Plug and play fault injector for dependability benchmarking

Abstract

Dependability benchmarks must include fault injectors that are very simple to install and use. They should be downloadable from the web together with the other components of the benchmark and be able to target all system components. Since the existing injectors did not fulfill this requirement, we have developed DBench-FI: Presently this SWIFI tool targets the Linux OS on Intel processors, and uses a flexible runtime kernel upgrading algorithm to allow access to either user or system spaces. It does not require the availability of the source code of any system component or user process. It is not based on any debug mode either, being able to inject faults even in tasks that were already running when it is installed, irrespective of their complexity. It currently only injects memory faults, but there are plans to include other fault models in the future. Results of complex fault injection campaigns are presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.