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White Paper:
Advancing Open Source
Safety-Critical Systems
Written by Shuah Khan, Chair of the ELISA Project Technical
Steering Committee and Linux Fellow at The Linux Foundation
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available
at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. Pursuant to Section 5 of the license, please
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Assessing whether a system is safe requires understanding the system sufficiently. You
have to understand what is happening in your system and how various modules and
components interact. If the system depends on Linux, it is crucial to understand Linux
within that system context and how Linux is used. Also, you have to know how the
Linux kernel interacts with various hardware components in the system and the user-
space running on top of the kernel. Only with a sound system understanding of the
specific context and interactions between the applications, base open-source libraries,
such as libc, and the kernel, can you adequately assess if the system is safe or not.
What are the challenges involved in running Linux in Safety-critical systems and
building products based on Linux? The primary challenge is selecting Linux components
and features that can be evaluated for safety and identifying gaps where more work
is needed to evaluate safety sufficiently.
The ELISA project has taken on the challenge to make it easier for companies to build
and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications by exploring potential methods to
enable engineers to answer that question for their specific system.
Another aspect is understanding the limits. We at ELISA want you to understand
that we:
• cannot engineer your system to be safe
• cannot ensure that you know how to apply the described process and methods
• cannot create an out-of-tree Linux kernel for safety-critical applications,
being mindful of the continuous process improvement argument
• cannot relieve you from your responsibilities, legal obligations, and liabilities.
As you might already know, Linux kernel releases are time-based, and releases
come out once every 8-10 weeks. The Linux kernel community has its own set of
development policies and processes that govern reviewing and accepting new
content. It is a challenge to keep up with the development process for safety
analysis and product support. We don’t have all the answers; however, we at ELISA
strive to provide a path forward as a home to like-minded peers to collaborate.
Please checkout the ELISA Working Group activities and join us to collaborate with us.
• Main Technical List: devel@lists.elisa.tech
• Technical Steering Committee: elisa.tech/about/tsc
• Kernel Development Process Working Group:
development-process@lists.elisa.tech
Advancing Open Source Safety-Critical Systems 3
• Safety Architecture Working Group: safety-architecture@lists.elisa.tech
• Medical Devices Working Group: medical-devices@lists.elisa.tech
• Automotive Working Group: automotive@lists.elisa.tech
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Technical Strategy
Let’s talk about how our Technical Charter anchors us in defining strategy and
deliverables based on Automotive and Medical use-cases.
What are ELISA deliverables?
• ELISA develops an example qualitative analysis for Automotive and Medical
use-cases for the Linux kernel.
• ELISA provides resources for System integrators to apply and use to analyze
qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems. For example, ELISA will
analyze published CWEs to identify hazards for the two use-cases.
• System Integrators use ELISA deliverables to analyze their systems
ELISA Working Groups collaborate in developing a qualitative analysis of the
Automotive and Medical use-cases for the Linux kernel.
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ELISA Technical Steering Committee is responsible for defining the technical
strategy. The TSC is currently focused on the following activities with Automotive
and Medical use-cases. We welcome other use-cases.
• Refining and finalizing the Technical Strategy
• Exploring how best to represent hazards and state what we tried.
• Defining clearly what ELISA is and is not
• Refining and finalizing executing on the Technical Strategy in WGs
• Deciding on our Publication Strategy (reviews and best practices for ELISA
deliverables)
ELISA Medical Devices Working Group is focused on:
• Finishing Open Artificial Pancreas System (OpenAPS) analysis
• Reviewing our analysis of OpenAPS (#openAPS) with System-Theoretic
Process Analysis (STPA) experts
• Presenting results of our analysis to the OpenAPS community for feedback.
• Publishing openAPS STPA analysis on Github and put it under version control.
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ELISA Automotive Working Group currently focuses on analyzing automotive use
cases with safety implications and collaborating with the Automotive Grade Linux
project to leverage their knowledge in this space. In addition it is:
• Continuing work on and improve the telltale use case
• Consolidating the concept and demo application
• Furthering the concept and architecture refinement
ELISA Safety Architecture Working Group is set out to complete the definition
of top-level safety requirements for the Kernel and identify associated entry points
within the context of the above example Automotive use-case. The current focus is
Automotive use-cases with a plan to include Medical use-cases. In addition, the WG
is working on the following within the context of the Automotive use-case.
• Starting the safety analyses for the telltale safety app
• Consolidating and refining the qualification methodology using the telltale
use case as the driver
• Starting the Freedom From Interference (FFI) analysis with Linux kernel as the
primary focus and taking Non-Safety Related (NSR) user space processes into
account. The FFI operates under the premise that a fault in a non or less safety-
critical component doesn’t lead to a fault in a more safety-critical component.
FFI, as defined by ISO 26262, is the “absence of cascading failures between
components that could lead to the violation of [some] safety requirement.”
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ELISA Kernel Development Process Working Group is currently engaged in
completing the Linux kernel management process, validation process, and basic hazard
classification for safety leveraging Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs). Auto-
motive and Medical use-cases are in scope for this work. So how do we do this? We:
• Define system characteristics, failure modes, and attributes of Linux kernel. As
an example, Timing and Execution is an important system property to ensure
a less safety-critical component doesn’t block a more safety-critical component.
• Identify Kernel configurations and features essential to safety-critical systems
For example, Timing and Execution is an important system property that will ensure
that a less safety-critical component doesn’t block a more safety-critical component.
Resource Locking Problems and Improper Locking related hazards in safety-critical
software components could prevent and undermine this System property. It is
important to detect and mitigate resource locking and improper locking problems
during development and integration. This WG identifies and analyzes available
detection and mitigation methods in the Linux kernel and provides resources to
System integrators to apply and use on their systems.
The detection and mitigation methods available in the Linux kernel are Static and
Dynamic analysis tools and Kernel dengue configuration options that can be used to
find and fix problems. CONFIG_LOCK_TORTURE_TEST and CONFIG_PROVE_LOCKING
are a couple of examples that could be used as detection methods for Resource
Locking and Improper Locking issues.
The ELISA Tool Investigation and Code Improvement Sub-WG is engaged in
aiding the ELISA Kernel Development Process Working Group’s goals by using
various static analysis methods and tools available in the Linux kernel and making
the results available to the ELISA and the Kernel communities.
• Continuous Integration (CI) with static analysis on Linux kernel repositories
focusing on configurations relevant to Automotive and Medical use-cases.
• CodeChecker Web service
• Investigate ECLAIR results, tailor tool to identify actionable results
• Work on fixing Documentation and kernel-doc. This activity benefits ELISA as
well as the Kernel community. This Sub-WG is actively engaged in improving
Kernel documentation.
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• Assist newcomers with onboarding. We recognize the need to help the rest of
the ELISA community understand how the Linux kernel development process
works. This Sub-WG is engaged in helping ELISA members participate in the
Kernel development process. Newcomers are welcome!
As you can see, the ELISA WGs collaborate and work towards providing resources for
System integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their
systems. You might ask, “Why can’t ELISA qualify safety-critical systems?” We can’t,
as we don’t know the product details to be able to do so. It is the System integrator’s
responsibility to use the resources ELISA is developing to analyze their systems.
Please note that the ELISA project will release the resources under the CC BY 4.0.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to address any
specific implementation.
Now that you have an idea of what ELISA is all about, I invite you to join the
discussion to help us define Safety Architecture for Medical use-case and bring us
new use-cases. Please join the ELISA member family.
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