From Fedora Project Wiki

< FWN‎ | Beats

(first draft of beat for 167)
(create fwn 288 draft)
 
(127 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 2: Line 2:
== QualityAssurance ==
== QualityAssurance ==


In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA</ref>.
In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA</ref>. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Join</ref>.
 
We apologize for the lack of a QA section for the last few issues of FWN: the QA team was very busy with Fedora 16 validation testing. This issue catches up with the QA team news from the last several weeks.


Contributing Writer: [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]]
Contributing Writer: [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]]
Line 10: Line 12:
=== Test Days ===
=== Test Days ===


This week's regular test day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-12</ref> was on the Intel graphics card driver, particularly kernel mode setting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/IntelKMS</ref>. [[KristianHoegsberg|Kristian Høgsberg]] was the developer present. Several people showed up and provided valuable testing for the full set of test cases on various chips, giving a good overview of the current state of the driver in several situations. A follow-up event will be held before the release of Fedora 11 to check on the progress of fixes for the identified issues. Further testing in this area is still very helpful: the Wiki page contains full instructions on performing the range of tests, and the Results table is still available, so anyone with an Intel graphics adapter is encouraged to visit the Wiki page, perform the tests, and file bug reports as appropriate.
In the past few weeks, we finished up the Fedora 16 Test Day schedule, with Graphics Test Week taking place at the start of September<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-06_Nouveau</ref> ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon</ref> ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon</ref>, virtualization test day taking place on 2011-09-15<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-15_Virtualization</ref>, another i18n desktop test day on 2011-09-22<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-22_I18n_Desktop</ref>, an ABRT test day on 2011-09-26<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-26_ABRT</ref>, a power management test day on 2011-09-29<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-29_PowerManagement</ref>, printing test day on 2011-10-06<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-06_Printing</ref>, Fedora packager plugin for Eclipse test day on 2011-10-13<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-13_Fedora_Packager_for_Eclipse</ref>, and Cloud SIG test day on 2011-10-20<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-20_Cloud_SIG_Test_Day</ref>. Most of these test days passed off successfully with the work of the developers behind them, despite the QA team being very busy, so many thanks to those who organized and carried out these events, and those who turned up to do the testing.
 
The Fedora 17 Test Day cycle has not yet started. We welcome proposals for test days for the Fedora 17 cycle, and we usually accept all the proposals that are made. You can propose a test day for almost anything, and organize it yourself following the handy guide we provide<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/SOP_Test_Day_management</ref>, or alternatively we can help out with the organization of the event. Information on how to propose a test day is available on the Wiki<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/Create</ref>.
 
<references/>


Next week will be special, as two test days are scheduled. A special test day is planned for Tuesday<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-17</ref>, on DeviceKit<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DeviceKit</ref> - the partial HAL replacement scheduled to be included in Fedora 11. Anyone can help with this testing, so please come along and help out at the test day! The regular test day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-19</ref> will be on the Xfce desktop environment<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xfce</ref>, particularly the new 4.6 release that will be part of Fedora 11. If Xfce is your desktop environment of choice, please come along and help make sure it'll be working properly in Fedora 11.
=== Fedora 16 preparation ===


The DeviceKit test day will be held on Tuesday (2009-03-17) and the Xfce test day on Thursday (2009-03-19) in the #fedora-qa channel on Freenode IRC. Please come by to help make sure these features will be in shiny working order for Fedora 11!
As mentioned above, Fedora 16 release validation took up almost all of the QA team's time during the last few months, with very challenging Beta and Final releases. There were a total of 12 candidate builds for Beta and Final combined, and the whole team put in tireless work running the set of validation tests against each build and then investigating and verifying the large number of blocker bugs identified. The team was able to contribute to the release eventually going ahead with only a one week slip to the Beta schedule and no slip of the Final schedule, a considerable achievement in the light of the many complex changes in the Fedora 16 feature list.


<references/>
<references/>


=== Weekly meetings ===
=== Release criteria updates ===


The QA group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-03-11. The full log is available<ref>http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/fedora-qa/fedora-qa-20090311.log.html</ref>. After a bracing discussion on how to send an apparently empty line to IRC, [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] reported little progress in his work on making the Semantic test result reporting extension for mediawiki available as a package. He also deferred investigation of X.org test suites for next week. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] noted that he had discussed one such suite, rendercheck, with [[User:bskeggs|Ben Skeggs]], and he will make a package available either as a scratch build or in the official repository to be used in the upcoming nouveau Test Day. The group agreed to see if it might be useful for other graphics test events.
Largely as a result of the Fedora 16 validation process, there were several adjustments and additions to the release criteria in recent weeks. After discussion of the proposed kickstart / unattended installation release criterion concluded, [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] reported that he had committed his proposed modifications<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102599.html</ref>. He also committed a change to reflect the increased priority of EFI installations from Fedora 17 onwards<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102600.html</ref>.


