Multidimensional Characterization of the Impact of Faulty Drivers on the Operating Systems Behavior

Authors

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a continuing research work on the practical characterization of operating systems behavior when one of its components has software faults. The methodology used is based on the emulation of software faults in device drivers and the observation of the behavior of the overall system regarding a comprehensive set of failure modes analyzed according to different dimensions related to different user perspectives. The emulation of the software faults is done through the injection at machine-code level of specific mutations that reproduce the code generated by compilers when typical programming errors exist in the high level language code. Two important aspects of this methodology are the independence of source code availability and the use of simple and established practices to evaluate operating systems failure modes, thus allowing its use as a dependability benchmarking technique. The generalization of the methodology to any software system built of discrete and identifiable components is also discussed.

Keywords

Dependability Benchmark, Software Fault Emulation

Subject

Software Fault Emulation and Injection

Related Project

DBench - Dependability Benchmarking

Journal

Transactions of IEICE (Institute of the Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers), December 2003