Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery – Data processing system error or fault handling – Reliability and availability
Patent
1998-01-26
2000-03-28
Beausoliel, Jr., Robert W.
Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery
Data processing system error or fault handling
Reliability and availability
G06F 1100
Patent
active
060444770
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to a monitor system and method for monitoring the operation of a data processing system such as, for example a communication system.
Most digital communication systems utilise a communication protocol which has a layered architecture. The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) protocol is a typical example of a communication protocol having such a layered architecture. Further details of layered communication architectures are available in, for example, "ISDN: An Introduction", W Stallings, published by Collier Macmillan publishers, London, or "An Introduction to OSI", N. W. Heap, published by Blackwell Scientific Publications.
IBM Technical disclosure bulletin, January 1971, pp2392-2393, discloses dynamic management of a pool of buffers in which a usage history is maintained for each block of information which may be stored in a buffer. The number of buffers is less than the number of blocks of information.
Many operating systems and communication systems utilise common resources for communicating or passing data between processes executing within said system. The processes may represent a communication stack which uses a pool of buffers to facilitate communication between the processes constituting the stack. A communication stack is a plurality of processes which implement the layers of a layered communication protocol. Each process in the layer manipulates received data according to the corresponding layered architecture. The Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California at Berkeley devised the "mbuf" facility to handle buffer management and hence enable a communication stack to be implemented. A further example of a communication stack is the buffer pool service used within the ISDN component of DirectTalk/6000 release 1.5 available from International Business Machines Corporation. Further information relating to the above can be found in "Programming for the Signalling Interface (SC33-1155-01)", "Configuration and Administration (SC22-0105-01)" and "Problem Determination (SC22-0105-03)" which are all available from International Business Machines Corporation.
One of the main features of such a buffer pool service is that a process may request a buffer to be allocated to it from a pool of buffers. Typically, a process, within a communication stack, receives data from another process via a reference to an allocated buffer containing that data. The receiving process performs various operations in relation to that data and then passes the reference to the data or a modified form thereof to another process for further manipulation. Generally, each process in the communication stack implements the encoding or decoding required by a layer of a layered communication protocol and manipulates the data stored in the buffer according to the operations conventionally performed by a respective layer of the communication protocol layer. When the data stored in the buffer is no longer needed, the allocated buffer is returned to the pool of buffers for subsequent use by other processes.
Occasionally, one of the processes within a communication stack malfunctions and, for example, corrupts, loses, or does not receive the reference to an allocated buffer. Alternatively, the process which currently has a reference to an allocated buffer may crash. In any of the above events the buffer, or reference thereto, may never be returned to the buffer pool. Such a malfunction is very likely to occur during the coding and testing stages of an implementation of a communication system and therefore very likely to repeatedly occur. If the loss of an allocated buffer stems from a malfunctioning communication stack, it is very likely that further allocated buffers will be lost each time the communication system receives data. Such an error could readily exhausts the supply of buffers thereby impeding or preventing the correct operation of the communication system.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for monitoring the operation of a data processing system having a pl
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Jordan Robert Michael
Lozinski Zygmunt Anthony
Beausoliel, Jr. Robert W.
Elmore Stephen C.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Ray-Yarletts Jeanine S.
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