Troubleshooting Blackbox SDN Control Software with Minimal Causal Sequences

摘要

Software bugs are inevitable in software-defined networking control software, and troubleshooting is a tedious, time-consuming task. In this paper we discuss how to improve control software troubleshooting by presenting a technique for automatically identifying a minimal sequence of inputs responsible for triggering a given bug, without making assumptions about the language or instrumentation of the software under test. We apply our technique to five open source SDN control platforms-Floodlight, NOX, POX, Pyretic, ONOS-and illustrate how the minimal causal sequences our system found aided the troubleshooting process.