On Tuesday, December 17, 2019 2:33:06 AM MST Kamil Paral wrote:
On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 12:23 AM John M. Harris Jr
<johnmh(a)splentity.com>
wrote:
> > We have 2 release-blocking media, so the total time is somewhere between
> > 2-3 hours (likely closer to 2 hours, because netinst installation is way
> > faster due to downloading packages from the net instead of copying them
> > from the disc). That's not the main problem, though. The main problem is
> > that during that time, one or two of our test machines in our office is
> > fully occupied with spinning the discs, and we can't use it for anything
> > else. That means all other bare-metal testing needs to wait. As Adam
> > already pointed out, sometimes we need to check the final candidate
> > composes in a single day, i.e. in the standard 8 working hours (and yes,
>
> we
>
> > often work overtime in these cases). Blocking half of our bare-metal
>
> office
>
> > test machines for 2 hours out of 8 is not a small deal.
>
> Do you need more test hardware? Honestly, that's what this sounds like.
Not really. Our office cubicle is unfortunately not inflatable. We have 2-3
dedicated bare-metal test machines available during the test cycle, and we
can't really fit any more.
> > It's simple to say "no user interaction is required", but
that's not
> > completely true either. If you want to do the QA job properly, you need
>
> to
>
> > have an eye on the media consistency check, because we've had issues in
>
> the
>
> > past where it timed out and either considered it a pass or fail (both
> > are
> > incorrect). So you can't simply walk away and come back and consider it
>
> OK
>
> > when it reached the installer, you really need to watch the progress in
> > certain critical points. Once the UI is ready, it is much slower than
>
> when
>
> > booting from USB. So you often spend 10, 20 seconds staring at the
> > screen
> > until it decides to do something.
>
> Is that due to the hardware under test, or is it a result of scratched
> media?
Due to the fact that optical media are just glacially slow. I don't know if
you have ever tried Workstation Live from a fast USB3 media, but the
difference is night and day.
Optical media is not *that* slow though. There's certainly a difference, but
optical isn't so slow that you have to stare at a blank screen while it loads.
--
John M. Harris, Jr.
Splentity