research-article

A user survey of configuration challenges in Linux and eCos

Authors:

Krzysztof CzarneckiAuthors Info & Claims

VaMoS '12: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Variability Modeling of Software-Intensive Systems

Pages 149 - 155

https://doi.org/10.1145/2110147.2110164

Published: 25 January 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Operating systems expose sophisticated configurability to handle variability in hardware platforms like mobile devices, desktops, and servers. The variability model of an operating system kernel like Linux contains thousands of options guarded by hundreds of complex constraints. To guide users throughout the configuration and ensure the validity of their decisions, specialized tools known as configurators have been developed. Despite these tools, configuration still remains a difficult and challenging process. To better understand the challenges faced by users during configuration, we conducted two surveys, one among Linux users and another among eCos users. This paper presents the results of the surveys along three dimensions: configuration practice; user guidance; and language expressiveness. We hope that these results will help researchers and tool builders focus their efforts to improve tool support for software configuration.

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Cited By

Bessghaier NSayagh MOuni AMkaouer M(2023)What Constitutes the Deployment and Runtime Configuration System? An Empirical Study on OpenStack ProjectsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/360718633:1(1-37)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607186
Acher MMartin HLesoil LBlouin AJézéquel JKhelladi DBarais OPereira JFelfernig AFuentes L(2022)Feature subset selection for learning huge configuration spacesProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3546997(85-96)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546932.3546997
Kuo HChen JMohan SXu T(2022)Set the configuration for the heart of the OSCommunications of the ACM10.1145/352430165:5(101-109)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524301
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cover image ACM Other conferences

VaMoS '12: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Variability Modeling of Software-Intensive Systems

January 2012

193 pages

ISBN:9781450310581

DOI:10.1145/2110147

General Chair:
Ulrich W. Eisenecker
University of Leipzig, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
Sven Apel
University of Passau, Germany
,
Stefania Gnesi
ISTI-CNR, Italy

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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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 January 2012

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VaMoS '12

VaMoS '12: Variability Modeling of Software-intensive Systems

January 25 - 27, 2012

Leipzig, Germany

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Cited By

Bessghaier NSayagh MOuni AMkaouer M(2023)What Constitutes the Deployment and Runtime Configuration System? An Empirical Study on OpenStack ProjectsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/360718633:1(1-37)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607186
Acher MMartin HLesoil LBlouin AJézéquel JKhelladi DBarais OPereira JFelfernig AFuentes L(2022)Feature subset selection for learning huge configuration spacesProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3546997(85-96)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546932.3546997
Kuo HChen JMohan SXu T(2022)Set the configuration for the heart of the OSCommunications of the ACM10.1145/352430165:5(101-109)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524301
Velez MJamshidi PSiegmund NApel SKästner C(2021)White-Box Analysis over Machine LearningProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00100(1072-1084)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00100
Franz PBerger TFayaz INadi SGroshev EEldh SFalessi D(2021)ConfigFixProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1109/ICSE-SEIP52600.2021.00018(91-100)Online publication date: 25-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEIP52600.2021.00018
Kuo HChen JMohan SXu T(2020)Set the Configuration for the Heart of the OSProceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems10.1145/33794694:1(1-27)Online publication date: 5-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3379469
Meinicke JWong CVasilescu BKästner CRothermel GBae D(2020)Exploring differences and commonalities between feature flags and configuration optionsProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1145/3377813.3381366(233-242)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377813.3381366
Krieter SThüm TSchulze SSaake GLeich T(2020)YASAProceedings of the 14th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems10.1145/3377024.3377042(1-10)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377024.3377042
Chen QWang TLegunsen OLi SXu TDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)Understanding and discovering software configuration dependencies in cloud and datacenter systemsProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409727(362-374)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368089.3409727
Sayagh MKerzazi NPetrillo FBennani KAdams B(2020)What should your run-time configuration framework do to help developers?Empirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-019-09790-x25:2(1259-1293)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09790-x
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