Debugging Nondeterministic Failures in Linux Programs through Replay Analysis

Abstract

Reproducing a failure is the first and most important step in debugging because it enables us to understand the failure and track down its source. However, many programs are susceptible to nondeterministic failures that are hard to reproduce, which makes debugging extremely difficult. We first address the reproducibility problem by proposing an OS-level replay system for a uniprocessor environment that can capture and replay nondeterministic events needed to reproduce a failure in Linux interactive and event-based programs. We then present an analysis method, called replay analysis, based on the proposed record and replay system to diagnose concurrency bugs in such programs. The replay analysis method uses a combination of static analysis, dynamic tracing during replay, and delta debugging to identify failure-inducing memory access patterns that lead to concurrency failure. The experimental results show that the presented record and replay system has low-recording overhead and hence can be safely used in production systems to catch rarely occurring bugs. We also present few concurrency bug case studies from real-world applications to prove the effectiveness of the proposed bug diagnosis framework.