Distributed systems are notoriously difficult to design and implement correctly. Formal verification provides correctness proofs, and has recently been successfully applied to various distributed systems. At the heart of a typical formal verification is a computer-checked proof with an inductive invariant. Finding this inductive invariant is the hardest part of the proof: a part that is currently undertaken manually by the developer and is responsible for most of the effort associated with formal verification.
In this paper, we present a new approach: Incremental Inference of Inductive Invariants (I4), to automatically generate inductive invariants for distributed protocols. We start from a simple idea: the inductive invariant of a finite instance of the protocol must be an instance of a general inductive invariant for the infinite distributed protocol. In I4, we instantiate a finite instance of the protocol, work out the finite inductive invariant of this instance, then figure out the general inductive invariant as a generalization of the finite invariant. Our experiments show that I4 can finish the general proof of correctness of several systems with minimal human effort.
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I4: incremental inference of inductive invariants for verification of distributed protocols
Designing and implementing distributed systems correctly
is a very challenging task. Recently, formal verification has
been successfully used to prove the correctness of distributed
systems. At the heart of formal verification lies a computer-checked
proof with an inductive invariant. Finding this inductive
invariant, however, is the most difficult part of the
proof. Alas, current proof techniques require inductive invariants
to be found manually—and painstakingly—by the
developer.
In this paper, we present a new approach, Incremental Inference
of Inductive Invariants (I4), to automatically generate
inductive invariants for distributed protocols. The essence of
our idea is simple: the inductive invariant of a finite instance
of the protocol can be used to infer a general inductive invariant
for the infinite distributed protocol. In I4, we create
a finite instance of the protocol; use a model checking tool
to automatically derive the inductive invariant for this finite
instance; and generalize this invariant to an inductive invariant
for the infinite protocol. Our experiments show that I4
can prove the correctness of several distributed protocols
like Chord, 2PC and Transaction Chains with little to no
human effort.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1814507
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10123630
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 27th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 370 to 384
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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