Testing the IPC Protocol for a Real-Time Operating System

by Achim D. Brucker, Oto Havle, Yakoub Nemouchi, and Burkhart Wolff

In this paper, we adapt model-based testing techniques to concurrent code, namely for test generations of an (industrial) OS kernel called PikeOS@. Since our data-models are complex, the problem is out of reach of conventional model-checking techniques. Our solution is based on symbolic execution implemented inside the interactive theorem proving environment Isabelle/HOL extended by a plugin with test generation facilities called HOL-TestGen.

As a foundation for our symbolic computing techniques, we refine the theory of monads to embed interleaving executions with abort, synchronization, and shared memory to a general but still optimized behavioral test framework.

This framework is instantiated by a model of PikeOS inter-process communication system-calls. Inheriting a micro-architecture going back to the L4 kernel, the system calls of the IPC-API are internally structured by atomic actions; according to a security model, these actions can fail and must produce error-codes. Thus, our tests reveal errors in the enforcement of the security model.

Keywords: test program generation, symbolic test case generations, black box testing, testing operating systems, certification, CC, concurrency, interleaving
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Please cite this article as follows:
Achim D. Brucker, Oto Havle, Yakoub Nemouchi, and Burkhart Wolff. Testing the IPC Protocol for a Real-Time Operating System. In Working Conference on Verified Software: Theories, Tools, and Experiments. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 2015.
Keywords: test program generation, symbolic test case generations, black box testing, testing operating systems, certification, CC, concurrency, interleaving
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