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== 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]]
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=== Test Days ===
=== Test Days ===


Last week's main track Test Day<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-08-20_ABRT</ref> was on ABRT<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ABRT</ref>, the Automated Bug Reporting Tool. There was a solid turnout of testers and developers, and several bugs were filed and fixed.
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>.


Last weeks' Fit and Finish Test Day<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-08-18_Fit_and_Finish:Printing</ref> was on printing. The Fit and Finish team and some volunteer testers filed several bugs which should improve the friendliness of printing and printing configuration, seven of which have already been fixed.
<references/>


Next week's main track Test Day<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-08-27</ref> will be on Dracut<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Dracut</ref>. Dracut is a new initrd (or, more properly, initramfs) generation tool designed to replace mkinitrd and nash for Fedora 12. An initrd or initramfs is the basic pre-built filesystem image that is initialized along with the kernel when your system first boots up, allowing the necessary hardware to be initialized to access your real storage devices and thus permitting the main boot process to proceed, so obviously it is a critical component of any system; if there's a problem with Dracut, it could very well stop your system from being able to boot at all. So it's vital that we get as much testing as possible on as wide a variety of hardware as we can. We're particularly interested in testing on more complex setups, where the root partition is on a RAID or LVM array, or even LVM-on-RAID, or where the root partition is mounted across a network connection. There will be live CD images available for testing, so you can test without a Rawhide install too. Please come along and help out! The Test Day will be held on Thursday 2009-08-27 in IRC #fedora-test-day (note the change of IRC channel).
=== Fedora 16 preparation ===


If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 12 cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in QA Trac<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/</ref>.
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.


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


The QA group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-08-17. The full log is available<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20090817</ref>. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] reported that a first release candidate for the Fedora 12 Alpha had been uploaded to alt.fedoraproject.org, the installation test matrix<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Fedora_12_Alpha_RC1_Install_Test_Results</ref> had been created, and that testing was needed to fill it out. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] asked how the blocker list looked, and James reported that it contained only two bugs, both in MODIFIED state, and both appearing to have been fixed. On overall readiness, James and [[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] reported that the installer seems to be in good shape, but the final round of testing would confirm that. Adam felt that X.org was in good shape, certainly good enough for an Alpha release. In general the group felt the current state was good enough for an Alpha release.
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:Wwoods|Will Woods]] reported on the progress of the AutoQA project. He had now implemented a system for all tests to report their results to the autoqa-results list<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/autoqa-results</ref> (sign up for this list if you want to see the results of the AutoQA tests!) He had updated the test writing notes<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Autotest</ref> and fixed the test watcher script so that the tests run regularly, automatically, with no manual intervention needed. He was planning to write a draft of a 'How to write a test' document. He had also made a blog post<ref>http://qa-rockstar.livejournal.com/8215.html</ref> to summarize current progress. [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] pointed out that Petr Splichal is working on a package sanity test tool, and it might be a good idea to integrate his work into the AutoQA framework. [[User:dpravec|David Pravec]] suggested inviting Petr to the next QA meeting to discuss the proposal, and Kamil contacted Petr to ask him to speak to Will.
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:Jlaska|James Laska]] gave an update on Test Day status. He had not seen a post-event report for the Fit and Finish team's Peripherals Test Day, but [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] noted he had run his test day report script on the Peripherals page and it showed 10 NEW, 2 ASSIGNED and one CLOSED bug report. He noted the Fit and Finish Printing Test Day and the main track ABRT Test Day were upcoming, and that [[User:dpravec|David Pravec]] and [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] were running the ABRT event. James asked [[User:Johannbg|Jóhann Guðmundsson]] if he would like to lead the upcoming Dracut Test Day, but Jóhann did not respond, so James promised to find out who would be leading the event later.
[[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>.


The Bugzappers group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-08-18. The full log is available<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-08-18/fedora-meeting.2009-08-18-15.02.log.html</ref>. Niels Haase asked if the switchover in procedure for marking bugs as triaged could be added to the QA project calendar. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] promised to check with [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] whether this could be done.
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>.


Brennan Ashton gave an update on the status of the triage metrics project. He intends to redesign the entire codebase from scratch to make it easier to maintain in the long term, and have the new version online in one month. He had to take down the current implementation temporarily while the server it is hosted on was upgraded, and intended to leave it down until the new code was ready, but [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] asked him to re-enable the existing system once the host server had been upgraded, so there was still some system available. Brennan also stated he might have someone interested in becoming a co-maintainer of the project. Adam wanted to make sure that once the re-design was complete the system would be able to stay in place consistently over the long term, as long term reliable and consistent reporting is vital to the metrics project. Brennan assured him this would be the case.
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 next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-08-24 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-08-25 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.


<references/>
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=== NetworkManager Test Day report ===
=== Update policy changes ===


[[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] reported<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00377.html</ref> on the NetworkManager Test Day held on 2009-08-13, with a list of all bugs reported during the Test Day and their current statuses. He also provided the command he had used to generate the list, for the benefit of others doing future Test Day reports.
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>.


<references/>
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.


=== Alpha release candidates ===
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.
 
[[User:Liam|Liam Li]] and [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] announced the availability of, respectively, Fedora 12 Alpha RC1<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00521.html</ref> and RC2<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00529.html</ref>, together with a plea for group members to test installation of these images and report their result to the test matrices: RC1<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Fedora_12_Alpha_RC1_Install_Test_Results</ref>, and RC2<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Fedora_12_Alpha_RC2_Install_Test_Results</ref>.


<references/>
<references/>


=== DeltaISOs for Alpha test builds ===
=== Update candidate notification ===


Andre Robatino announced the availability of DeltaISOs for going from the Alpha Test Compose to Alpha RC1<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00411.html</ref>, and later for going from Alpha RC1 to Alpha RC2<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00532.html</ref>. If you have downloaded the Test Compose or RC1 and would like to test RC2, please consider using these DeltaISOs to reduce the strain on the server.
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/>


=== Test Day live image creation guide updates ===
=== 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:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] announced<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00428.html</ref> that he had updated the Test Day live image creation guide once more, with some refinements to the included applications and desktop icons.
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/>


=== Daily Rawhide live spins available ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===


[[User:maxamillion|Adam Miller]] announced<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-August/msg00443.html</ref> that, with the help of [[User:Kevin|Kevin Fenzi]] and others, a system was now in place to generate and make available daily Rawhide live images for several spins<ref>http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes</ref>, so it will always be possible to test a bleeding-edge Rawhide system without installing anything to hard disk. Several list members posted heartfelt thanks for their efforts.
[[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!