ConfDiagnoser: An automated configuration error diagnosis tool for Java software

Abstract

This paper presents ConfDiagnoser, an automated configuration error diagnosis tool for Java software. Conf-Diagnoser identifies the root cause of a configuration error - a single configuration option that can be changed to produce desired behavior. It uses static analysis, dynamic profiling, and statistical analysis to link the undesired behavior to specific configuration options. ConfDiagnoser differs from existing approaches in two key aspects: it does not require users to provide a testing oracle (to check whether the software functions correctly) and thus is fully-automated; and it can diagnose both crashing and non-crashing errors. We demonstrated ConfDiagnoser's accuracy and speed on 5 non-crashing configuration errors and 9 crashing configuration errors from 5 configurable software systems.