1,497 research outputs found
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930 -- 2002): A Portrait of a Genius
We discuss the scientific contributions of Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, his opinions
and his legacy.Comment: 10 pages. To appear in Formal Aspects of Computin
Verification of distributed algorithms with the Why3 tool
Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Informatics EngineeringNowadays, there currently exist many working program verification tools however, the developed tools are mostly limited to the verification of sequential code, or else of multi-threaded shared-memory programs. Due to the importance that distributed systems and protocols play in many systems, they have been targeted by the program verification community since the beginning of this area. In this sense, they recently tried to create tools capable of deductive verification in the distributed setting (deductive verification techniques offer the highest degree of assurance) and claim to have achieved impressive results. Thus, this dissertation will explore the use of the Why3 deductive verification tool for the verification of dis tributed algorithms. It will comprise the definition of a dedicated Why3library, together with a representative set of case studies. The goal is to provide evidence that Why3 is a privileged tool for such a task, standing at a sweet spot regarding expressive power and practicality.Nos dias de hoje, possuímos diversas ferramentas de verificação, ferramentas essas limitadas à verificação de código sequencial, ou então de programas multi-thread de memória partilhada. Devido à importância que os sistemas e protocolos distribuídos desempenham em muitos sistemas, estes foram alvos por parte da comunidade de verificação de programas desde o início desta área. Neste sentido, recentemente tentaram criar ferramentas capazes de realizar a verificação dedutiva no ambiente distribuído (técnicas de verificação dedutiva que oferecem o mais elevado grau de segurança) e afirmam ter alcançado resultados impressionantes. Assim, esta dissertação irá explorar o uso da ferramenta de verificação dedutiva Why3 com o propósito de verificar algoritmos distribuídos. Irão ser desenvolvidos modos e modelos da biblioteca Why3do, juntamente com um conjunto representativo de casos de estudos. O objetivo é fornecer evidências de que Why3 é uma ferramenta privilegiada para esta tarefa, estando no ponto ideal na relação poder expressivo e praticabilidade.This work is financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the North Portugal
Regional Operational Programme - NORTE2020 Programme and by National Funds through the Portuguese
funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-028550-
PTDC/EEI-COM/28550/2017
Liveness of Randomised Parameterised Systems under Arbitrary Schedulers (Technical Report)
We consider the problem of verifying liveness for systems with a finite, but
unbounded, number of processes, commonly known as parameterised systems.
Typical examples of such systems include distributed protocols (e.g. for the
dining philosopher problem). Unlike the case of verifying safety, proving
liveness is still considered extremely challenging, especially in the presence
of randomness in the system. In this paper we consider liveness under arbitrary
(including unfair) schedulers, which is often considered a desirable property
in the literature of self-stabilising systems. We introduce an automatic method
of proving liveness for randomised parameterised systems under arbitrary
schedulers. Viewing liveness as a two-player reachability game (between
Scheduler and Process), our method is a CEGAR approach that synthesises a
progress relation for Process that can be symbolically represented as a
finite-state automaton. The method is incremental and exploits both
Angluin-style L*-learning and SAT-solvers. Our experiments show that our
algorithm is able to prove liveness automatically for well-known randomised
distributed protocols, including Lehmann-Rabin Randomised Dining Philosopher
Protocol and randomised self-stabilising protocols (such as the Israeli-Jalfon
Protocol). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully-automatic
method that can prove liveness for randomised protocols.Comment: Full version of CAV'16 pape
Learning to Prove Safety over Parameterised Concurrent Systems (Full Version)
We revisit the classic problem of proving safety over parameterised
concurrent systems, i.e., an infinite family of finite-state concurrent systems
that are represented by some finite (symbolic) means. An example of such an
infinite family is a dining philosopher protocol with any number n of processes
(n being the parameter that defines the infinite family). Regular model
checking is a well-known generic framework for modelling parameterised
concurrent systems, where an infinite set of configurations (resp. transitions)
is represented by a regular set (resp. regular transducer). Although verifying
safety properties in the regular model checking framework is undecidable in
general, many sophisticated semi-algorithms have been developed in the past
fifteen years that can successfully prove safety in many practical instances.
In this paper, we propose a simple solution to synthesise regular inductive
invariants that makes use of Angluin's classic L* algorithm (and its variants).
