Benchmarking the Impact of Faulty Drivers : Application to the Linux Kernel

Arnaud Albinet, Jean Arlat, Jean-Charles Fabre

Abstract

Device drivers constitute an important part of operating systems. Previous studies have shown that such extensions contribute to a large extent to the observed misbehaviors. Their failure can have a significant impact on the kernel and cause significant damages to the system as a whole. This paper proposes an approach to assess the robustness of an operating system in the presence of faulty drivers. It relies on fault injection experiments targeting the DPI (Driver Programming Interface) that implements the way drivers interact with the kernel. Faults are injected on the parameters of these core kernel functions . In order to conduct comprehensive analyses, complementary measures are considered that span three end-user viewpoints: kernel responsiveness, kernel availability and workload safety. The experimental data gathered can also help isolate weaknesses and reveal potential error propagation channels; these insights are useful to derive protection mechanisms focusing on identified malfunctions.

Keywords: Operating System, Kernel, Basic Software, Driver, Experimental Evaluation, Fault Injection, Characterization of Failure Modes.