Safer Than Safe: On the Initial State of Self-stabilizing Systems

  • Authors:

  • Sylvie Delaët;Shlomi Dolev;Olivier Peres

  • Affiliations:

  • Univ Paris Sud, LRI, CNRS, Orsay F-91405;Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105;Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105

  • Venue:
  • SSS '09 Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

A self-stabilizing algorithm [2] is a distributed algorithm with an additional property: it guarantees to eventually execute its task, by reaching a legitimate configuration , regardless of the state in which the processes and communication links are started. Some algorithms are supposed to remain safe at all times while they carry out their task. Safety, however, is impossible when very high levels of failures overwhelm the system, e.g., when more than a third of the processes are Byzantine, or in the extreme case, when all the processes disappear.