[[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] and [[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]] reported that they had not had time to look at a method for identifying bugs caused by GCC 4.4 miscompilation issues. The group evaluated the response to the known bugs in this area, and decided that the responses suggested most issues would be resolved by fixes to GCC itself, and this should not cause major problems.
Adam also passed on a suggestion from [[User:Pjones|Peter Jones]] to improve the clarity of the virtualization criteria<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102601.html</ref>. After an extensive discussion, an elegant wording suggestion from Albert Graham<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102636.html</ref> was eventually accepted and committed<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103680.html</ref>.


[[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] reported that he and [[User:Fcami|François Cami]] had spoken to the intel and radeon driver developers about holding test days for those graphics drivers, and were in the process of organizing both events.
[[User:Tflink|Tim Flink]] raised the question to what extent support for Xen virtualization should be included in the release criteria<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/103127.html</ref>. After a similarly enthusiastic discussion, it was eventually agreed that Xen DomU support - effectively, the ability to install successfully as a Xen guest - should be a Final release criterion<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103678.html</ref>.


[[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] reported that a serious bug in squashfs in the Rawhide kernel was causing Rawhide installation to be impossible. This was to be fixed by a kernel update in the following day's Rawhide (which turned out indeed to be the case). He also reported that initial signing of packages for F11 was in progress in chunks, in order to ease the synchronization load for the mirroring system.
Adam also proposed downgrading some rarely-used kickstart deployment methods from Beta to Final in the criteria, requiring only the most commonly-used to be working at Beta stage<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103557.html</ref>.


Jesse also reported that work on the substantial rewrite of Anaconda's storage code was in progress. The group agreed that this was quite close to the beta release, and that it seemed possible there could still be substantial problems in the code at the time the beta should be released, so discussed what kind of problems might be acceptable for a beta release and what might not. Despite some concern on the part of [[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]], the group agreed to evaluate issues on a case-by-case basis, taking care to make sure all issues in this area were added to the beta release blocker bug so they would be evaluated.
Finally, Adam proposed a criterion for i18n (translation) issues<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103588.html</ref>. After discussion, the proposal was agreed upon at a blocker review meeting later in the week<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103679.html</ref>.


The Bugzappers group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-03-10. The full log is available<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2009-Mar-10</ref>. [[User:Poelstra|John Poelstra]] reminded the group to evaluate all bugs with regard to the Fedora 11 blocker ('F11Blocker') and Fedora 11 target ('F11Target') blocker bugs. He also announced that Monday 2009-03-16 will be a bug blocker day, for the maintainers, QA and release engineering groups to go over the list of blocker bugs.
<references/>


The group agreed to require a short self-introduction email to fedora-test-list as the criterion for becoming a member of the fedorabugs group in FAS. [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] volunteered to write up this procedure into an SOP, as discussed at the previous meeting.
=== Update policy changes ===


The group again discussed the Wiki re-design, particularly how the front page should be laid out and how the main information flow should work from there. Everyone agreed that it was important to keep the front page short and simple and lay out a clear linear path for potential new members to follow. The group agreed to wait for [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] to finish his combination of [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk's]] draft<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tk009/bugzappers</ref> and [[User:Beland|Christopher Beland's]] draft<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Beland/BugZappers</ref>, with reference to the ideas discussed in the meeting. The group also discussed the new Tracking page (since re-arranged to become Components and Triagers <ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Components_and_Triagers</ref>), and agreed it was a good layout, but some of the content that had been merged into it should not have been. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] suggested that the statistics be updated regularly and automatically via Brennan Ashton's metrics script.
In September, [[User:Karsten|Karsten Hopp]] raised the issue of a security update for Fedora 14 which had been languishing in the updates-testing repository for some time<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102493.html</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] explained that the amount of testers working on older releases was limited, and that the actual karma requirements for updates to be accepted were controlled by FESCo (the Fedora engineering steering committee), not the QA group<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102497.html</ref>. [[User:Cra|Chuck Anderson]] noted that he had the update in question installed, but was struggling for lack of information on how to test it properly<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102503.html</ref>. [[User:Sundaram|Rahul Sundaram]] suggested that Karsten file a ticket with FESCo to raise the issue<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102502.html</ref>, and Karsten did<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/664</ref>.


[[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] reported that he had updated the bug workflow graphic<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow</ref> to reflect that NEEDINFO is no longer a status, but some members had trouble seeing the updated graphic due to caching issues.
That ticket was merged with another similar one reported by Doug Ledford<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/667</ref>, which became a topic of concern to FESCo. After several rounds of discussions, FESCo first decided to relax the requirements for critical path updates somewhat by allowing them to be sent through to the stable repository without the 'required' karma after a period of two weeks had elapsed<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/bodhi/ticket/642</ref>, and later proposed removing the requirement for critical path updates to receive positive karma from a proven tester<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/667#comment:26</ref>, effectively a proposal to end the proven tester system, as this is the only function it serves.


