A Constraint-Based Approach to Diagnosing Distributed Software Systems

Distributed software problems can be particularly mystifying to diagnose, for both system users and system administrators. Model-based diagnosis methods that have been more commonly applied to physical systems can be brought to bear on such software systems. A case study is presented here using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The knowledge base is divided into three components: user interaction, protocol and connguration. For each component knowledge is naturally represented in the form of constraints. In particular, user interaction modeling is accomplished through the introduction of constraints representing user assumptions. Diagnosis is viewed as a partial constraint satisfaction problem (PCSP). A PCSP algorithm has been adapted for use as a diagnostic engine. Even our prototype implementation is able to diagnose some rather obscure FTP problems.

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