[LTP] [RFC] [KDUMP] [PROPOSED WORK] kdump on Xen hypervisor and guests, more tests for utilities, like makedumpfile, mkdumprd, kexec etc

[Cai Qian]

Hi Subrata,

From: Subrata Modak <subrata at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [LTP] [RFC] [KDUMP] [PROPOSED WORK] kdump on Xen hypervisor and guests, more tests for utilities, like makedumpfile, mkdumprd, kexec etc
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:43:02 +0530

> On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 10:16 +0800, Cai Qian wrote:
> > Hi Subrata,
> > 
> > From: Subrata Modak <subrata at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> > Subject: Re: [LTP] [RFC] [KDUMP] [PROPOSED WORK] kdump on Xen hypervisor and guests, more tests for utilities, like makedumpfile, mkdumprd, kexec etc
> > Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:02:47 +0530
> > 
> > > Cai,
> > > 
> > > Any headway in this front ?
> > > 
> > 
> > I have all test cases finished, but I am working on implementing a
> > suitable harness to run those tests.
> 
> Thanks Cai. Happy to know that you are done with all the test cases, and
> only the integration part is pending. I am little bit confused when you
> say that you are working on implementing a suitable harness to run those
> tests. Does that mean that the way the present LTP-Kdump tests are run
> is not suitable to accommodate the enhancements/additions that you are
> doing to the LTP-Kdump ?
> 

What I have already done is to create several basic building blocks for
testing of Kdump. For example, setup-bare-metal, config-ext3,
crash-sysrq-c, crash-lkdtm, analyse-crash etc. You probably could guess
what they are doing from their names. Then, we could combine those
building blocks to create test cases, which should give us more freedom
and flexibility to test things. I am going to include some pre-defined
test cases into LTP as well. I might propose new tests as LTP-kdump-ng.

> I do not mind in having a nice harness within LTP for executing the
> LTP-Kdump tests, but i would hope that the new harness should also
> include the existing LTP-Kdump tests, so that you use the same (new
> harness) to tests everything in LTP-Kdump. Let me know what you think
> for the same.
> 

The problem that I am trying to figure it out is that we need a suitable
harness to schedule those tests and report results. For example, there
is a test case is like the following,

setup-bare-metal
config-ext3:uuid
crash-sysrq-c
analyse-crash

The first and the third steps requires to reboot the machine, so we need
a harness could resume execution of tests after reboot. I am thinking of
using cron job as in existing LTP-kdump tests, or a tests injector
running as a daemon, or something else.

New tests should incorporate all existing tests and coverage of Kdump in
LTP.

CaiQian

> Regards--
> Subrata
> 
> > 
> > CaiQian
> > 
> > > Regards--
> > > Subrata
> > > 
> > > On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 05:11 +0530, Subrata Modak wrote:
> > > > Hi Cai,
> > > > 
> > > > Some patches in Bits and Pieces regarding this nearby ?
> > > > 
> > > > Regards--
> > > > Subrata
> > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Yes. Initally, I put this item to a relative low priority, partly
> > > > > because kdump config options and init scripts are tend to be
> > > > > distro-specific, so it won't be easy to write portable tests for
> > > > > different distros. In addition, lots of config options are not easy to
> > > > > be tested automately, like raw disk target, vfat disk target, and
> > > > > network target etc, as testers have to setup those name manually. But,
> > > > > you are right, those are high priority tests for kexec/kdump in distro
> > > > > release, we tested most of those options manually for RHEL anyway and we
> > > > > had some automated tests of it, which I'll try to submit to LTP as many
> > > > > as possible. For those manual tests, I'll also try to find some ways to
> > > > > automate them. For example, for different dump targets, it is possible
> > > > > to verify the generated initrd file as expected.
> > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > > == increase coverages for new kexec/kdump development efforts ==
> > > > > > > - new reserved region syntax in Kernel.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Another important thing we need to focus on is driver testing. Drivers
> > > > > > can fail to initialize in second kernel and kdump will fail. Can we do
> > > > > > something so that we can do following.
> > > > > >
> > > > > 
> > > > > That isn't something I have not thought of. For RHEL release testing, we
> > > > > will have a workflow to run those tests on any storage/network drivers,
> > > > > and it will report back testing results and driver matrix. However, this
> > > > > workflow is very distro-specific, and depends on the test farm it is
> > > > > using, so it does not make any sense to put it here.
> > > > > 
> > > > > > - Collect the machine statistics on which kdump was tested and send
> > > > > >   the reports to a common place. Especially capture the storage/network
> > > > > >   driver data which can be probably be available through LTP site.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > That sounds like a good idea to me.
> > > > > 
> > > > > > - Also capture how much memory was reserved on what architecture and
> > > > > >   whether it worked or not. This will help us verify for sure that how
> > > > > >  much memory to reserve for second kernel on various architectures.
> > > > > >
> > > > > 
> > > > > This is something could be done. I'll have a look at it.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > CaiQian
> > > > > 
> > > > > > Thanks
> > > > > > Vivek
> > > > 
> > > > 
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