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Automated Reproduction and Analysis of Bugs in Embedded Software

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Embedded Software Verification and Debugging

Part of the book series: Embedded Systems ((EMSY))

Abstract

Embedded systems are used everywhere in our daily lives. About 90% of the produced microprocessors are used in embedded systems. Embedded systems get more and more dominated by software. Bugs remain in the software and can often be observed for the first time only in late development phases. It is difficult to reproduce bugs in embedded systems based on test reports. Our proposed automated bug reproduction concept is capable of handling sensor inputs as well as thread schedules. It reduces the manual effort while debugging a reproduced bug by applying dynamic verification during replay . This chapter shows the implementation of assertions and presents anomaly detection techniques to locate the root-causes of bugs. Anomalies can be detected by comparing executions which cause the bug with executions which do not cause the bug. Interferences between two executions which can be compared have to be detected. Using partitioning techniques, we explain coverage-based analysis and metrics as well as invariant-based analysis. The monitoring of the software for these analyses may cause a high overhead and thus may result in long monitoring times. Therefore, we show how monitoring can be accelerated by hierarchical refinement. Most of the available automated bug reproduction and dynamic verification tools are only applicable on specific platforms. Debugging tools, like the GDB, are usually the first tools which are available for new embedded platforms. Therefore, our tool is implemented based on the GDB . We present a tool for automated bug reproduction and efficient dynamic verification implemented with a debugger tool.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Status July 2016

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Hanno Eichelberger, Thomas Kropf, Jürgen Ruf & Wolfgang Rosenstiel

Authors
  1. Hanno Eichelberger
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  2. Thomas Kropf
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  3. Jürgen Ruf
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  4. Wolfgang Rosenstiel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hanno Eichelberger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil

    Djones Lettnin

  2. Luzern, Switzerland

    Markus Winterholer

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Eichelberger, H., Kropf, T., Ruf, J., Rosenstiel, W. (2017). Automated Reproduction and Analysis of Bugs in Embedded Software. In: Lettnin, D., Winterholer, M. (eds) Embedded Software Verification and Debugging. Embedded Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2266-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2266-2_4

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-2265-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-2266-2

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