Main Screen Blank/Black

[garyjac]

G'Day All,

Took the 3 week old S 70 on a drive to Tambourine Mountain today, about 150 km round trip.

Parked in Beaudesert at various locales along the way, and on the third "park" came back to find the main screen blank.

Car has been in "Energy Saving mode. NOT "always connected", fwiw.

Rebooted in the standard way. Car drove fine for the rest of the day.

Reported this to Service.

So, I thought this particular bug was out of the system at around Rev 6.2 ?

Anyone else had this behaviour recently in a new(er) car?

It will be very worrying to new owners of Model 3 if this goes to the mass market. A nuisance issue that needs to be resolved definitively as it is not a good "look" from a sales point of view.

Regards,
Gary

 

[meloccom]

A number of people had this a few days after the 7.1 update.
Rebooted twice and it has never come back.
Whilst I agree you have to reboot too frequently anything with an operating system needs to be re-booted on a regular basis, your PC, Mac, smartphone and now your car.

 

[garyjac]

G'Day All,

It is absolutely not the case that "anything with an operating system needs to be re-booted on a regular basis" IF it is in proper working order. I don't count th edefective Microsoft OS as software that works correctly, btw, as just one instance :smile: If this is still happening (as it is), then it indicates a flaw in the operating system code (we coyly call these "bugs" - how cute - the moth in the relays and all that). However, this is a flaw and it needs to be corrected. It is clear in the history of the Model S that this flaw has existed for some time (years?). I suppose (expect) that Tesla is working on that since they should have been informed of it since 7.1 rolled out if it has happened to a number of users.

Can you imagine the level of "confidence" that consumers might have in the banking system (ho ho) if all the ATMs in Australia needed to be regularly rebooted? Do you think it would be acceptable to take the big iron in the basements of various main branches of the big four banks off line for a "reboot" to cure a software flaw (bug)? How secure would you feel if the CBA were to reboot the lot tonight to reinit after curing some fault in the operating system and you were unable to access your accounts in the morning, or even if it were just the web site were down for an hour or two? "It's all working fine sir, you just can't see it". We've all had that sinking feeling when a web page refuses to load.

My PC runs Red Hat Linux (Tesla uses Debian Linux I believe). My PC does not need to be rebooted frequently, or at all, to "cure" software faults. This does not mean that it is perfect. It means that faults in the software can be fixed while keeping the OS on-line at all times. We have become far too complacent about this sort of software behaviour and it is unacceptable in mission critical systems of any kind. I see the main screen of a Tesla car as a potentially mission critical system.

Now, apart from this point, Tesla (and all of us) need to be mindful that they (on the big stage) and each of us, (in our small way) are trying to convince a fossil-fuelled world to morph into an "electric world". We will not be given much leeway in doing this. The slightest little thing will be pointed at and picked on. When Model 3 hits the road it simply cannot have a flaw like this in the operating system. One or two instances, maybe you can get away with that. Every car manufacturer does. If it's a few thousand then you have a mass "panic" as though the brakes had failed. or caught fire, or some major catastrophe had happened. That is how the competitors wil portray it, and, no doubt, some media pundits as well. You can see the car-press head lines.

There will be no rational public reaction if this happens in over 500,000 vehicles at the rate it has happened with model S, no matter how safe the underlying functionality may be. That is why it is important to have such visible flaws in the software corrected, or, if not corrected, then recoverable automatically and immediately, but preferably, corrected.

Apologies for the bit of rant, but a car as terrific as this should look its best at all times. I can't stand the thought that it would be "marked down", or prospective buyers turning away, after hearing about curable defects like this.

Regards,
Gary

 

[paulp]

G'Day All,

It is absolutely not the case that "anything with an operating system needs to be re-booted on a regular basis" IF it is in proper working order. I don't count th edefective Microsoft OS as software that works correctly, btw, as just one instance :smile: If this is still happening (as it is), then it indicates a flaw in the operating system code (we coyly call these "bugs" - how cute - the moth in the relays and all that). However, this is a flaw and it needs to be corrected. It is clear in the history of the Model S that this flaw has existed for some time (years?). I suppose (expect) that Tesla is working on that since they should have been informed of it since 7.1 rolled out if it has happened to a number of users.

Can you imagine the level of "confidence" that consumers might have in the banking system (ho ho) if all the ATMs in Australia needed to be regularly rebooted? Do you think it would be acceptable to take the big iron in the basements of various main branches of the big four banks off line for a "reboot" to cure a software flaw (bug)? How secure would you feel if the CBA were to reboot the lot tonight to reinit after curing some fault in the operating system and you were unable to access your accounts in the morning, or even if it were just the web site were down for an hour or two? "It's all working fine sir, you just can't see it". We've all had that sinking feeling when a web page refuses to load.

My PC runs Red Hat Linux (Tesla uses Debian Linux I believe). My PC does not need to be rebooted frequently, or at all, to "cure" software faults. This does not mean that it is perfect. It means that faults in the software can be fixed while keeping the OS on-line at all times. We have become far too complacent about this sort of software behaviour and it is unacceptable in mission critical systems of any kind. I see the main screen of a Tesla car as a potentially mission critical system.

