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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>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-03_SoaS</ref> was on Sugar on a Stickthe Fedora-derived USB stick distribution which features the Sugar desktop environment that is the default desktop for the OLPC project. Not too many people showed up to test, but we did get a solid set of results, and this was the first test day to experiment with a new result reporting system based on the Semantic MediaWiki plugin.
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>.


This coming week is special from a Test Day perspective: it's Video Test Week! There will be not one but three main track Test Days, one for each of the major video adapter manufacturers. Wednesday 2009-09-09 is ATI/AMD Radeon Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-09_Radeon</ref>. Thursday 2009-09-10 is NVIDIA Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-10_Nouveau</ref>. And last but not least, Friday 2009-09-11 is Intel graphics Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-11_Intel</ref>. As always, graphics drivers are one of the most vital parts of the Fedora experience, and the three main drivers have received their usual round of significant changes since the last release, so we encourage everyone to come out on the appropriate Test Day for their hardware and help test. There will be live images available, so you don't need Rawhide - or even Fedora - installed to test: you just need to show up, download a live image, run some simple tests to see how well the graphics work, and report your results. This will help us immensely to make sure Fedora 12 has good support for as much graphics hardware as possible, so please do come along! Each Test Day will run all day and be held in Freenode IRC #fedora-test-day. If you're not sure how to use IRC, see this page<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_IRC</ref>.
<references/>


Next week's Fit and Finish<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fit_and_Finish</ref> project Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-08_Fit_and_Finish:Sharing</ref> will be on sharing - sharing files, printers, music, and even remote desktop functionality. This area is critical to many users but often overlooked, so please come along to help refine it! The Test Day will be held on Tuesday 2009-09-08 in Freenode IRC #fedora-test-day.
=== 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.


<references/>
<references/>


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


The QA group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-08-31. The full log is available<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20090831</ref>. [[User:dpravec|David Pravec]] reported that he had created the test-announce mailing list<ref>http://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test-announce</ref> for important QA and BugZappers event announcements.
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:Jlaska|James Laska]] reported that he had not yet been able to talk to [[User:Liam|Liam Li]] about refining the install test plan to be more achievable within the timeframe for each snapshot release. He had improved the Dracut Test Day test cases. He had also spoken to [[User:Mmcgrath|Mike McGrath]] about the impact of nightly Rawhide images on the resources of alt.fedoraproject.org. Mike had not yet seen or had reported any major problems, but would like to be kept in the loop when new milestones are released. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] asked if Infrastructure had any numbers for downloads of the nightly images. James did not know, but would ask.
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:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] reported that he had built the new version of autotest for the AutoQA project to test. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] and [[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]] were in progress on testing it, and would report next week.
[[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:Wwoods|Will Woods]] reported on the progress of the AutoQA project. They had spent the week writing documentation, collected in the AutoQA category on the Wiki<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:AutoQA</ref>. There are pages on how to write hooks and tests for AutoQA, and also pages on how AutoQA and autotest work. Will emphasized that no particular knowledge of how AutoQA itself works is required to write tests and hooks that can be used with it, and it's best to write tests and hooks before worrying about wrapper code to use them in AutoQA. In the coming week, they were planning to work on a method to get data back out of autotest to be used for projects like the israwhidebroken.com site.
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>.


[[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] did a Test Day update. He thanked those who had participated in the Dracut Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-08-27_Dracut</ref>, and promised to send a summary to the mailing list soon. He noted that a sectool Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-01_Sectool</ref> was due the day after the meeting. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] suggested some potential improvements to the Wiki page, and James asked him to send them to the mailing list so the Test Day organizer, Eduard Beneš, could update the page. The Sugar on a Stick Test Day was due the Thursday after the meeting, and noted that he and [[User:Sdz|Sebastian Dziallas]] were working on getting the page ready, using the new Semantic system for reporting results. Finally, [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] noted that Graphics Test Week was coming the following week, and he was working on getting the pages created. He expected to be able to re-use many test cases from the Fedora 11 Test Days.
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>.


