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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 ===


There was no Test Day last week, and no Test Day is currently planned for this week. If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 13 cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in QA Trac<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/</ref>.
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/>
<references/>


=== Weekly meetings ===
=== 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.


The QA group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-11-23. The full log is available<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-11-23/fedora-meeting.2009-11-23-16.00.log.html</ref>. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] noted that a common bugs page entry had been added<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F12_bugs#preupgrade-boot</ref> to cover the known issue with preupgrade and free space in the /boot partition, and [[User:Rhe|Rui He]] had been working to update the preupgrade test cases to catch similar problems in future<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/30</ref>.
<references/>


[[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] admitted that he had not yet sent out the request for feedback for the Fedora 12 QA retrospective, but promised to do it soon. [[User:poelstra|John Poelstra]] asked whether the group would be interested in a project-wide retrospective at the upcoming FUDCon; James offered to discuss the idea with John after the meeting.
=== Release criteria updates ===


The group discussed the question of privilege escalation testing, following the PackageKit installation permission controversy<ref>http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047</ref>. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] wanted to discuss the plan [[TomCallaway|Tom 'spot' Callaway]] had proposed via a blog post<ref>http://spot.livejournal.com/312216.html</ref> and create a test plan based around it. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] felt it was too early to begin planning testing, since Tom's blog post was only a proposal, and there was no official policy or guideline for privilege escalation issues on which a test plan could be based. Adam was also worried about defining the scope of testing, as checking every package in the distribution would be impractical given the size of the QA team. The group agreed that for any useful testing to be done, two things would be needed: a project-wide policy or set of policies and guidelines, and a tool for generating a list of packages which are capable of privilege escalation. Adam agreed to start a discussion of this on the development and security mailing lists. [[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]] offered to work on the tool for identifying escalation-capable packages.
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]] brought up [[User:poelstra|John Poelstra's]] plan to improve the release criteria<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg00926.html</ref>, and asked the group to provide feedback. John noted that he was hoping people could get together to work on finalizing the new criteria at FUDCon.
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:Wwoods|Will Woods]] and [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] reported on the progress of the AutoQA project. Will had completed the redesign of the autoqa code to be based around a Python shared library containing functions commonly used in multiple watchers and tests. The new post-koji-build test hook is also included, and autoqa is currently running an rpmlint test on every Koji build to test the hook. He said the next objective was to solidify the post-koji-build hook, help package maintainers add post-build tests, and get the rpmguard test running. A later objective is to work on a post-bodhi-update hook and dependency check test so that all updates submitted to Bodhi will be checked for dependency consistency, to hopefully end the situation where updates are pushed which break dependency chains. Kamil had been working on the Wiki documentation, and had created a new front page<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AutoQA</ref> which briefly explains the project and contains links to the most important relevant pages. He also pointed out that [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] had been drafting further improvements to this page<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Jlaska/Draft</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>.


[[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] proposed a talk during FUDCon to explain how several new ideas across the release engineering and QA groups - no frozen rawhide, autoqa, autosigning, and new milestones - would fit together in upcoming Fedora release cycles. The group thought this was a good idea, and Jesse said he would take the lead in arranging it.
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>.


The Bugzappers group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings</ref> was held on 2009-11-24. The full log is available<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-11-24/fedora-meeting.2009-11-24-15.11.log.html</ref>. The group discussed housekeeping tasks, particularly updating the components and triagers page<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Components_and_Triagers</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] thought the list of triagers should be kept (rather than being emptied as was previously the case with each new release) but pruned, with triagers known to be inactive being removed. [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] volunteered to look into a method for updating the component list, based on the current critical path package list.
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 group then discussed the topic of mentoring new members, with [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] encouraging experienced group members to help mentor new ones to make sure they got a good start on their triaging careers. He also thought it would be good for existing members to join in welcoming new members to the group when they posted their introduction emails. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] suggested doing this via private mail to avoid cluttering up the list.
<references/>


[[User:Mcepl|Matej Cepl]] brought up a problem related to the recently-implemented change in the method of marking bugs that had been triaged. He had found that the fact that this was now being done differently for different releases made it impossible to construct a Bugzilla search for all triaged or un-triaged bugs in a given component across all releases. To address this problem, he proposed adding the new Triaged keyword to all bugs in ASSIGNED state for existing supported releases (Fedora 10 through 12), which would allow searches to be performed using the keyword in all releases. The group could see no problems with this idea, as long as it was done without generating a large amount of email, and approved the plan for Matej to approach the Bugzilla maintainer for help in implementing it.
=== Update policy changes ===


[[User:Mcepl|Matej Cepl]] pointed out that the level of duplicate bugs being filed via the abrt<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/abrt/wiki</ref> automated bug reporting tool was increasing the triage workload on some components significantly. After a long discussion, the group agreed a plan to try and address this. [[User:Wwoods|Will Woods]] would talk to the abrt team about the idea of reporting issues to an intermediate, abrt-specific server rather than directly to Bugzilla, based on the kerneloops.org<ref>http://www.kerneloops.org</ref> model. Matej would talk to the abrt team about their plans to improve abrt's own automatic duplicate detection and about having abrt format its reports in ways that would aid triagers in manual duplicate detection. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] would respond to the existing thread on the development mailing list about the problem to raise the group's concerns, and ask the abrt team whether future improvements to abrt's duplicate detection logic could be retrospectively applied to bugs already filed by older versions of abrt.
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 next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-11-30 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-12-01 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.
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 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/>


=== Increasing the grub timeout ===
=== 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<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/>
 
=== 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>.


Scott Robbins started a long thread<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01012.html</ref> with the suggestion to increase the default timeout for the Fedora boot loader from its current default setting of 0 (which causes the boot loader menu never to be shown at all). There were many opinions on this idea, but the general response was positive enough for Scott to file a feature request<ref>http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=541315</ref> on the idea, where some compromises were suggested. Richard Ryniker suggested having the system detect unclean shutdowns and force the boot menu to be displayed on the next boot (much as Windows does). Stewart Adam suggested having grub initially installed with a non-zero timeout, and have firstboot change it to zero on the assumption that a system that can get to firstboot must have a properly configured bootloader.
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 QA retrospective ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===


[[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] posted a request<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01126.html</ref> for feedback on the Fedora 12 QA cycle from anyone, both on things that went well and areas that could be improved. Many group members posted replies, including [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]]<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01127.html</ref>, [[User:Johannbg|Jóhann Guðmundsson]]<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01149.html</ref>, and [[User:Sundaram|Rahul Sundaram]]<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01128.html</ref>.
[[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!