Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 10 Aug 2000 21:06:08 +0100 (BST) | From | James Sutherland <> | Subject | Re: [Announce] Linux Test Project |
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On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Nathan Straz wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 10, 2000 at 05:03:15PM +0100, James Sutherland wrote: > > On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, David Mansfield wrote: > > > Ideally, in the case where something bad but not as fatal as complete > > > lockup happens, the test bed should diagnose the fault. This could be > > > capturing the oops, or running ps -alx to see where it's stuck. > > > > Yep. Using a serial console should enable reasonable information capture, > > and the script can have a standard set of "failure responses" to run if a > > test returns a failure of any sort? > > While I definately want to support serial consoles and network logging > for large testing environments (like product testing), I also want LTP > to work on a single system environment. I think that's important to > have for the average Linux hacker. If Joe User finds a problem with in > the kernel I want him to be able to run LTP on his box to get detailed > testing information that someone else can analyze and use to solve the > problem.
A good aim. I was thinking in terms of a testing farm a la SourceForge for this idea. To support home use, writing to a file using O_SYNC is probably the most flexible? Writing to a printer as ASCII would probably be better where possible; if/when the machine reboots, the printer would just print up to the point where the box died, and then spit the page out.
> > > In all the cases where I've tested the kernel, it has been a matter of > > > 'Here is the test which crashes the kernel, let's see if it crashes this > > > one, too' and I just want to throw this into the consideration of how to > > > best create a test harness. > > > > Indeed. The other question is, how to handle deadlocks? I'd probably use a > > serial console, being logged by another machine; if the machine dies, just > > reboot, then have the machine resume testing where it left off. > > That would be the easy case. How do you reboot a locked machine over a > serial console?
On a testing farm, you just use a remote switch (APC sell something along these lines for this purpose, IIRC): the monitoring machine will just pull the plug remotely. For home use, you'd have to be sitting nearby unless you have a watchdog card installed, I suspect?
James.
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