A Study of Modern Linux API Usage and Compatibility: What to Support When You’re Supporting

 April 4, 2021 at 10:51 am

EuroSys'16 Best Paper

link

This paper supports the author's following work, graphene(-SGX).

Targeted Interfaces (APIs)

  • System Calls
  • Proc Filesystem

Method

  • Measured the download and dependency data of packages in Ubuntu 15.04.
  • Statically analyzed what syscalls will be invoked in a package and what path will be accessed by a binary (hardcoded string)

Measurement

  • API Importance: A Metric for Individual APIs
  • Weighted Completeness: A System-Wide Metric (combined with #downloads)

Questions Answered

  • Which syscalls are more important than others?
  • Which syscalls can be deprecated? (some are rarely used)
  • Which syscalls should be supported for compatibility?