reversible dual-boot test station
by Chris Murphy
Hi,
I mentioned this in a QA meeting, and have given it enough testing that I think it's broadly usable. If desired it can be copied out of my user account and put up somewhere where QA folks will see it and can modify it as issues or improvements are discovered.
What is it? The idea is to produce a system that can confidently be used for baremetal testing, without risking the primary operating system. While VM's are a great way to test, it's also a really idealized environment that tends to not expose an assortment of bugs that affect particular hardware. But then quite a lot of folks reasonably don't want to upgrade their daily use hardware early on, because they don't want to always have to debug things, or have to figure out how to undo the upgrade if it really goes badly.
Therefore, I present a dual-boot setup offering:
* no re-partitioning;
* no installation step, instead system upgrade is used;
* reversibility, or undoability, i.e. with just a few steps you can delete the "test OS".
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Chrismurphy/Draft/dualboot_teststation
--
Chris Murphy
3 weeks, 4 days
Re: Thoughts welcome: interface between automated test gating and
the "critical path"
by Adam Williamson
On Fri, 2022-09-02 at 08:37 +0000, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote:
> >
> > Now, because I glued openQA to the critpath because it was handy, there
> > are two sets of consequences to a package being in critical path:
> >
> > 1. Tighter Bodhi requirements
> > 2. openQA tests are run, and results gate the update (except Rawhide)
> >
> > So, one of the implicit questions here is, is it OK to keep twinning
> > these two sets of consequences, or should we split them up? Splitting
> > them up kinda implies answer 2) from my original mail: "Keep the
> > current "critical path" concept but define a broader group
> > of "gated packages" somewhere". Because we would then need some new
> > concept that isn't "critical path". As I said, that's more *work* -
> > it'd require us to write new code in several places[0]. Even if we
> > decide it'd be nice to do this, is it nice *enough* to be worth doing
> > that work?
>
> I'd still vote for keeping a single critpath list and using it as
> "the list of packages that require extra care and testing".
>
> As you describe, the original meaning of critpath has shifted, but
> it's because the way we do updates and QA has also shifted. Doing
> gating tests for a package seems much more useful than just keeping
> it longer in 'updates-testing' in hope that somebody discovers an
> important regresion in the second week.
Well, there's a caveat there - openQA doesn't test everything. On the
whole we cover quite a lot with the set of tests that gets run on
updates, but there's certainly lots of potential for there to be
important bugs it misses, that a human tester might catch. So I think
there is still a case for the higher karma requirements too.
>
> So yeah, I don't think it makes sense to do the extra work to split
> the concepts. Also because we have way too many concepts and processes
> in Fedora already.
On the whole, though, I agree with you. I just don't trust my own
opinion because it's obviously biased by what's convenient for me. :D
> > If we don't think it's worth doing that work, then we're kinda stuck
> > with openQA glomming onto the critpath definition to decide which
> > updates to test and gate, because I don't have any other current viable
> > choices for that, really. And we'd have to figure out a critpath
> > definition that's as viable as possible for both purposes.
> >
> >
> > BTW, one other thought I've had in relation to all this is that we
> > could enhance the current critpath definition somewhat. Right now, it's
> > built out of package groups in comps which are kinda topic-separated:
> > there's a critpath-kde, a critpath-gnome, a critpath-server, and so on.
> > But the generated critical path package list is a monolith: it doesn't
> > distinguish between a package that's on the GNOME critpath and a
> > package that's on the KDE critpath, you just get a big list of all
> > critpath packages. It might be nice if we actually did distinguish
> > between those - the critpath definition could keep track of which
> > critpath topic(s) a package is included in, and Bodhi could display
> > that information in the web UI and provide it via the API. That way
> > manual testers could get a bit more info on why a package is critpath
> > and what areas to test, and openQA could potentially target its test
> > runs to conserve resources a bit, though this might require a bit more
> > coding work on the gating stuff now I think about it.
>
> That sounds useful. We only need a volunteer to figure out the details
> and do the work ;)
I actually did a huge rewrite of the thing that generates the critpath
data this week, and it probably wouldn't be tooooo much work, honestly.
The most annoying bit would be the Bodhi frontend stuff, but that's
because I'm bad at frontend dev in general. :P But yeah, this is
definitely off in sky-castle land. I'll add it to my ever-growing list
of sky-castle projects to do when I get a couple of years of spare
time...
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA
IRC: adamw | Twitter: adamw_ha
https://www.happyassassin.net
7 months
Plan / proposal: enable openQA update testing and potentially
gating on Rawhide updates
by Adam Williamson
Hi folks!
We've had openQA testing of updates for stable and branched releases,
and gating based on those tests, enabled for a while now. I believe
this is going quite well, and I think we addressed the issues reported
when we first enabled gating - Bodhi's gating status updates work more
smoothly now, and openQA respects Bodhi's "re-run tests" button so
failed tests can be re-triggered.
