Abstract
This chapter discusses efficient detection of global predicates in a distributed program. Previous work in detection of global predicates was restricted to predicates that could be specified as a boolean formula of local predicates. Many properties in distributed systems, however, use the state of channels. In this chapter, we introduce the concept of a channel predicate and provide an efficient algorithm to detect any boolean formula of local and channel predicates. We define a property called monotonicity for channel predicates. Monotonicity is crucial for efficient detection of global predicates. We show that many problems studied earlier, such as detection of termination and computation of global virtual time are special cases of the problem considered in this chapter. The message complexity of our algorithm is bounded by the number of messages used by the program. The main application of our results are in debugging and testing of distributed programs. Our algorithms have been incorporated in a distributed programming environment which runs on a network of IBM RS/6000 Workstations under AIX with the PVM environment.
Supported in part by the NSF Grant CCR-9110605, a TRW faculty assistantship award, a General Motors Fellowship, and an IBM grant
Supported in part by the Texas Instruments/Jack Kilby Faculty Fellowship
Supported in part by an MCD fellowship
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ö Babaoğlu, and K. Marzullo, “Consistent Global States of Distributed Systems: Fundamental Concepts and Mechanisms,” Distributed Systems, 2nd Edition, editor Sape Mullender, Addison Wesley, New York, NY. 1994, pp. 55–96.
K. Chandy, and L. Lamport, “Distributed Snapshots: Determining global states of distributed systems,” ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, no. 1, pp. 63–75, February 1985.
R. Cooper and K. Marzullo, “Consistent Detection of Global Predicates,” Proc. of the ACM/ONR Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging, Santa Cruz, California, pp. 163-173, May 1991.
E. W. Dijkstra, W. H. J. Feijen, and A. J. M. VanGasteren, “Derivation of a Termination Detection Algorithm for Distributed Computation,” Inf. Proc. Letters, Vol. 16, June 1983, pp. 217–219.
C. J. Fidge, “Partial Orders for Parallel Debugging,” Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging also SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 24. No. 1. January, 1989. pp. 183–194.
E. Fromentin, M. Raynal, V. K. Garg, and A. Tomlinson, “On the Fly Testing of Regular Patterns in Distributed Computations,” Proceedings of the 23rd Int Conference on Parallel Processing, Pennsylvania State University, August 1994.
V. K. Garg, and A. Tomlinson, “Using Induction to Prove Properties of Distributed Programs,” Proceedings of the Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, Dallas, Texas, December, 1993, pp.478–485.
V. K. Garg, and B. Waldecker, “Detection of Weak Unstable Predicates in Distributed Programs,” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1994, pp. 299–307.
V. K. Garg and B. Waldecker, “Detection of Unstable Predicates in Distributed Programs,” Proc. 12th Conference on the Foundations of Software Technology & Theoretical Computer Science, New Delhi, India, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 652, Springer-Verlag, Dec. 1992, pp. 253–264.
A. Geist, et. al., PVM 3 Users’ Guide and Reference Manual, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, May, 1993.
D. Haban and W. Weigel, “Global events and global breakpoints in distributed systems,” Proc. of the 21st Intl. Conf. on System Sciences, Vol. 2, Jan 1988, pp 166-175. 1990, pp. 134–141.
M. Hurfin, N. Plouzeau and M. Raynal, “Detecting Atomic Sequences of Predicates in Distributed Computations,” Proceedings of the ACM/ONR Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging, San Diego, California, May, 1993.
L. Lamport, “Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 558–565, July 1978.
F. Mattern, “Virtual time and global states of distributed systems,” Parallel and Distributed Algorithms: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Algorithms, Elsevier Science Publishers B. V., 1989, pp. 215–226.
Y. Manabe, and M. Imase, “Global Conditions in Debugging Distributed Programs,” Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Vol. 15, pp. 62–69, 1992.
B.P. Miller and J. Choi, “Breakpoints and Halting in Distributed Programs,” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, San Jose, California, June 1988, pp. 316-323.
J. Misra, “Detecting Termination of Distributed Computation Using Markers,” Proc. of the 2nd annual ACM Symposium on Principles of DC, Aug, 1983, pp. 290-294.
R. Schwartz and F. Mattern, “Detecting Causal Relationships in Distributed Computations: In Search of the Holy Grail,” SFB 124–15/92, Department of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, December 1992.
M. Spezialetti and P. Kearns, “Efficient Distributed Snapshots,” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 1986, pp. 382-388.
A.L Tomlinson and V. K. Garg, “Detecting Relational Global Predicates in Distributed Systems,” Proc. 3rd ACM/ONR Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging, San Diego, California, May 1993, pp. 21-31.
MPI: A Message-Passing Interface Standard, Message Passing Interface Forum, May, 1994.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garg, V., Chase, C., Mitchell, R., Kilgore, R. (1996). Efficient Detection of Unstable Global Conditions Based on Monotonic Channel Predicates. In: Zaky, A., Lewis, T. (eds) Tools and Environments for Parallel and Distributed Systems. The Springer International Series in Software Engineering, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4123-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4123-3_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-6849-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-4123-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive