SFIDA: a software implemented fault injection tool for distributed dependable applications

SFIDA, a new software implemented fault injection tool is described in this paper which can be used to test for dependability of distributed applications on the Linux platform. This has been integrated with a general debugging tool so that it has the functionality of both debugging and fault injection. It is assumed that the target application is composed of multiple components (programs) which cooperate for the result, and that its successful completeness is determined by a failure condition. SFIDA is capable of injecting transient and permanent hardware faults with emulating the error state incurred by hardware faults in the runtime environment of each program. It can also collect test results from all components and determine the soundness of the final result based on the failure condition.