KITO tool: A fault injection environment in Linux kernel data structures

• A fault injection tool, called KITO, is proposed.
• KITO focuses in injecting faults in the Linux kernel data structures via a loadable kernel module.
• The features of KITO are explained and examples are provided for customization of the fault injection time and location.
• An experimental fault injection campaign is presented, including faults in the process control block and kernel symbols.

Transient faults in safety-critical computer-based systems represent a major issue for guaranteeing correct system behaviour. Fault injection is a commonly used method to evaluate the sensitivity of such systems. This paper presents a fault injection tool, called KITO, to evaluate the effects of faults in memory containing data structures belonging to a Unix-based Operating System and, in particular, elements linked to resource synchronization management. An experimental analysis was conducted on a large set of memory elements of the Operating System itself, while the system was subject to stress from benchmark programs that use different elements of the Linux kernel. Experimental results show that synchronization aspects of the kernel are susceptible to a significant set of possible errors ranging from performance degradation to failure in successfully completing the benchmark application.