Now, apart from this point, Tesla (and all of us) need to be mindful that they (on the big stage) and each of us, (in our small way) are trying to convince a fossil-fuelled world to morph into an "electric world". We will not be given much leeway in doing this. The slightest little thing will be pointed at and picked on. When Model 3 hits the road it simply cannot have a flaw like this in the operating system. One or two instances, maybe you can get away with that. Every car manufacturer does. If it's a few thousand then you have a mass "panic" as though the brakes had failed. or caught fire, or some major catastrophe had happened. That is how the competitors wil portray it, and, no doubt, some media pundits as well. You can see the car-press head lines.

There will be no rational public reaction if this happens in over 500,000 vehicles at the rate it has happened with model S, no matter how safe the underlying functionality may be. That is why it is important to have such visible flaws in the software corrected, or, if not corrected, then recoverable automatically and immediately, but preferably, corrected.

Apologies for the bit of rant, but a car as terrific as this should look its best at all times. I can't stand the thought that it would be "marked down", or prospective buyers turning away, after hearing about curable defects like this.

Regards,
Gary

Hmmm, I've been forced to reset my model s once since july, and my pc about twice each day. the OS in my car seems very robust.

 

[meloccom]

The number of times I have had to reboot due to a non-responsive screen since I owned the car I could count on the fingers of one hand.
I have re-booted it many more times due to Tune-ins inability to refresh a list of podcasts and a few times for 3G connectivity issues.
September last year I got off a plane at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport and went to an ATM to withdraw 300 Euro for travelling expenses.
The device locked up and re-booted so I went somewhere else. When I got home I discovered that it had debited the full amount from my account including surcharge. I had taken a picture of the machine number and noted the date and time but it still took until about late January to get my money back.
I work in IT, at the coal face assisting users directly with their problems. The people I support are generally more senior so you end up helping them with their privately owned devices as well as the devices you are paid to support. I have seen a re-boot fix almost every type of device from PC, iOS, Android, mac and other devices. I have never supported Linux devices so good luck to you, they must be perfect. :smile:

 

[garyjac]

G'Day All,

Indeed, so you appreciate that a re-boot in an ATM, snitching all your money for the day is a reeeaalll pita? Flaw in the software and unacceptable in an application like that. Now, I did point out that there is/was no claim that Linux software is *perfect*. Nothing is. However, it should be able to be brought back to service without taking down a whole system (i.e. the ATM, the banking system - I exaggerate, a little, but not much).

I don't work in IT (anymore), but I used to work in Computer Science. I was a researcher in semantics of non-deterministic data models (retired these days) and this is the kind of thing that is involved in Autopilot (to an extent), and it is a terrifically interesting and burgeoning field that has applications in a vast number of areas (some which are nasty and we won't mention them).

Re-booting does not "fix" very much. It will cause the OS to pick up the journalling thread (assuming it exists), attempt to fix defective or unuseable inodes and cross references then restart the OS from the init loader (or something very similar). It will not fix (for example) a memory leak in an application that slowly chews up the available stack or heap on the machine (crude, but common example). The machine will fail again, for the same reasons and a re-boot will appear to "fix" the problem by re-initialising the RAM.

My last point was that, as owners you/me/we are accepting this as a "minor matter" when it should not even come to our notice. I'm not complaining that I had to perform one re-boot. I am genuinely worried that this sort of thing, making its way into production of Model 3 could cast a thin veil over the car giving GM, Ford, Toyota even VW (heh heh) a stick to beat Tesla with and that won't do. Look at the nonsense talked about reliability of the Model S in the U.S. when there were a few issues with the drive train and the door handles. All fixed in double-quick time by Tesla and no longer an issue. So it should be with the software.

@paulp The software (Debian Linux) is very robust in the Model S and your PC (if Microscum) software is so poor I can't even start to tell you about it. Next time Microsoft offers an "upgrade" take their advice and upgrade to a commercial flavour of Linux. I'm guessing it's Microsnore, not Apple, since Apple has a UNIX OS underneath and it's usually quite reliable too.

My 2 cents (guess) with the Model S is that it's invoking a sleep mode when its trying to save energy. If not, then the next suspect would be an internal application leaving muddy footprints on somebody else's stack or heap space. The on-line history seems to show improvement in this area. Let's hope it's forging ahead and the issue disappears soon.

Regards,
Gary

 

[danielp]

Rebooting to fix these problems needs to go away. As you kinda said, rebooting may not be such a hassle but the perception problem is. It needs to become much more resilient.

There is work in the automotive industry to improve the hardware and software architectures of these systems, but they seem to be plodding along at the usual slow automotive pace.

Did you send a bug report to Tesla??!

 

[garyjac]

I have notified Service in Sydney. I presume they are responsible enough to pass that along. However, if there is a more direct route to send this to Tesla I'd be glad to hear about it. I think that I read somewhere that the car can be used to leave a log note? Appreciate advice on how that is done.

 

[danielp]

Voice command from the steering wheel "bug report <blah blah>" should work. ;-)

 

[garyjac]

Thanks. I'll give that a go.

 

[Dborn]

An email to [email protected] should also help. Quote vin, date and time. They can look up the logs.