Ahead of Time Static Analysis for Automatic Generation of Debugging Interfaces to the Linux Kernel - Archive ouverte HAL Access content directly
Journal Articles Automated Software Engineering Year : 2014

Ahead of Time Static Analysis for Automatic Generation of Debugging Interfaces to the Linux Kernel

Abstract

The Linux kernel does not export a stable, well-defined kernel interface, complicating the development of kernel-level services, such as device drivers and file systems. While there does exist a set of functions that are exported to external modules, this set of functions frequently changes, and the functions have implicit, ill-documented preconditions. No specific debugging support is provided. We present Diagnosys, an approach to automatically constructing a debugging interface for the Linux kernel. First, a designated kernel maintainer uses Diagnosys to identify constraints on the use of the exported functions. Based on this information, developers of kernel services can then use Diagnosys to generate a debugging interface specialized to their code. When a service including this interface is tested, it records information about potential problems. This information is preserved following a kernel crash or hang. Our experiments show that the generated debugging interface provides useful log information and incurs a low performance penalty.
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Dates and versions

hal-00992283 , version 1 (21-05-2014)

Identifiers

Cite

Tegawendé F. Bissyandé, Laurent Réveillère, Julia Lawall, Gilles Muller. Ahead of Time Static Analysis for Automatic Generation of Debugging Interfaces to the Linux Kernel. Automated Software Engineering, 2014, pp.1-39. ⟨10.1007/s10515-014-0152-4⟩. ⟨hal-00992283⟩
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