marcello kernel &ppc64

[linas at austin.ibm.com]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:36:20PM -0600, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
>
> I was hoping the Linux Test project and the stuff OSDL is doing would
> wind up with a 'test suite' that mere mortals with real work to do could
> easily run.

Off-topic, but ...  LTP is OK, but not really a thorough test suite,
it doesn't test many major components (disclaimer: to the best of my
understanding).  My understanding is that its good at single-box
tests, but doesn't really stress network, nfs or device drivers
(disk, scsi, etc).

Testing is, by its very nature, not going to be something that
'mere mortals with work to do' are going to be able to do.
First of all, just obtaining all the hardware and setting up all the
interesting permutations can be a full-time job, esp. if you are
testing networks or NFS or disk, e.g. fibre-channel i/o.  Then
you've got to monitor all of your test machines every now and then,
make sure none of them hung.  Didn't have a period of inexplicable
slowness.  Simply reviewing performance stats for a dozen
machines is time consuming.

Finally, and you'll hate me for saying this: if all your tests are
passing, that means you aren't testing hard enough. Its a full-time
job to figure out how you might be able to break the system, then to
write that test case, and then try to break it.


--linas


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