The exception handling effectiveness of POSIX operating systems

Operating systems form a foundation for robust application software, making it important to understand how effective they are at handling exceptional conditions. The Ballista testing system was used to characterize the handling of exceptional input parameter values for up to 233 POSIX functions and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering 2000-09, Vol.26 (9), p.837-848
Main Authors: Koopman, P., DeVale, J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Application software
Codes
Comparative analysis
Computer crashes
Designers
Embedded systems
Errors
Failure
Handling
Libraries
Materials handling
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Operating systems
Performance evaluation
Programming profession
Robustness
Software
Software engineering
Studies
System testing
Tasks
Telecommunication computing
Testing
Vehicle crash testing
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Summary:Operating systems form a foundation for robust application software, making it important to understand how effective they are at handling exceptional conditions. The Ballista testing system was used to characterize the handling of exceptional input parameter values for up to 233 POSIX functions and system calls on each of 15 widely used operating system (OS) implementations. This identified ways to crash systems with a single call, ways to cause task hangs within OS code, ways to cause abnormal task termination within OS and library code, failures to implement defined POSIX functionality, and failures to report unsuccessful operations. Overall, only 55 percent to 76 percent of the exceptional tests performed generated error codes, depending on the operating system being tested. Approximately 6 percent to 19 percent of tests failed to generate any indication of error despite exceptional inputs. Approximately 1 percent to 3 percent of tests revealed failures to implement defined POSIX functionality for unusual, but specified, situations. Between 18 percent and 33 percent of exceptional tests caused the abnormal termination of an OS system call or library function, and five systems were completely crashed by individual system calls with exceptional parameter values. The most prevalent sources of these robustness failures were illegal pointer values, numeric overflows, and end-of-file overruns.
ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/32.877845