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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 planned Test Day on internationalization (i18n) was postponed to a yet-to-be-determined future date. Our apologies to anyone who made time to attend.
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.


Two Test Days are scheduled for next week. The first<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-10-20</ref> is on the confined SELinux users feature. This feature involves assigning an SELinux role to a user. The role's policy controls the extent of the user's access to the system. The Test Day will focus on testing several scenarios to ensure the policy restrictions work as they should. As usual, there will be a live CD available for testing - there's no need to install Rawhide. The Test Day will run all day on Thursday 2009-10-20 in the #fedora-test-day IRC channel.
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>.


The second Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-10-22</ref> will be on power management<ref>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/PowerManagementF12</ref>, especially specific improvements made in Fedora 12. Some very specific but easy-to-run test cases which will greatly aid the development team in refining power management have been developed for the Test Day: there's even a helpful script which runs the tests and generates the need results automatically. As usual, there will be a live CD available for testing - there's no need to install Rawhide. This Test Day will be very easy to participate in, and the information you can generate will be very helpful, so please come along and help out! The Test Day will run all day on Thursday 2009-10-22 in the #fedora-test-day IRC channel.
<references/>


No Fit and Finish track Test Day is planned for next week.
=== Fedora 16 preparation ===


If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 12 or 13 cycles, 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 ===
 
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>.
 
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: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 QA group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-10-12. The full log is available<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-10-12/fedora-meeting.2009-10-12-16.00.log.html</ref>. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] reported that the new hardware which would be used to host the israwhidebroken.com project and other parts of the AutoQA project is in transit.
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]] had contacted the Anaconda development team to check if the recent installer test days had identified any Beta blocker bugs. He found that the first test day had resulted in three blockers being added to the list. [[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] worried that too much testing was being done after the Beta freeze, which made resolving identified bugs very difficult. James felt that extensive testing was being done both before and after the freeze. Jesse believed some of the blocker bugs that were found after the freeze date could have been found earlier. James agreed to investigate the bugs in question to see when they were introduced and when they were identified.
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:Jlaska|James Laska]] reviewed the status of the first Beta release candidate build, and noted status on the last remaining beta blocker bug was unclear. Denise Dumas said that [[User:Dlehman|Dave Lehman]] would investigate and report whether the bug was fixed in the release candidate build, and hence whether a second release candidate build would be required. James, [[User:Liam|Liam Li]] and [[User:Rhe|Rui He]] had already started validation testing on the release candidate build<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_12_Beta_RC1_Install</ref>.
<references/>


[[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]] reported on the progress of the AutoQA project. He had been working on backlinking from the test status information on israwhidebroken.com to the actual test result in the autotest front end, but had not yet found a satisfactory solution. He had also been looking at auto-generating a Wiki page to list the critical path packages (as the set of critical path packages can change unpredictably, a manually-maintained static page is not a good solution). His plan for this is blocked by the Python interface to the Wiki using JSON, which cannot create or edit pages. Will and [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] agreed that James would work on creating a package of the israwhidebroken.com code to be used for the production instance of the site. [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] reported steady progress on his packagediff test for identifying major changes between package versions. He had initial implementations of most important tests, and was working to generate fake packages so he can test the script and isolate any bugs in it. The group agreed that in the long term it would make sense to integrate Kamil's work as extensions to the existing rpmdiff tool, but in the short term it could be hosted as part of the AutoQA project.
=== Update policy changes ===


[[User:Johannbg|Jóhann Guðmundsson]] explained his project to revise and standardize Wiki pages dealing with debugging and reporting bugs in various components<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00112.html</ref>. He had created a template for such pages<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Template:How_to_debug</ref> and revised several existing pages to fit this new template. The group discussed a standard naming convention for such pages, and agreed on How_to_debug_(component name). Jóhann mentioned that he would welcome feedback on the usefulness of the existing pages, which would be the most important ones to revise, and what new pages of this type should be created.
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>.


The Bugzappers group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-10-13. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] commented on the QA group's discussion of [[User:Johannbg|Jóhann Guðmundsson's]] debugging page revision project, noting the agreement on the How_to_debug_(component name) naming convention.
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.


[[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] noted that housekeeping tasks, which would have been starting that week, had been delayed due to the overall release schedule delay occasioned by the delay of the Beta release.
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:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] noted that [[User:Rjune|Richard June]] was not present to give an update on the kernel triage project, nor was Brennan Ashton present to discuss the triage metrics project.
<references/>


[[User:Rudchenkos|Sergey Rudchenko]] wanted to know if there was a way to have Bugzilla notify him of new bugs being filed on a particular component, but not of any change activity to existing bugs, as he found the volume of email with all the change messages included overwhelming. [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] suggested that he use the RSS feed search result feature for this. Any Bugzilla search can be used as an RSS feed in Red Hat's Bugzilla, so to achieve the desired result you can simply search for NEW bugs in any component and subscribe to the feed for the search result. New bugs for that component will then be shown on the feed.
=== Update candidate notification ===


The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-10-19 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-10-20 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.
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/>


=== DeltaISO update ===
=== 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>.


Andre Robatino reported<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00197.html</ref> that he was unable to generate DeltaISOs on Rawhide as a side-effect of the endianness issue in xz which had been previously discussed by the development group. Andre later announced<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00222.html</ref> DeltaISOs for Beta test compose -> Beta RC1 and Beta RC1 -> Beta RC2.
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/>


=== Fedora 12 Beta RC2 testing ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===


[[User:Liam|Liam Li]] announced the formal testing process for the second release candidate build of Fedora 12 Beta<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00203.html</ref>. He noted that the test matrix was available<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_12_Beta_RC2_Install</ref> and asked for the group's help in performing as many of the tests as possible. Cornel Panceac wondered<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00260.html</ref> why there were no live images available. [[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] explained<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00290.html</ref> that he had had to delay building the live images until he was sure the regular installer images were OK due to resource constraints.
[[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!