Penguin-powered platform board keels over at Alpine station • The Register

Just picture it. You're at a Swiss train station, looking for information on your connecting line. You peer up at the platform sign hoping to find out how long you'll be waiting and whether you're standing in the right place. But instead of helpful info, you see "* Installation log files are stored in /tmp." Gee, thanks a lot!

Spotted by the eagle-eyed brother of a Register reader, an IT support person based in Northern Ireland, the signage on platform 1 at Sargans appears to be a little too clever for its own good, but has – alas – fallen over when trying to boot what appears to be a variant of Linux.

It's always good to see Linux being more than capable of having a day just as bad as Windows when it comes to digital signage. There are some helpful hints about what went wrong, and there's always an opportunity to run a text installation if a user really wants. There is, however, no option to fall back to the much-missed split-flap signs of old – sometimes called "Solari" boards after the Italian manufacturer Solari di Udine – or the manually updated planks that were a fixture of this writer's schooldays.

Our reader's brother was heading to Innsbruck, and we hope he was able to select the correct train without assistance from the platform board. That said, there are worse places in the world to be than Sargans. There's a castle to look at, decent hiking to be had, and some spectacular scenery. Sure, the station might be eclipsed by the UK's East Croydon in many ways. But, then again, the station also isn't in East Croydon...

We took a look at the UK Departure Boards hardware in 2024 and concluded that the boards, while not cheap, were perfect for anyone with even the smallest interest in transport. Recent updates include support for freight and non-stop services on the software side and built-in speakers on the hardware side.

The Register asked the purveyors of wonderfully nerdy displays, UK Departure Boards, for their thoughts. After all, if it's possible to bring British train, heritage rail, bus, and tram information to a domestic display, then how hard can it be to make the same happen on a Swiss station platform? A spokesperson for the outfit told us the company had no plans to expand to other countries, although observed: "Looks like the Linux OS crashed, or became corrupted, so it can't boot correctly."

While Linux has become ubiquitous in many digital signage applications due to its flexibility and cost-effectiveness, this incident highlights the potential pitfalls of over-engineering simple display systems. The boot error message visible to passengers suggests the system was perhaps configured with too much verbosity or lacked proper error handling for display failures.

For IT administrators managing similar systems, this serves as a reminder to implement proper fail-safes and user-friendly error states. A simple "System unavailable, please check with station staff" would have been far more helpful than exposing the inner workings of the Linux boot process to confused travelers.

The incident also raises questions about the maintenance and monitoring of these digital displays. In an era where physical signage is increasingly replaced by digital alternatives, ensuring reliability becomes crucial. After all, when technology fails, passengers still need to catch their trains.

As for the future of platform information displays, perhaps there's still a place for the analog solutions of yesteryear. While digital displays offer dynamic content and remote management capabilities, they also introduce new failure modes that can leave passengers stranded without essential information.

For now, travelers passing through Sargans station will need to rely on traditional methods – asking station staff, checking printed timetables, or using smartphone apps – while the Linux-powered display sorts itself out. And maybe, just maybe, someone will consider adding a simple fallback display mode that shows basic train information even when the main system encounters problems.

[ BORK! BORK! BORK! ]