The group discussed the potential new meeting time with reference to the availability matrix<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugzappers_meeting_matrix</ref>, but did not yet come to a decision.
The QA group discussed this proposal at the weekly meeting of 2011-11-07<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20111107</ref>, agreeing that, while they had some reservations about the proposal, they were not definitely opposed to it, and recognized that critical path updates not receiving the currently-required karma is a significant problem.
 
The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-03-18 at 1700 UTC (note changed time, in UTC reference frame) in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-03-11 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.


<references/>
<references/>


=== Bugzappers Wiki reorganization ===
=== Update candidate notification ===


[[User:Beland|Christopher Beland]] worked hard to revise several areas of the Wiki, including a new Tracking page<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Tracking</ref> which combined pages on active triagers, priority triage components, group goals and finding bugs<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00437.html</ref>. After feedback from [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]], [[User:Poelstra|John Poelstra]] and others, this was reduced simply to the Components and Triagers page<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Components_and_Triagers</ref>, leaving the others separate for now. Christopher updated these pages also. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] submitted his combined new front page draft for the group's review<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00662.html</ref>.
Samuel Greenfeld asked if there was any system to notify testers of new candidate updates for specific packages, and to determine what packages are being actively used on a system<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102981.html</ref>. There were no takers for the second question, but for the first, [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] suggested using yum parameters that would allow one to specify only certain packages be pulled from the updates-testing repository<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102982.html</ref>, and [[User:till|Till Maas]] pointed out that Bodhi can actually provide per-package RSS notifications<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102992.html</ref>.


<references/>
<references/>


=== Advertising triage days ===
=== Proven tester meetings ===
 
As a response to the concerns about candidate updates not receiving enough karma, [[User:Kevin|Kevin Fenzi]] ran a series of weekly proven tester meetups<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102869.html</ref> from 2011-09-21 to 2011-10-26. Recaps of these meetings are available in the mailing list archives<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/103000.html</ref> <ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103341.html</ref> <ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103585.html</ref> <ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103840.html</ref> <ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/104043.html</ref>.


[[User:Beland|Christopher Beland]] pointed out that triage days are not advertised anywhere in the Wiki<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00695.html</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] apologized and explained<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00713.html</ref> that this is because he is short on time at present as he is taking an internal Red Hat training course during his work days. He welcomed any help from the group in adding information about the triage day events to the Wiki.
Kevin also proposed an updates-testing-info mailing list, containing only the mails about new packages in updates-testing<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/103163.html</ref>. However, the consensus was against the idea, as it was felt that it was easy enough to simply filter the desired mails from the test mailing list for those who did not want to read the other traffic.


<references/>
<references/>


=== Metrics ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===


[[User:Beland|Christopher Beland]] reported<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00693.html</ref> that he could not access the pages for Brennan Ashton's triage metrics reporting system. Brennan thanked him for the feedback<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00727.html</ref> and explained that there was a hardware issue on the server. [[User:Poelstra|John Poelstra]] suggested<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-March/msg00739.html</ref> that the code for the metric system be hosted in the Bugzappers group's git repository.
[[User:Ankursinha|Ankur Sinha]] asked whether anyone from the QA team would be present at the upcoming FUDCon in Pune, India and able to do a presentation on the group's activities<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103712.html</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] replied that unfortunately none of the Red Hat team would be at the conference, but encouraged Ankur to take a shot at giving a presentation himself<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103728.html</ref>. A S Alam then stepped up to volunteer to lead a QA session<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103739.html</ref>. His session was scheduled for 2011-11-04<ref>http://fudcon.in/sessions/fedora-testing</ref>, but we have no report on the event - if you were present, please write to the mailing list and let us know how it went!


<references/>
<references/>

Latest revision as of 05:10, 17 November 2011

QualityAssurance

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1]. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page[2].

We apologize for the lack of a QA section for the last few issues of FWN: the QA team was very busy with Fedora 16 validation testing. This issue catches up with the QA team news from the last several weeks.

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

Test Days

In the past few weeks, we finished up the Fedora 16 Test Day schedule, with Graphics Test Week taking place at the start of September[1] ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon</ref> ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon</ref>, virtualization test day taking place on 2011-09-15[2], another i18n desktop test day on 2011-09-22[3], an ABRT test day on 2011-09-26[4], a power management test day on 2011-09-29[5], printing test day on 2011-10-06[6], Fedora packager plugin for Eclipse test day on 2011-10-13[7], and Cloud SIG test day on 2011-10-20[8]. Most of these test days passed off successfully with the work of the developers behind them, despite the QA team being very busy, so many thanks to those who organized and carried out these events, and those who turned up to do the testing.

