Re: [Announce] Linux Test Project

[Nathan Straz]

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.  

> > 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?  

Nate