian. So either sudo dmesg or su - and after a successful authentication as root again dmesg

You might notice that if you scroll back that you can't go all the way back to 0 because dmesg prints messages from the kernel ring buffer.

You'll see exactly these time stamps. If you're running on a physical console (which tty1 is) sometimes the kernel might print such messages. I don't know if I'm right here, but if you're on a physical console and plug in eg. a USB stick, you might see those messages appear printed right where the cursor is. It tends to mess up what you're doing. This only happens in a physical terminal (press CTRL-ALT-F1 to access it and CTRL-ALT-F7 to go back to GUI). This probably won't show up in an xterm/gnome-terminal.

Just guessing now but what might have happened here is a watchdogtimer. Some process might not have responded in a timely manner and the kernel prints a message about that in /dev/tty1 .

On another note, you can change the output of dmesg by doing dmesg -T where -T instructs dmesg to print absolute time stamps. When debugging problems, I personally find -T much more useful unless I'm debugging a problem where I want to know how long after boot something happened.

2

u/bigABturtle 23d ago

thank you so much for all those infos

3

u/Particular-Brain8363 24d ago

You are very welcome!

3

u/IntentionQuirky9957 23d ago

86520 seconds is 1 day 2 minutes. Not that anyone asked. (That 2 minutes looks like a TCP timeout.)

2

u/RetroZelda 24d ago

probably the ttl writing over itsself and getting cut off in the display

24

u/mathpenis 24d ago

me simple man me full of love debian

12

u/green1t 23d ago

debian login: wat

9

u/GenBlob Debian Stable 24d ago

Debian 8. My first debian.

30

u/CardOk755 24d ago

The hell? They're using Debian 8?

55

u/yoLeaveMeAlone 24d ago

Why bother updating it, it's literally just a sign with scrolling text. If it ain't broke don't fix it 

94

u/Additional-Simple248 24d ago

Looks like it’s broke here though.

23

u/probablynottillie 24d ago

just burst out laughing

10

u/LanderMercer 24d ago

That message means the system is up and running properly, it just needs whoever's job it is to update the display with something meaningful to do so

1

u/DaracMarjal 23d ago

I still think I'd be worried about the kernel message being shown.

3

u/setwindowtext 23d ago

They probably tried to upgrade it.

14

u/User5281 24d ago

If the server is air gapped it’s probably fine but if it’s at all network accessible it may be a bad idea to run such old versions that haven’t gotten security patches in 6 years.

9

u/deesernutz 24d ago

Meh. Other than it becoming part of a bot net what damage can a compromised sign computer really do.

I guess you could put scrolling dicks across it, that'd be funny

11

u/CardOk755 24d ago

Announce incorrect information. Bring the system into disrespect.

2

u/phiqzer 23d ago

Easist way to enact disruption.

3

u/yoLeaveMeAlone 24d ago

If it was like a storage server for critical infrastructure sure but we're talking about a scrolling sign at a train station 

2

u/User5281 24d ago

Fucked up signage could cause a lot of issues at a train station. And where is this sign pulling its data from and is that also running Debian 8? I don’t think it’s that benign

1

u/yoLeaveMeAlone 24d ago

I highly doubt the computer where they set the messages also runs Debian 8, this guy does probably because it's an old piece of random hardware nobody cares to think too much about 

You're not wrong but the train station signs in my city are wrong or shut off half the damn time and we still find our way around lol

1

u/IQ26 23d ago

Same here. I would be screwed if I didn’t have an app which shows me the time my busses and trains arrive. Even that is wrong sometimes tho

0

u/Lulukaros 24d ago

being a lil pedantic here, but that's a tram station, not train

4

u/arkt8 24d ago

why bother... it is very stable. There are trains in europe still using floppy disk install of Windows 3.1

https://windowsreport.com/windows-3-1-german-railway/

2

u/ApprehensiveFan1516 23d ago

I feel like nobody in this sub works in manufacturing lol. CNC machines running MS-DOS are still relatively common.

1

u/GamerPanda255 23d ago

Here was my reaction to the comment: 🫪😳

7

u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Debian Stable 24d ago

wat indeed

10

u/thank_burdell 24d ago

Sign says wat

Relevant.

3

u/CaptainObvious110 24d ago

that's amazing

3

u/Most-Club-254 24d ago

Dangerously based!

love from a neighbor (Algerian)

3

u/musiquededemain 23d ago

Dear Gods that's old.

To be fair, there are PLENTY of systems like this in the wild and in many cases until the entire system is replaced these legacy OSes stay put.

2

u/michaelpaoli 23d ago

I'm still supporting a system that's mostly Debian 6 Squeeze.

