GSOC Projects proposals

[haris iqbal]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 1:51 PM, Gabriel Laskar <gabriel at lse.epita.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Here is my 2 projects proposal for GSOC 2016.
>
> Fault injection for syscalls
> Suggested by: Gabriel Laskar
>
> Strace is basically a big pattern matcher for syscalls. It is mainly
> used for diagnostics and debugging purpose. But it seems that with a
> code base like this we could do more. We receive an event at the start
> and end of a syscall, and we have th possiblity to cancel a syscall,
> and affect the output.
>
> The basic idea is here to be able to inject some faults in programs, in
> order to stress test them.

This actually sounds very interesting to me. I mean if this works,
then strace could enter into a list of tools for stress testing also.
This can be used by many programmers to check if they are handling
their return values and possible errors in a safe manner or not.
Sometimes in a big project it is very difficult.

>
> For example, we should be able to express that mmap() calls should fail
> 10% of the time. We could reuse `-e` option for that.

Although merging it with the -e option does not sound good. As this
seems like a completely different idea. We can use some code to mark
the system calls to be stress tested like we do for the -e option, and
then use that along with another option to make a particular system
call fail through probability.


>
> This is not a simple project, and there is multiple level of
> possibilities here. This project can be greatly rewarding, as all the
> apis needs to be designed.
>
>
> Netlink socket parsers
> Suggested by: Gabriel Laskar
>
> Netlink is a network protocol that is used to communicate between the
> kernel and the userspace. For example, iproute use netlink in order to
> configure the network stack (interfaces, addresses, routes, etc…). It
> is also used by the kernel to report hotplug events to the userland.
>
> The goal here is to add support in strace to decode theses packet
> structures in order to be able to debug and discover netlink messages.
>
> With the base ground work done, it can be easily extended to support
> more protocols.
>
> --
> Gabriel Laskar
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
> APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
> Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
> Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
> _______________________________________________
> Strace-devel mailing list
> Strace-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/strace-devel



-- 

With regards,

Md Haris Iqbal,
Placement Coordinator, MTech IT
NITK Surathkal,
Contact: +91 8861996962