A few weeks ago, I enabled testing of Rawhide updates in the openQA
lab/stg instance. This was to see how smoothly the tests run, how often
we run into unexpected failures or problems, and whether the hardware
resources we have are sufficient for the extra load.
So far this has been going more smoothly than I anticipated, if
anything. The workers seem to keep up with the test load, even though
one out of three worker systems for the stg instance is currently out
of commission (we're using it to investigate a bug). We do get
occasional failures which seem to be related to Rawhide kernel slowness
(e.g. operations timing out that usually don't otherwise time out), but
on the whole, the level of false failures is (I would say) acceptably
low, enough that my current regime of checking the test results daily
and restarting failed ones that don't seem to indicate a real bug
should be sufficient.
So, I'd like to propose that we enable Rawhide update testing on the
production openQA instance also. This would cause results to appear on
the Automated Tests tab in Bodhi, but they would be only informational
(and unless the update was gated by a CI test, or somehow otherwise
configured not to be pushed automatically, updates would continue to be
pushed 'stable' almost immediately on creation, regardless of the
openQA results).
More significantly, I'd also propose that we turn on gating on openQA
results for Rawhide updates. This would mean Rawhide updates would be
held from going 'stable' (and included in the next compose) until the
gating openQA tests had run and passed. We may want to do this a bit
after turning on the tests; perhaps Fedora 37 branch point would be a
natural time to do it.
Currently this would usually mean a wait from update submission to
'stable push' (which really means that the build goes into the
buildroot, and will go into the next Rawhide compose when it happens)
of somewhere between 45 minutes and a couple of hours. It would also
mean that if Rawhide updates for inter-dependent packages are not
correctly grouped, the dependent update(s) will fail testing and be
gated until the update they depend on has passed testing and been
pushed. The tests for the dependent update(s) would then need to be re-
run, either by someone hitting the button in Bodhi or an openQA admin
noticing and restarting them, before the dependent update(s) could be
pushed.
In the worst case, if updated packages A and B both need the other to
work correctly but the updates are submitted separately, both updates
may fail tests and be blocked. This could only be resolved by waiving
the failures, or replacing the separate updates with an update
containing both packages.
All of those considerations are already true for stable and branched
releases, but people are probably more used to grouping updates for
stable and branched than doing it for Rawhide, and the typical flow of
going from a build to an update provides more opportunity to create
grouped updates for branched/stable. For Rawhide the easiest way to do
it if you need to do it is to do the builds in a side tag and use
Bodhi's ability to create updates from a side tag.
As with branched/stable, only critical path updates would have the
tests run and be gated on the results. Non-critpath updates would be
unaffected. (There's a small allowlist of non-critpath packages for
which the tests are also run, but they are not currently gated on the
results).
I think doing this could really help us keep Rawhide solid and avoid
introducing major compose-breaking bugs, at minimal cost. But it's a
significant change and I wanted to see what folks think. In particular,
if you find the existing gating of updates for stable/branched releases
to cause problems in any way, I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks folks!
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA
IRC: adamw | Twitter: adamw_ha
https://www.happyassassin.net
9 months, 1 week
Fedora Linux 38 blocker status summary
by Ben Cotton
We've branched F38 from Rawhide, so it's time to start everyone's
favorite Friday email from Ben! The F38 Beta freeze begins on 21
February. The current target release date is the early target date
(2023-03-14).
Action summary
====================
Accepted blockers
-----------------
1–3. distribution — {Workstation,Everything,Server} boot x86_64 image
exceeds maximum size — ASSIGNED
ACTION: Relevant Teams to reduce image size or increase the limit
Proposed blockers
-----------------
1. anaconda — installer fails to boot in text mode or rescue mode with
systemd 253 — MODIFIED
ACTION: Maintainers to build an update that includes upstream PR
2. grub2 — ext4 filessystem support missing — NEW
ACTION: Maintainer to diagnose issue
NEEDINFO: ausil
3. kwin — kwin_wayland often crashed when used as the sddm Wayland
compositor and logging out of Plasma resulting in a black screen — NEW
ACTION: Maintainer to diagnose issue
4. mesa — KDE crashes on start with mesa-23.0.0~rc3-3.fc38 — ASSIGNED
ACTION: Maintainer to diagnose issue
Bug-by-bug detail
=============
Accepted blockers
-----------------
1–3. distribution — {Workstation,Everything,Server} boot x86_64 image
exceeds maximum size — ASSIGNED
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2149246
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2151495
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2151497
Image sizes exceed the specified limits. The choices are to either
shrink the image by removing packages or to riase the limits.
Proposed blockers
-----------------
1. anaconda — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2165433 — MODIFIED
installer fails to boot in text mode or rescue mode with systemd 253
anaconda is writing systemd units to an unexpected area. Upstream PR
4534 contains a candidate fix:
https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/pull/4534
2. grub2 — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2166412 — NEW
ext4 filessystem support missing
Between grub2-2.06-76 and grub2-2.06-78, grub2 apparently lost the
ability to detect ext4 filesystems.
