Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 11 Apr 1997 08:29:04 -0500 (CDT) | From | Oliver Xymoron <> | Subject | Re: Kernel testing |
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On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Seth M. Landsman wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Oliver Xymoron wrote: > > A formalized testing process would be great - I'm envisioning a collection > > of people with spare machines, each with slightly different configs, > > downloading a kernel patch and a test suite patch, building the kernel, > > rebooting, and then building and running an automated test suite for a day > > or two ("make test"). The test suite might consist of a giant Perl script > > coordinating a bunch of programs like crashme, lmbench, TCP/IP exercisers, > > scripts to abuse various file systems and devices, and so on. It could > > even include automatic reporting to a central database of some sort. > > Hopefully with enough participants, a decent subset of possible kernel and > > hardware configurations and features could be checked and we'd have some > > data to point to for people with reliability concerns ("This kernel has > > been tested on 150 different configurations for a total of 7200 hours > > without crashing, enjoy."). > > FWIW, this is a great idea, and I'll help (not volunteer to > coordinate, but help) write this thing if there is an interest ... The > one caveat I see is that we should create a test suite that will run in > approx. 6 hours. I would be (and I think so would others) willing to run > this thing on my office machine, if I can set it going when I leave in the > evening and have my machine back when I come in the next morning ...
I think the time is very flexible - I was thinking the bulk of the time would be spent on stress testing like crashme rather than functionality testing. Even a very complete set of functionality tests would be well less than 6 hours, I'd think, because any single "does this syscall return the right value?" test is going to be nearly instantaneous.
-- "Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.."
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