On Enhancing the Robustness of Commercial Operating Systems

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 most computer based systems, namely the Operating System (OS). The proposed framework allows a system designer to ascertain possible error propagation paths, from drivers through the OS to the applications. This knowledge significantly helps enhance the OS (or driver/application) with selective robustness hardening capabilities, i.e., robustness wrappers.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ISAS
• Authors: Andréas Johansson, Adina Sarbu, Arshad Jhumka, Neeraj Suri
• Keywords: Constituent Components, Information Management, ISAS 2004, Robustness Hardening Capabilities, Ubiquitous Computing