Abstract
Operating systems (OS) are increasingly geared towards support of diverse peripheral components, both hardware (HW) and software (SW), rather than explicitly focused on increased reliability of delivered OS services. The interface between the OS and the HW devices is provided by device drivers. Furthermore, drivers have become add-on COTS components to support the OS’s capabilities of widespread device support. Unfortunately, drivers constitute a major cause of system outages, impacting overall service reliability. Consequently, the testing of drivers becomes important. However, despite the efforts to develop appropriate testing methods, the multitude of possible system configurations and lack of detailed OS specifications makes the task difficult. Not requiring access to OS source code, this paper develops novel, non-intrusive support for test methods, based on ascertaining test progress from a driver’s operational state model. This approach complements existing schemes, enhancing the level of accuracy of the test process by providing test location guidance.
This research has been supported, in part, by Microsoft Research, EU FP6 NoE ReSIST and EU FP6 IP DECOS.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Oney, W.: Programming the MS Windows Driver Model. Microsoft Press, Redmond (2003)
Swift, M.M., Bershad, B.N., Levy, H.M.: Improving the reliability of commodity operating systems. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 23, 77–110 (2005)
Harrold, M.J.: Testing: A roadmap. In: International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 61–72 (2000)
Myers, G.J.: The Art of Software Testing, 2nd edn. Wiley & Sons, lnc., Chichester (2004)
Hamlet, D., Taylor, R.: Partition testing does not inspire confidence. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 16(12), 1402–1411 (1990)
Möller, K.H., Paulish, D.: An empirical investigation of software fault distribution. In: First International Software Metrics Symposium, pp. 82–90 (1993)
Weyuker, E.J., Jeng, B.: Analyzing partition testing strategies. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 17(7), 703–711 (1991)
Weyuker, E.J.: Using operational distributions to judge testing progress. In: ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 1118–1122. ACM Press, New York (2003)
Avritzer, A., Larson, B.: Load testing software using deterministic state testing. In: International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, pp. 82–88 (1993)
Johansson, A., Sârbu, A., Jhumka, A., Suri, N.: On enhancing the robustness of commercial operating systems. In: Malek, M., Reitenspiess, M., Kaiser, J. (eds.) ISAS 2004. LNCS, vol. 3335, pp. 148–159. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Johansson, A., Suri, N.: Error propagation profiling of operating systems. In: International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), pp. 86–95 (2005)
Fenton, N., Neil, M.: A critique of software defect prediction models. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 25(5), 675–689 (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sârbu, C., Johansson, A., Fraikin, F., Suri, N. (2006). Improving Robustness Testing of COTS OS Extensions. In: Penkler, D., Reitenspiess, M., Tam, F. (eds) Service Availability. ISAS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4328. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11955498_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11955498_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68724-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68725-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)