On enhancing the robustness of commercial operating systems

Abstract

A ubiquitous computing system derives its operations from the collective interactions of its constituent components. Consequently, a robust ubiquitous system entails that the discrete components must be robust to handle errors arising in themselves and over interactions with other system components. This paper conceptually outlines a profiling framework that assists in finding weaknesses in one of the fundamental building blocks of computer based systems, namely the Operating System (OS). The framework allows a system designer to ascertain possible error propagation paths, from drivers through the OS to applications. This significantly helps enhance the OS (or driver/application) with selective robustness hardening capabilities, i.e., robustness wrappers. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.