Detecting Inter-Component Configuration Errors in Proactive: A Relation-Aware Method

Configuration errors, similar to bugs, are often the dominant causes of errors in deployed applications, leading to application failures, exceptions and even crashes. Misconfigurations are hard to detect and diagnose. To address this issue, we propose a method to detect the potential misconfigurations. Unlike the existing work, we focus on the misconfigurations introduced by the relations between components. The options in configuration files of an application are extracted and classified into several groups. Directed by the relations, the possible inter-related parameters are discovered and checked with some proposed checking rules. We implement a prototype and make evaluations. The case study shows that this method can detect and check a majority of inter-related configuration options with less human effort.