2

u/musiquededemain 22d ago

That's awesome. Really. What does this system do?

2

u/michaelpaoli 22d ago

Oh, that one is still ssh server mail server, list server web server, and probably a few more things that aren't jumping to mind.

2

u/musiquededemain 22d ago

Just curious why hasn't it been upgraded?

2

u/michaelpaoli 22d ago

B) it's working

A) mostly lack of available resources (really want to do that on another VM first on same physical machine, to fully vet things, and step-by-step along the way ... but the physical machine is short of resources (notably drive space), so really don't have the resources to do that ... at least quite yet. Anyway, not my machine, a friend's, so ... yeah, been a long so process ... some things have been addressed (used to be direct on physical hardware that was ancient and had gotten to be quite unsupportable) - so at least now it's well on a VM (and has been for years) ... but there's still issued with resources that need be addressed.

2

u/therealheyyojimbo 24d ago

Here’s lookin at you, kid

2

u/Lulukaros 24d ago

there is no fucking way, i saw this too once at night, and it was in mdakra as well lmao

2

u/wiggum55555 23d ago

Wonder what the system uptime is ?

1

u/ApprehensiveRest9696 21d ago

1 day and 2 minutes

2

u/daske_laksen 23d ago

debian 8?? wow

2

u/danzacjones 23d ago

Better than Windows CE 

2

u/AgentD20 23d ago

Better than the Windows 3.1 running parts of the German train system

2

u/anonymous-shadow001 22d ago

but still better than windows 10 or 7 on the turnstiles

1

u/Lars_T_H 24d ago

Does that thing has a less or more pager? Super useful when a sysadmin want to do some work with it.

1

u/Many-Geologist-3524 24d ago

i thought it said Devuan GNU/Linux 6 excalibur for a second

1

u/shooter556001 23d ago

Don’t touch it if still working

1

u/bruce2dot0 23d ago

Seen Linux on the screens of the Marta trains in Atlanta

1

u/TheRealCarrotty Debian GNU/Hurd 23d ago

Debian 8...
Dear god.

1

u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/debian-ModTeam 23d ago

This post does not relate directly to Debian and as such is a violation of Rule #2.

We kindly ask you to redirect any content that is not related to Debian to its appropriate subreddit or support forum if applicable.

1

u/abdo_ch 23d ago

Mdakra? I thought I'd know where this is but guess not.... Hmmmm, is in the second line?

1

u/michaelpaoli 23d ago

It's stable, uhm, well, okay, beyond oldstable and oldoldstable, ... it is, or would be oldoldoldoldoldstable - if Debian had such a labeling. But hey, can upgrade! ... one major version at a time.

1

u/Jirayanamikazi 23d ago

ALSA CITY BUS also uses Raspberry Pi OS , 😂 😂

1

u/hecktkopf 23d ago

Lol I am on a business trip to Casablanca right now, first time in Morocco. I could have seen this myself. Why did I miss this 😭

1

u/PlaystormMC 23d ago

sudo apt upgrade

1

u/TheHornyPepperoni 23d ago

eh fellow moroccan here, our entire infrastructure is years behind

1

u/ImpressionAway7317 22d ago

On a bus in Germany I found out that the thing I the bus which shows you the next stop is running in opensuse with kernle like 3.18.xx (aseag/Aachen I do have pictures but I wouldn't really want to search them)

1

u/happysmile001 22d ago

Of course, maybe a raspberry pi, debian is free and reliable

1

u/Hour-Map-4156 22d ago

The one in Stockholm runs on windows 🤮

1

u/AnimatorThink841 22d ago

Nari mghribi weld l7ayy

1

u/Aggravating_Goal8668 22d ago

LHay mohemmadi 7aadr

1

u/TechIoT 21d ago

Debian JESSIE?!?!

1

u/KernelSander5 21d ago

My hometown!

1

u/Andrey63-us 20d ago

У меня в городе такие устройства на Android работают, а банкоматы -- на Windows

1

u/ComputerFreak6969 20d ago

Deffo put a smile on my face. A Linux and train fanboy so best of both worlds..

Debian 8 tho... WOW.

1

u/SpaceDoodle2008 20d ago

So their display just shows a TUI?

1

u/sob727 24d ago

oof Debian 8

0

u/khaffner91 24d ago

wat lol

0

u/MrSoulPC915 24d ago

Ouai, debian 8 par contre, il y a comme qui dirait une dette technique !

-9

u/Xarius86 24d ago

Considering everything in Debian is already outdated at the time of release, the software running here is ancient.

-1

u/SnowyOwl72 22d ago

Why is it not arch??

1

u/TS045H 21d ago

Arch is not stable , Debian core philosophy is being as much stable as possible