3. kwin — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2168034 — NEW
kwin_wayland often crashed when used as the sddm Wayland compositor
and logging out of Plasma resulting in a black screen
Logging out of Plasma sometimes triggers a kwin crash. This may be
limited to running in a virtual machine.
4. mesa — https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2164667 — ASSIGNED
KDE crashes on start with mesa-23.0.0~rc3-3.fc38
A recent mesa update caused both GNOME and KDE to crash on start.
Update FEDORA-2023-40b973fa06 fixed GNOME, but KDE is still seeing
this issue. The root cause is still uncertain.
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
11 months, 2 weeks
new criterion proposal: Window manager functionality
by Kamil Paral
Related to a recently proposed blocker [1][2], I propose a new release
criterion which would cover such cases. Here it is:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The desktop environment must work correctly when displaying common
application content - that includes regular application windows, video
output, games and possibly other common content. Regular operations like
windows close/resize/maximize/minimize/fullscreen (when
supported/applicable), windows switching, using windows on virtual
workspaces, and similar common operations must behave as expected.
Footnote - "What does this cover?":
A small number of misbehaving applications is not a violation of this
criterion. The goal of this criterion is to ensure general functionality
for different types of applications and their operations. An example of a
violation would be e.g. if a significant number of QT applications couldn't
be resized (but they should be), or if all Java applications failed to
display any content.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think this criterion could target F38 Beta Release Criteria [3] or Basic
Release Criteria [4].
Please tell me your thoughts, thanks!
Kamil
[1] https://pagure.io/fedora-qa/blocker-review/issue/1102
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2178167
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_38_Beta_Release_Criteria
[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Basic_Release_Criteria
11 months, 2 weeks
2023-04-03 @ 15:00 UTC - Fedora QA Meeting
by Adam Williamson
# Fedora Quality Assurance Meeting
# Date: 2023-04-03
# Time: 15:00 UTC
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/UTCHowto)
# Location: #fedora-meeting on irc.libera.chat
Greetings testers!
It's meeting time again!
If anyone has any other items for the agenda, please reply to this
email and suggest them! Thanks.
== Proposed Agenda Topics ==
1. Previous meeting follow-up
2. Window manager release criterion proposal
3. Fedora 38 status
4. Test Day / community event status
5. Open floor
--
Adam Williamson (he/him/his)
Fedora QA
Fedora Chat: @adamwill:fedora.im | Mastodon: @adamw(a)fosstodon.org
https://www.happyassassin.net
11 months, 2 weeks
test kernels 6.2.x in F37 - an ultimate killer
by lejeczek
Hi guys.
Just to let you know - all the kernels I tried, x.5 tin x.7
, kill the system...
.. when some video in a browser - as I do not playback any
videos allow cannot comment there - is played or paused and
some resizing or switching or showing thumbnails/miniatures
(tabs) is show/played/takes place, then Fedora starts
blinking my both monitors, laptop's builtin & external Dell.
Blinking slow, black & desktop view alternately, at ~1 sec
intervals then about ~1 min later both monitors switch black
& stay that way.
From the very blink system is irresponsible - hard
power-cycle is a must.
Interestingly(?) audio continues - until of course, all goes
black - to playback okey.
Nothing else is from koji/test, up to date from repos OS.
System - Thinkpad e14 g2 (AMD)
regards, L.
11 months, 3 weeks
Fedora 38 Upgrade Test Day 2023-03-28
by Sumantro Mukherjee
Hey All,
As we come closer to Fedora 38 release dates, it's time to test upgrades.
Fedora 38 has a lot of changesets and it becomes essential that we
test the graphical upgrade methods as well as the command line.
As a part of this test day[0], we will test upgrading from a full
updated, F36 and F37 to the F38 for all architectures(x86_64,ARM,aarch
64) and variants(WS,cloud,server,silverblue,IoT).
The results can be submitted here[1]
As usual, we hang out on the #fedora-test-day, should you have questions.
[0] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2023-03-28_F38_Upgrade_Test_Day
[1] https://testdays.fedoraproject.org/events/154
--
//sumantro
Fedora QE
TRIED AND PERSONALLY TESTED, ERGO TRUSTED
11 months, 3 weeks
Possible problem with texi2dvi on F38
by José Abílio Matos
Hi,
while building from source the octave development (to become octave 9) I get
a problem at the end:
"""
TEXI2DVI doc/interpreter/octave.dvi
/usr/bin/texi2dvi: Your TeX installation appears to be broken - texi2dvi
cannot determine auxiliary files output from a TeX run.
You may need to install TeX, or change the values of your PATH, TEX
or PDFTEX environment variables in order to proceed.
"""
In the end this is harmless since the only issue is that the documentation is
not converted to pdf.
In Fedora 38 texlive has been updated to texlive 2022 and I do not have any
problem with any other application that uses texlive (e.g. when using latex).
Does anyone has seen a problem like this before?
If not I will fill a report in bugzila.
Regards,
--
José Abílio Matos
11 months, 3 weeks