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Link to original content: https://doi.org/10.1145/2351676.2351686

Diagnosys: automatic generation of a debugging interface to the Linux kernel | Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

Article

Diagnosys: automatic generation of a debugging interface to the Linux kernel

Authors:

Tegawendé F. Bissyandé,

Laurent Réveillère,

Julia L. Lawall,

Gilles MullerAuthors Info & Claims

ASE '12: Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

Pages 60 - 69

https://doi.org/10.1145/2351676.2351686

Published: 03 September 2012 Publication History

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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Cited By

Metwalli SVan Meter R(2024)Testing and Debugging Quantum CircuitsIEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering10.1109/TQE.2024.33748795(1-15)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TQE.2024.3374879
KUBOTA TAOTA NKONO K(2020)Logging Inter-Thread Data Dependencies in Linux KernelIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2019EDP7255E103.D:7(1633-1646)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2019EDP7255
Botacin Mde Geus PGrégio A(2020)Leveraging branch traces to understand kernel internals from withinJournal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques10.1007/s11416-019-00343-w16:2(141-155)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-019-00343-w
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Index Terms

Diagnosys: automatic generation of a debugging interface to the Linux kernel
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Reliability
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Software reliability

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASE '12: Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

September 2012

409 pages

ISBN:9781450312042

DOI:10.1145/2351676

General Chair:
Michael Goedicke,
Program Chairs:
Tim Menzies,
Motoshi Saeki

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

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SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence
Universität Duisburg Essen: Universität Duisburg Essen
TCSE: IEEE Computer Society's Tech. Council on Software Engin.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 September 2012

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ASE'12

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT

ASE'12: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering

September 3 - 7, 2012

Essen, Germany

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Overall Acceptance Rate 82 of 337 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1109/TQE.2024.3374879
KUBOTA TAOTA NKONO K(2020)Logging Inter-Thread Data Dependencies in Linux KernelIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2019EDP7255E103.D:7(1633-1646)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2019EDP7255
Botacin Mde Geus PGrégio A(2020)Leveraging branch traces to understand kernel internals from withinJournal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques10.1007/s11416-019-00343-w16:2(141-155)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-019-00343-w
Gao JKong PLi LBissyandé TKlein JStorey MAdams BHaiduc S(2019)Negative results on mining crypto-API usage rules in Android appsProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2019.00065(388-398)Online publication date: 26-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MSR.2019.00065
Li DLi LKim DBissyandé TLo DLe Traon Y(2019)Watch out for this commit! A study of influential software changesJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.218131:12Online publication date: 12-Dec-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2181
Lee JKim DBissyandé TJung WLe Traon YTip FBodden E(2018)Bench4BL: reproducibility study on the performance of IR-based bug localizationProceedings of the 27th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3213846.3213856(61-72)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3213846.3213856
Koyuncu ABissyandé TKim DKlein JMonperrus MLe Traon YBultan TSen K(2017)Impact of tool support in patch constructionProceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3092703.3092713(237-248)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2017
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Li LBissyande TLe Traon YKlein J(2016)Accessing Inaccessible Android APIs: An Empirical Study2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2016.35(411-422)Online publication date: Oct-2016
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Bissyandé TRéveillère LLawall JMuller G(2016)Ahead of time static analysis for automatic generation of debugging interfaces to the Linux kernelAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-014-0152-423:1(3-41)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10515-014-0152-4
Bissyandé TOuoba JAhmat DOuédraogo FBéré CBikienga MSere ADandjinou MSié O(2016)Vulnerabilities of Government Websites in a Developing Country – the Case of Burkina Fasoe-Infrastructure and e-Services10.1007/978-3-319-43696-8_14(123-135)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2016
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