The Fedora 17 Test Day cycle has not yet started. We welcome proposals for test days for the Fedora 17 cycle, and we usually accept all the proposals that are made. You can propose a test day for almost anything, and organize it yourself following the handy guide we provide[9], or alternatively we can help out with the organization of the event. Information on how to propose a test day is available on the Wiki[10].

Fedora 16 preparation

As mentioned above, Fedora 16 release validation took up almost all of the QA team's time during the last few months, with very challenging Beta and Final releases. There were a total of 12 candidate builds for Beta and Final combined, and the whole team put in tireless work running the set of validation tests against each build and then investigating and verifying the large number of blocker bugs identified. The team was able to contribute to the release eventually going ahead with only a one week slip to the Beta schedule and no slip of the Final schedule, a considerable achievement in the light of the many complex changes in the Fedora 16 feature list.


Release criteria updates

Largely as a result of the Fedora 16 validation process, there were several adjustments and additions to the release criteria in recent weeks. After discussion of the proposed kickstart / unattended installation release criterion concluded, Adam Williamson reported that he had committed his proposed modifications[1]. He also committed a change to reflect the increased priority of EFI installations from Fedora 17 onwards[2].

Adam also passed on a suggestion from Peter Jones to improve the clarity of the virtualization criteria[3]. After an extensive discussion, an elegant wording suggestion from Albert Graham[4] was eventually accepted and committed[5].

Tim Flink raised the question to what extent support for Xen virtualization should be included in the release criteria[6]. After a similarly enthusiastic discussion, it was eventually agreed that Xen DomU support - effectively, the ability to install successfully as a Xen guest - should be a Final release criterion[7].

Adam also proposed downgrading some rarely-used kickstart deployment methods from Beta to Final in the criteria, requiring only the most commonly-used to be working at Beta stage[8].

Finally, Adam proposed a criterion for i18n (translation) issues[9]. After discussion, the proposal was agreed upon at a blocker review meeting later in the week[10].

Update policy changes

In September, Karsten Hopp raised the issue of a security update for Fedora 14 which had been languishing in the updates-testing repository for some time[1]. Adam Williamson explained that the amount of testers working on older releases was limited, and that the actual karma requirements for updates to be accepted were controlled by FESCo (the Fedora engineering steering committee), not the QA group[2]. Chuck Anderson noted that he had the update in question installed, but was struggling for lack of information on how to test it properly[3]. Rahul Sundaram suggested that Karsten file a ticket with FESCo to raise the issue[4], and Karsten did[5].

That ticket was merged with another similar one reported by Doug Ledford[6], which became a topic of concern to FESCo. After several rounds of discussions, FESCo first decided to relax the requirements for critical path updates somewhat by allowing them to be sent through to the stable repository without the 'required' karma after a period of two weeks had elapsed[7], and later proposed removing the requirement for critical path updates to receive positive karma from a proven tester[8], effectively a proposal to end the proven tester system, as this is the only function it serves.

The QA group discussed this proposal at the weekly meeting of 2011-11-07[9], agreeing that, while they had some reservations about the proposal, they were not definitely opposed to it, and recognized that critical path updates not receiving the currently-required karma is a significant problem.

Update candidate notification

Samuel Greenfeld asked if there was any system to notify testers of new candidate updates for specific packages, and to determine what packages are being actively used on a system[1]. There were no takers for the second question, but for the first, Adam Williamson suggested using yum parameters that would allow one to specify only certain packages be pulled from the updates-testing repository[2], and Till Maas pointed out that Bodhi can actually provide per-package RSS notifications[3].

Proven tester meetings

As a response to the concerns about candidate updates not receiving enough karma, Kevin Fenzi ran a series of weekly proven tester meetups[1] from 2011-09-21 to 2011-10-26. Recaps of these meetings are available in the mailing list archives[2] [3] [4] [5] [6].

Kevin also proposed an updates-testing-info mailing list, containing only the mails about new packages in updates-testing[7]. However, the consensus was against the idea, as it was felt that it was easy enough to simply filter the desired mails from the test mailing list for those who did not want to read the other traffic.

QA group representation at FUDCon Pune

Ankur Sinha asked whether anyone from the QA team would be present at the upcoming FUDCon in Pune, India and able to do a presentation on the group's activities[1]. Adam Williamson replied that unfortunately none of the Red Hat team would be at the conference, but encouraged Ankur to take a shot at giving a presentation himself[2]. A S Alam then stepped up to volunteer to lead a QA session[3]. His session was scheduled for 2011-11-04[4], but we have no report on the event - if you were present, please write to the mailing list and let us know how it went!