IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
A VMM-Level Approach to Shortening Downtime of Operating Systems Reboots in Software Updates
Summary :
Operating system (OS) reboots are an essential part of updating kernels and applications on laptops and desktop PCs. Long downtime during OS reboots severely disrupts users' computational activities. This long disruption discourages the users from conducting OS reboots, failing to enforce them to conduct software updates. Although the dynamic updatable techniques have been widely studied, making the system “reboot-free” is still difficult due to their several limitations. As a result, users cannot benefit from new functionality or better performance, and even worse, unfixed vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers. This paper presents ShadowReboot, a virtual machine monitor (VMM)-based approach that shortens downtime of OS reboots in software updates. ShadowReboot conceals OS reboot activities from user's applications by spawning a VM dedicated to an OS reboot and systematically producing the rebooted state where the updated kernel and applications are ready for use. ShadowReboot provides an illusion to the users that the guest OS travels forward in time to the rebooted state. ShadowReboot offers the following advantages. It can be used to apply patches to the kernels and even system configuration updates. Next, it does not require any special patch requiring detailed knowledge about the target kernels. Lastly, it does not require any target kernel modification. We implemented a prototype in VirtualBox 4.0.10 OSE. Our experimental results show that ShadowReboot successfully updated software on unmodified commodity OS kernels and shortened the downtime of commodity OS reboots on five Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Cent, and SUSE) by 91 to 98%.
- Publication
- IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E97-D No.10 pp.2663-2675
- Publication Date
- 2014/10/01
- Publicized
- Online ISSN
- 1745-1361
- DOI
- 10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7031
- Type of Manuscript
- PAPER
- Category
- Software System
Authors
Hiroshi YAMADA
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Kenji KONO
Keio University
Keyword
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Hiroshi YAMADA, Kenji KONO, "A VMM-Level Approach to Shortening Downtime of Operating Systems Reboots in Software Updates" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information,
vol. E97-D, no. 10, pp. 2663-2675, October 2014, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7031.
Abstract: Operating system (OS) reboots are an essential part of updating kernels and applications on laptops and desktop PCs. Long downtime during OS reboots severely disrupts users' computational activities. This long disruption discourages the users from conducting OS reboots, failing to enforce them to conduct software updates. Although the dynamic updatable techniques have been widely studied, making the system “reboot-free” is still difficult due to their several limitations. As a result, users cannot benefit from new functionality or better performance, and even worse, unfixed vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers. This paper presents ShadowReboot, a virtual machine monitor (VMM)-based approach that shortens downtime of OS reboots in software updates. ShadowReboot conceals OS reboot activities from user's applications by spawning a VM dedicated to an OS reboot and systematically producing the rebooted state where the updated kernel and applications are ready for use. ShadowReboot provides an illusion to the users that the guest OS travels forward in time to the rebooted state. ShadowReboot offers the following advantages. It can be used to apply patches to the kernels and even system configuration updates. Next, it does not require any special patch requiring detailed knowledge about the target kernels. Lastly, it does not require any target kernel modification. We implemented a prototype in VirtualBox 4.0.10 OSE. Our experimental results show that ShadowReboot successfully updated software on unmodified commodity OS kernels and shortened the downtime of commodity OS reboots on five Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Cent, and SUSE) by 91 to 98%.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7031/_p
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@ARTICLE{e97-d_10_2663,
author={Hiroshi YAMADA, Kenji KONO, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={A VMM-Level Approach to Shortening Downtime of Operating Systems Reboots in Software Updates},
year={2014},
volume={E97-D},
number={10},
pages={2663-2675},
abstract={Operating system (OS) reboots are an essential part of updating kernels and applications on laptops and desktop PCs. Long downtime during OS reboots severely disrupts users' computational activities. This long disruption discourages the users from conducting OS reboots, failing to enforce them to conduct software updates. Although the dynamic updatable techniques have been widely studied, making the system “reboot-free” is still difficult due to their several limitations. As a result, users cannot benefit from new functionality or better performance, and even worse, unfixed vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers. This paper presents ShadowReboot, a virtual machine monitor (VMM)-based approach that shortens downtime of OS reboots in software updates. ShadowReboot conceals OS reboot activities from user's applications by spawning a VM dedicated to an OS reboot and systematically producing the rebooted state where the updated kernel and applications are ready for use. ShadowReboot provides an illusion to the users that the guest OS travels forward in time to the rebooted state. ShadowReboot offers the following advantages. It can be used to apply patches to the kernels and even system configuration updates. Next, it does not require any special patch requiring detailed knowledge about the target kernels. Lastly, it does not require any target kernel modification. We implemented a prototype in VirtualBox 4.0.10 OSE. Our experimental results show that ShadowReboot successfully updated software on unmodified commodity OS kernels and shortened the downtime of commodity OS reboots on five Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Cent, and SUSE) by 91 to 98%.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7031},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={October},}
Copy
TY - JOUR
TI - A VMM-Level Approach to Shortening Downtime of Operating Systems Reboots in Software Updates
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 2663
EP - 2675
AU - Hiroshi YAMADA
AU - Kenji KONO
PY - 2014
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7031
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E97-D
IS - 10
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - October 2014
AB - Operating system (OS) reboots are an essential part of updating kernels and applications on laptops and desktop PCs. Long downtime during OS reboots severely disrupts users' computational activities. This long disruption discourages the users from conducting OS reboots, failing to enforce them to conduct software updates. Although the dynamic updatable techniques have been widely studied, making the system “reboot-free” is still difficult due to their several limitations. As a result, users cannot benefit from new functionality or better performance, and even worse, unfixed vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers. This paper presents ShadowReboot, a virtual machine monitor (VMM)-based approach that shortens downtime of OS reboots in software updates. ShadowReboot conceals OS reboot activities from user's applications by spawning a VM dedicated to an OS reboot and systematically producing the rebooted state where the updated kernel and applications are ready for use. ShadowReboot provides an illusion to the users that the guest OS travels forward in time to the rebooted state. ShadowReboot offers the following advantages. It can be used to apply patches to the kernels and even system configuration updates. Next, it does not require any special patch requiring detailed knowledge about the target kernels. Lastly, it does not require any target kernel modification. We implemented a prototype in VirtualBox 4.0.10 OSE. Our experimental results show that ShadowReboot successfully updated software on unmodified commodity OS kernels and shortened the downtime of commodity OS reboots on five Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Cent, and SUSE) by 91 to 98%.
ER -
English