[[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] brought up the idea of using zsync<ref>http://zsync.moria.org.uk/</ref> to reduce the download weight of nightly Rawhide live images. [[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] and [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] did not think it would result in much benefit, due to the way Fedora live CDs are implemented (as a single large filesystem image, rather than a set of package files). [[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]] suggested doing some tests to be sure, and Kamil said he would do this.
<references/>
 
The group discussed the status of the proposed lower process capabilities feature for Fedora 12<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/LowerProcessCapabilities</ref>. There was general concern that development of this feature was not sufficiently advanced for the current stage of Fedora 12 development. Fenris02 agreed to talk to the feature maintainer to see what could be done to avoid dropping the feature entirely for Fedora 12.


The Bugzappers group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-09-01. The full log is available<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-01/fedora-meeting.2009-09-01-15.01.log.html</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] noted that some planned topics could not be discussed, as important people were not present: Brennan Ashton was not available to update on the triage metrics project, and [[User:Rjune|Richard June]] was not present to update on the kernel triage project.
=== Update policy changes ===


The group discussed the new test-announce mailing list<ref>http://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test-announce</ref>. [[User:Mcepl|Matej Cepl]] suggested that it be added to Gmane<ref>http://www.gmane.org/</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] promised to do this.
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:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] brought up the topic of Triage Days, which [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] had put on the agenda with a view to presenting some ideas on improving them. However, Edward was not at the meeting. No-one else had significant ideas on the topic.
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 next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-09-07 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-09-08 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.
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.


<references/>
<references/>


=== Zsync feasibility ===
=== Update candidate notification ===


As discussed at the meeting, [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] tested<ref>http://kparal.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/zsync-transfer-large-files-efficiently/</ref> the practicality of using zsync<ref>http://zsync.moria.org.uk/</ref> to reduce the size of nightly Rawhide live image downloads. He found that savings of between 30% and 60% were possible when testing the deltas between various nightly images.
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/>


=== Installation testing SOP update ===
=== Proven tester meetings ===
 
[[User:Liam|Liam Li]] announced<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00007.html</ref> that he had updated the installation testing SOP draft<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Liam/Draft_Install_Test_SOP</ref>, with improved instructions on summarizing test results.
 
<references/>


=== Test Day summaries ===
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>.


Test Day summaries for Dracut<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00027.html</ref> and Sectool<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00053.html</ref> were provided by [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] and Eduard Beneš respectively.
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/>


=== Mediawiki Semantic plugin testing ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===


[[User:Mchua|Mel Chua]] announced<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00085.html</ref> that he had built a working Mediawiki test instance with the Semantic extension<ref>http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki</ref> installed, for the purpose of implementing an improved test result reporting system. He linked to a meeting log<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-qa/2009-09-02/fedora-qa.2009-09-02-14.14.log.html</ref> which documented the implementation. He noted that the upstream project were interested in having Fedora's use of the Semantic system documented, and asked if anyone would be willing to work on this.
[[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

  1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA
  2. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Join

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].

  1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-06_Nouveau
  2. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-15_Virtualization
  3. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-22_I18n_Desktop
  4. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-26_ABRT
  5. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-29_PowerManagement
  6. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-06_Printing
  7. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-13_Fedora_Packager_for_Eclipse
  8. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-20_Cloud_SIG_Test_Day
  9. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/SOP_Test_Day_management
  10. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/Create

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].

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102599.html
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102600.html
  3. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102601.html
  4. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102636.html
  5. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103680.html
  6. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/103127.html
  7. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103678.html
  8. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103557.html
  9. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103588.html
  10. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103679.html

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.

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102493.html
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102497.html
  3. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102503.html
  4. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102502.html
  5. ↑ http://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/664
  6. ↑ http://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/667
  7. ↑ http://fedorahosted.org/bodhi/ticket/642
  8. ↑ http://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/667#comment:26
  9. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20111107

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].

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102981.html
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102982.html
  3. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102992.html

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.

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/102869.html
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/103000.html
  3. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103341.html
  4. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103585.html
  5. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103840.html
  6. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/104043.html
  7. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-September/103163.html

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!

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103712.html
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103728.html
  3. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-October/103739.html
  4. ↑ http://fudcon.in/sessions/fedora-testing
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