A software fault injection tool on real-time Mach

Abstract

Ensuring that a distributed real-time system with strict dependability constraints meets its prescribed specification is a growing challenge that confronts software developers and system engineers. This paper reports on a software fault injection tool, called SockPFI, for testing the fault tolerance and timing behavior of distributed real-time applications. SockPFI, developed on Real-Time Mach, can be used to test socket-based distributed real-time applications on this platform without modifying the source code of the target protocol. The SockPFI tool is based on the concept of script-driven probing and fault injection. It is explicitly designed to address some of the intrusiveness associated with fault injection of distributed systems, and in particular, with real-time protocols. The paper describes the design and implementation of SockPFI on Real Time Mach, and a demonstration of the tool on a real-time primary-backup replication protocol.