[CSEE-colloq] talk: Diagnosing Misconfigured Open Source Systems Software, 1pm Mon 3/5 ITE325b UMBC

[Tim Finin]

                   Using Static Analysis to Diagnose
               Misconfigured Open Source Systems Software

                       Ariel Rabkin, UC Berkeley

               1:00pm Monday 5 March 2012, ITE 325b UMBC


Ten years ago, few software developers worked on distributed
systems. Today, developers often run code on clusters, relying on
large open-source software stacks to manage resources.  These systems
are challenging to configure and debug. Fortunately, developments in
program analysis have given us new tools for managing the complexity
of modern software. This talk will show how static analysis can help
users configure their systems. I present a technique that builds an
explicit table mapping a program's possible error messages to the
options that might cause them. As a result, users can get immediate
feedback on how to resolve configuration errors.

Ari Rabkin (http://bit.ly/Rabkin) is a PhD student in Computer Science
at UC Berkeley working in the AMP lab.  His current research interest
is the software engineering and administration challenges of big-data
systems. He is particularly interested in applying program analysis
techniques to tasks like log analysis and configuration debugging.
His broader interests focus on systems and security, including
improving system usability by making systems easier to understand, the
connections between computer science research and technology policy,
developing program analysis techniques that work acceptably well on
large, complex, messy software systems.

Host: Anupam Joshi
See http://csee.umbc.edu/talks for more information