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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 Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2010-02-25_YumLangpackPlugin</ref> was on the langpack plugin for yum<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/YumLangpackPlugin</ref>. The event suffered a little from falling in the same week as the Alpha candidate testing process, but testing did result in the identification of two bugs. Thanks to those who came out to test.
In the past few weeks, we finished up the Fedora 16 Test Day schedule, with Graphics Test Week taking place at the start of September<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-06_Nouveau</ref> ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon</ref> ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-07_Radeon</ref>, virtualization test day taking place on 2011-09-15<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-15_Virtualization</ref>, another i18n desktop test day on 2011-09-22<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-22_I18n_Desktop</ref>, an ABRT test day on 2011-09-26<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-26_ABRT</ref>, a power management test day on 2011-09-29<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-09-29_PowerManagement</ref>, printing test day on 2011-10-06<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-06_Printing</ref>, Fedora packager plugin for Eclipse test day on 2011-10-13<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-13_Fedora_Packager_for_Eclipse</ref>, and Cloud SIG test day on 2011-10-20<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-10-20_Cloud_SIG_Test_Day</ref>. Most of these test days passed off successfully with the work of the developers behind them, despite the QA team being very busy, so many thanks to those who organized and carried out these events, and those who turned up to do the testing.
 
The Fedora 17 Test Day cycle has not yet started. We welcome proposals for test days for the Fedora 17 cycle, and we usually accept all the proposals that are made. You can propose a test day for almost anything, and organize it yourself following the handy guide we provide<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/SOP_Test_Day_management</ref>, or alternatively we can help out with the organization of the event. Information on how to propose a test day is available on the Wiki<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/Create</ref>.
 
<references/>


Next week's Test Day<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2010-03-04_SSSDByDefault</ref> will be on the use of SSSD by default<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSDByDefault</ref>. As the page says, "The prime benefit of the System Security Services Daemon is support for offline logins. Above and beyond the traditional pam_ldap or pam_krb5 approaches, the SSSD would remove the need for laptop users of Fedora to maintain a local account, separate from their centrally-managed account, to work offline or disconnected from the central servers." This is a significant feature for many people, so please come out and help us test it! The Test Day will run all day on Thursday 2010-03-04 in the #fedora-test-day IRC channel.
=== Fedora 16 preparation ===


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>.
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>.


The QA group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings</ref> was held on 2010-02-22. The full logs are available<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20100222</ref>. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] noted that the privilege escalation policy<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Privilege_escalation_policy</ref> the group had helped to create had been approved by FESco and was now an official policy.
[[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:Jlaska|James Laska]] noted that the first Alpha release candidate was now available for testing<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2010-February/000023.html</ref>. [[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]] mentioned that it had turned out to be quite broken. James pointed out the test result matrix<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_13_Alpha_RC1_Install#Test_Matrix</ref> as the best summary of exactly how broken. The group briefly discussed the causes for the regressions from the second test compose, with the X server input switch from HAL to dbus being one of the major causes, and some errors in anaconda changes the other. [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] pointed out that an SELinux bug was impeding desktop validation testing. After some discussion, the group agreed testing could go ahead with SELinux disabled and negative results recorded, but not positive results (as it was impossible to be sure if the result would also be positive with SELinux enabled). The group also discussed the best approach to testing to try and get all critical issues fixed without having to delay the Alpha release, and agreed to focus on closing as many open bugs as possible even with the known-bad RC1 images and then testing RC2 quickly once it was made available.
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:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] briefly mentioned that he would be putting the topicof Fedora 13 bug procedures up for discussion at the next day's Bugzappers meeting.
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 discussed the question of membership of the QA group in FAS for a while. This has historically been unimportant as it was not used for anything, but in future, positive feedback in Bodhi for critical path packages will be required from members of QA or Release Engineering before the update can be pushed, so the question of group membership becomes important. [[User:maxamillion|Adam Miller]] volunteered to write an initial draft of a policy / procedure on group membership.
<references/>


[[User:maxamillion|Adam Miller]] recapped his call for help with QA brainstorming for the new security spin<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SecuritySpin:QA_Brainstorm</ref>. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] pointed out that there had recently been a test day for sectool, and suggested those involved with that may be interested in helping.
=== Update policy changes ===


The Bugzappers group weekly meeting<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings</ref> was held on 2010-02-23. The full log is available<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2010-02-23/fedora-meeting.2010-02-23-15.04.log.html</ref>. The group discussed Jon Stanley's suggestions<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-February/088644.html</ref>. No-one could immediately think of any extra resources the project in general could be providing that would help the Bugzappers' work. The question of sending out updates regarding the project's work became a discussion of the long-pending triage statistics project. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] said that Brennan Ashton had been discussing incorporating the project into the Fedora Community system at FUDCon. [[User:Tk009|Edward Kirk]] said he had blogged in the last couple of weeks about starting work on this. After the meeting, Brennan contacted the group to let them know he was working actively on the Fedora Community system and had been posting about his work on the infrastructure SIG mailing list. He also granted [[User:Mcepl|Matej Cepl]] administrator access to the triage section on fedorahosted.
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]] introduced the topic of what to do with bugs reported against Rawhide between the Fedora 12 release and the early branch of Fedora 13 under the new 'no frozen Rawhide' system. After some discussion, the group agreed in principle that these bugs should be rebased to Fedora 13, and Adam volunteered to talk to [[User:poelstra|John Poelstra]] and Dave Lawrence about this.
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 2010-03-01 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting. The next Bugzappers weekly meeting will be held on 2010-03-02 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/>


=== Fedora 13 Alpha validation testing and delay ===
=== Update candidate notification ===


It was a busy week for Alpha validation testing for QA and release engineering, with four Alpha release candidate builds being built and (to some extent) tested. As discussed at the meeting, the first release candidate had significant problems rendering it almost unusable. The second fixed some issues but was still had major problems. The third fixed most of the outstanding issues but introduced a regression which broke x86-64 installation, and could also not be installed from the live image. Despite great effort on the part of the release engineering team, It was not possible to build a fourth release candidate in time to be properly tested before the project-wide release readiness meeting, so QA and release engineering had to vote to delay the Alpha release. As announced<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-February/131315.html</ref> by [[User:jkeating|Jesse Keating]], the Alpha release would be delayed by one week, but the Beta and Final schedules would not be changed. The fourth release candidate build was announced<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2010-February/000030.html</ref> by [[User:Rhe|Rui He]] on 2010-02-26, and validation testing results looked positive at the time of writing. Andre Robatino announced<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-February/088807.html</ref>DeltaISOs for RC2 -> RC3, and RC3 -> RC4.
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/>


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


[[User:Beland|Christopher Beland]] asked<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-February/088788.html</ref> what should be done with open bugs that were on the Target lists for previous releases. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] replied to agree that this was an unsettled question, and pointed out that practically speaking, neither QA nor development teams had paid much attention to the Target lists for several releases. He suggested the system should be either revised or abandoned.
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/>


=== Critical Path Wranglers proposal ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===


[[User:maxamillion|Adam Miller]] presented<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-February/088824.html</ref> an outline<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/JoinCriticalPathWranglers:Draft</ref> of a policy for membership of the QA group in FAS (as initially discussed during the weekly meeting). He asked for the group to comment on the proposal and suggest possible refinements and improvements.
[[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!