Model Checking Guided Testing for Distributed Systems

Distributed systems have become the backbone of cloud computing. Incorrect system designs and implementations can greatly impair the reliability of distributed systems. Although a distributed system design modelled in the formal specification can be verified by formal model checking, it is still challenging to figure out whether its corresponding implementation conforms to the verified specification. An incorrect system implementation can violate its verified specification, and causes intricate bugs.

In this paper, we propose a novel distributed system testing technique, Model checking guided testing (Mocket), to fill the gap between the specification and its implementation in a distributed system. Specially, we use the state space generated by formal model checking to guide the testing for the system implementation, and unearth bugs in the target distributed system. To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of Mocket, we apply Mocket on three popular distributed systems, and find 3 previously unknown bugs in them.

• Software and its engineering → Software testing and debugging; Model checking.