Software systems running continuously for a long time tend to show degrading performance and an increasing failure occurrence rate, due to error conditions that accrue over time and eventually lead the system to failure. This phenomenon is usually referred to as \textit{Software Aging}. Several long-running mission and safety critical applications have been reported to experience catastrophic aging-related failures. Software aging sources (i.e., aging-related bugs) may be hidden in several layers of a complex software system, ranging from the Operating System (OS) to the user application level. This paper presents a software aging analysis at the Operating System level, investigating software aging sources inside the Linux kernel. Linux is increasingly being employed in critical scenarios; this analysis intends to shed light on its behaviour from the aging perspective. The study is based on an experimental campaign designed to investigate the kernel internal behaviour over long running executions. By means of a kernel tracing tool specifically developed for this study, we collected relevant parameters of several kernel subsystems. Statistical analysis of collected data allowed us to confirm the presence of aging sources in Linux and to relate the observed aging dynamics to the monitored subsystems behaviour. The analysis output allowed us to infer potential sources of aging in the kernel subsystems.
Software aging analysis of the Linux operating system / Cotroneo, Domenico; Natella, Roberto; Pietrantuono, Roberto; Russo, Stefano. - (2010), pp. 71-80. (Intervento presentato al convegno IEEE 21st International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering tenutosi a San Jose, CA, USA nel 1-4 novembre 2010) [10.1109/ISSRE.2010.24].
Software aging analysis of the Linux operating system
COTRONEO, DOMENICO;NATELLA, ROBERTO;PIETRANTUONO, ROBERTO;RUSSO, STEFANO
2010
Abstract
Software systems running continuously for a long time tend to show degrading performance and an increasing failure occurrence rate, due to error conditions that accrue over time and eventually lead the system to failure. This phenomenon is usually referred to as \textit{Software Aging}. Several long-running mission and safety critical applications have been reported to experience catastrophic aging-related failures. Software aging sources (i.e., aging-related bugs) may be hidden in several layers of a complex software system, ranging from the Operating System (OS) to the user application level. This paper presents a software aging analysis at the Operating System level, investigating software aging sources inside the Linux kernel. Linux is increasingly being employed in critical scenarios; this analysis intends to shed light on its behaviour from the aging perspective. The study is based on an experimental campaign designed to investigate the kernel internal behaviour over long running executions. By means of a kernel tracing tool specifically developed for this study, we collected relevant parameters of several kernel subsystems. Statistical analysis of collected data allowed us to confirm the presence of aging sources in Linux and to relate the observed aging dynamics to the monitored subsystems behaviour. The analysis output allowed us to infer potential sources of aging in the kernel subsystems.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