We provide a termination guarantee when the set of configurations reachable
from a given set of initial configurations is regular. We have tested L*
algorithm on standard (as well as new) examples in regular model checking
including the dining philosopher protocol, the dining cryptographer protocol,
and several mutual exclusion protocols (e.g. Bakery, Burns, Szymanski, and
German). Our experiments show that, despite the simplicity of our solution, it
can perform at least as well as existing semi-algorithms.Comment: Full version of FMCAD'17 pape
Self-Stabilization in the Distributed Systems of Finite State Machines
The notion of self-stabilization was first proposed by Dijkstra in 1974 in his classic paper. The paper defines a system as self-stabilizing if, starting at any, possibly illegitimate, state the system can automatically adjust itself to eventually converge to a legitimate state in finite amount of time and once in a legitimate state it will remain so unless it incurs a subsequent transient fault. Dijkstra limited his attention to a ring of finite-state machines and provided its solution for self-stabilization. In the years following his introduction, very few papers were published in this area. Once his proposal was recognized as a milestone in work on fault tolerance, the notion propagated among the researchers rapidly and many researchers in the distributed systems diverted their attention to it. The investigation and use of self-stabilization as an approach to fault-tolerant behavior under a model of transient failures for distributed systems is now undergoing a renaissance. A good number of works pertaining to self-stabilization in the distributed systems were proposed in the yesteryears most of which are very recent. This report surveys all previous works available in the literature of self-stabilizing systems
Bounds for self-stabilization in unidirectional networks
A distributed algorithm is self-stabilizing if after faults and attacks hit
the system and place it in some arbitrary global state, the systems recovers
from this catastrophic situation without external intervention in finite time.
Unidirectional networks preclude many common techniques in self-stabilization
from being used, such as preserving local predicates. In this paper, we
investigate the intrinsic complexity of achieving self-stabilization in
unidirectional networks, and focus on the classical vertex coloring problem.
When deterministic solutions are considered, we prove a lower bound of
states per process (where is the network size) and a recovery time of at
least actions in total. We present a deterministic algorithm with
matching upper bounds that performs in arbitrary graphs. When probabilistic
solutions are considered, we observe that at least states per
process and a recovery time of actions in total are required (where
denotes the maximal degree of the underlying simple undirected graph).
We present a probabilistically self-stabilizing algorithm that uses
states per process, where is a parameter of the
algorithm. When , the algorithm recovers in expected
actions. When may grow arbitrarily, the algorithm
recovers in expected O(n) actions in total. Thus, our algorithm can be made
optimal with respect to space or time complexity
Synthesis of a simple self-stabilizing system
With the increasing importance of distributed systems as a computing
paradigm, a systematic approach to their design is needed. Although the area of
formal verification has made enormous advances towards this goal, the resulting
functionalities are limited to detecting problems in a particular design. By
means of a classical example, we illustrate a simple template-based approach to
computer-aided design of distributed systems based on leveraging the well-known
technique of bounded model checking to the synthesis setting.Comment: In Proceedings SYNT 2014, arXiv:1407.493
Asynchronous neighborhood task synchronization
Faults are likely to occur in distributed systems. The motivation for designing self-stabilizing system is to be able to automatically recover from a faulty state. As per Dijkstra\u27s definition, a system is self-stabilizing if it converges to a desired state from an arbitrary state in a finite number of steps. The paradigm of self-stabilization is considered to be the most unified approach to designing fault-tolerant systems. Any type of faults, e.g., transient, process crashes and restart, link failures and recoveries, and byzantine faults, can be handled by a self-stabilizing system; Many applications in distributed systems involve multiple phases. Solving these applications require some degree of synchronization of phases. In this thesis research, we introduce a new problem, called asynchronous neighborhood task synchronization ( NTS ). In this problem, processes execute infinite instances of tasks, where a task consists of a set of steps. There are several requirements for this problem. Simultaneous execution of steps by the neighbors is allowed only if the steps are different. Every neighborhood is synchronized in the sense that all neighboring processes execute the same instance of a task. Although the NTS problem is applicable in nonfaulty environments, it is more challenging to solve this problem considering various types of faults. In this research, we will present a self-stabilizing solution to the NTS problem. The proposed solution is space optimal, fault containing, fully localized, and fully distributed. One of the most desirable properties of our algorithm is that it works under any (including unfair) daemon. We will discuss various applications of the NTS problem
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