METHOD FOR MONITORING A SOFTWARE PROGRAM AND CORRESPONDING ELECTRONIC DEVICE, COMMUNICATION SYSTEM, COMPUTER READABLE PROGRAM PRODUCT AND COMPUTER READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM

• US 20170024244A1
• Filed: 07/20/2016
• Published: 01/26/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 07/24/2015
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Thomson Licensing (Vantiva SA)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Licensing (Vantiva SA)
• Inventors: CRUNCHANT, Sebastien, RIBIERE, Jean-Claude, LE GARJAN, Bruno
• Application Number:
  US15/215,553
• Publication Number:
  US 20170024244A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0715 in a system implementing multitasking multitasking per se G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0757 by exceeding a time limit, i.e. time-out, e.g. watchdogs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1417 Boot up procedures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1438 Restarting or rejuvenating
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3003 Monitoring arrangements specially adapted to the computing system or computing system component being monitored
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/302 where the computing system component is a software system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3093 Configuration details thereof, e.g. installation, enabling, spatial arrangement of the probes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/88 Monitoring involving counting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/445 Program loading or initiating bootstrapping G06F9/4401; security arrangements for program loading or initiating G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/485 Task life-cycle, e.g. stopping, restarting, resuming execution G06F9/4881 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5016 the resource being the memory

Abstract

The disclosure relates to a method to be performed in an electronic device, for monitoring the execution of a software program including at least one watched process, the monitoring method including periodic reading, by a supervisor process, of a memory zone shared by the watched process and the supervisor process. According to an embodiment, the method further includes conditional forcing, by the supervisor process, of a booting of a watched process of the software program, the conditional forcing taking into account an update of a first read memory zone between two successive readings and a previous conditional forcing. The disclosure also relates to the corresponding electronic device, communication system, computer readable program product and computer readable storage medium.

Claims

1. A monitoring method, to be performed in at least one supervisor software process executing in at least one electronic device, for monitoring the execution of a software program comprising at least one process watched by said supervisor process and sharing at least one memory zone with said supervisor process, said monitoring method comprising periodic readings, of said shared memory zone, wherein said method comprises:

conditional forcing of a booting of at least one process of said software program, said conditional forcing taking into account an update of the shared memory zone between at least two successive readings, by said supervisor process, of said shared memory zone;

wherein said conditional forcing takes into account at least one boot criterion taking into account a number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process.

2. The monitoring method according to claim 1 wherein said boot criterion takes into account a number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process during a duration.

3. The monitoring method according to claim 1 wherein said booting is forced only when said number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process is below a threshold.

4. The monitoring method according to claim 1 wherein said method comprises maintaining, by said supervisor process, at least one boot counter located in a first non-volatile memory zone of said electronic device, said boot counter being representative of a number of boot of a process of said software program.

5. The monitoring method according to claim 1 wherein said boot counter is representative of at least one item belonging to a group comprising:

a number of boot of said watched process;

a number of boot of said supervisor process;

a number of boot of a main process of said software program.

6. The monitoring method according to claim 1 wherein said processor is configured for:

maintaining, by said supervisor process, at least one boot counter located in a first non-volatile memory zone of said electronic device, said boot counter being representative of a number of boots of said watched process and

storing, by said supervisor process, at least one value of said boot counter representative of a boot of said watched process forced by said supervisor process.

7. The monitoring method according to claim 1 wherein said conditional forcing takes into account at least one element belonging to a group comprising:

a number of consecutive forced boots of said watched process;

a number of consecutive forced boots of said supervisor process;

a number of consecutive forced boots of a main process of said software program;

a number of consecutive forced boots of said supervisor process related to said watched process;

a number of consecutive forced boots of a main process of said supervisor process related to said watched process;

a number of forced boots of said watched process during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of said supervisor process during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of a main process of said software program during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of said supervisor process related to said watched process during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of a main process of said software program related to said watched process during a reference period of time.

8. An electronic device, comprising at least one memory and at least one processor, said processor being configured for a monitoring, by at least one supervisor software process executing in said electronic device, of the execution of a software program comprising at least one process watched by said supervisor process and sharing at least one memory zone with said supervisor process, said monitoring comprising periodic readings, by at least one supervisor process of said device, of said shared memory zone, wherein said processor is configured for:

conditional forcing, by said supervisor process, of a booting of at least one process of said software program, said conditional forcing taking into account an update of the shared memory zone between at least two successive readings, by said supervisor process, of said shared memory zone, said conditional forcing takes into account at least one boot criterion taking into account taking into account a number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process.

9. The device according to claim 8 wherein said watched process is comprised in another electronic device.

10. The device according to claim 8 wherein said booting takes into account a number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process during a duration.

11. The device according to claim 10 wherein said booting is forced only when said number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process is below a threshold.

12. The device according to claim 10 wherein said processor is configured for maintaining, by said supervisor process, at least one boot counter located in a first non-volatile memory zone of said electronic device, said boot counter being representative of a number of boot of a process of said software program.

13. The device according to claim 10 wherein said boot counter is representative of at least one item belonging to a group comprising:

a number of boot of said watched process;

a number of boot of said supervisor process;

a number of boot of a main process of said software program.

14. The device according to claim 10 wherein said processor is configured for:

maintaining, by said supervisor process, at least one boot counter located in a first non-volatile memory zone of said electronic device, said boot counter being representative of a number of boots of said watched process and

storing, by said supervisor process, at least one value of said boot counter representative of a boot of said watched process forced by said supervisor process.

15. The device according to claim 10 wherein said conditional forcing takes into account at least one element belonging to a group comprising:

a number of consecutive forced boots of said watched process;

a number of consecutive forced boots of said supervisor process;

a number of consecutive forced boots of a main process of said software program;

a number of consecutive forced boots of said supervisor process related to said watched process;

a number of consecutive forced boots of a main process of said supervisor process related to said watched process;

a number of forced boots of said watched process during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of said supervisor process during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of a main process of said software program during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of said supervisor process related to said watched process during a reference period of time;

a number of forced boots of a main process of said software program related to said watched process during a reference period of time.

16. The device according to claim 10 wherein said conditional forcing further depends on a level of risk of said watched process.

17. The device according to claim 10 wherein said software program comprises a plurality of watched processes and in that the memory zones of at least two watched processes are adjacent.

18. The device according to claim 10 wherein said processor is configured for a reacting of said supervisor process taking into account an update of a second read memory zone between at least two successive readings.

19. The device according to claim 10 wherein said processor is configured for generating an alert according to the update of said first and/or second read memory zone.

20. Computer readable storage medium carrying a software program comprising program code instructions for performing, when said non-transitory software program is executed by a computer, a monitoring method, to be performed in at least one supervisor software process of said software program, for monitoring the execution of a software program comprising at least one process watched by said supervisor process and sharing at least one memory zone with said supervisor process, said monitoring method comprising periodic readings, of said shared memory zone, said method comprising:

conditional forcing of a booting of at least one process of said software program comprising at least one process watched by said supervisor process, said conditional forcing taking into account an update of the shared memory zone between at least two successive readings, by said supervisor process, of said shared memory zone;

said conditional forcing takes into account at least one boot criterion taking into account taking into account a number of consecutive boots of said watched process forced by said supervisor process.