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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>.
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 ===


Thursday 2011-04-28 was cloud Test Day, with events for BoxGrinder<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-04-28_Cloud_SIG_BoxGrinder_Build</ref> and EC2<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-04-28_Cloud_SIG_Fedora_EC2</ref>. Both Test Days went off successfully, with a decent turnout of testers and some productive results. Marc Savy posted a recap of the BoxGrinder event<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-May/000243.html</ref>: "In the course of testing only two major unanticipated bugs were encountered, along with several known issues for Fedora 15 appliances, but no blockers preventing inclusion in the distribution.  These problems have since been remediated in the upcoming 0.9.2 release...Aside from the bugs exposed, the opportunity to meet new users, garner ideas and solicit opinions was extremely worthwhile."
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.


These were the final Test Days for the Fedora 15 cycle. If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 16 cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in QA Trac<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/</ref>.
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>.


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=== Fedora 15 validation and preparation ===
=== Fedora 16 preparation ===


Over the last three weeks the group has been busy with preparation and testing for the final Fedora 15 release, leading to the absence of this beat from recent FWN issues, for which we apologize. The final blocker review meeting took place on Friday 2011-05-06<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-bugzappers/2011-05-06/f15-blocker-review.2011-05-06-17.02.html</ref>. The first test compose landed on Tuesday 2011-05-03<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-May/000236.html</ref>, followed by three release candidates, the first on Wednesday 2011-05-11<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-May/000239.html</ref>, the second on Friday 2011-05-13<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-May/000240.html</ref>, and the third and final also on that date<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-May/000241.html</ref>. The group completed desktop and installation validation testing for all four composes, viewable on the Wiki<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fedora_15_Final_RC_Test_Results</ref> <ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fedora_15_Final_TC_Test_Results</ref>. As can be inferred from the existence of the second and third release candidates, the group was able to identify release blocking issues and ensure these were successfully resolved. The RC3 testing confirmed that this image set met all release criteria, and it was duly approved as the gold image set for Fedora 15 release at the Go/No-Go meeting of 2011-05-17<ref>http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-05-17/fedora_15_go_or_no_go_meeting.2011-05-17-21.00.html</ref>, a decision which was later announced by [[User:Rbergero|Robyn Bergeron]]<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test-announce/2011-May/000245.html</ref>.
As mentioned above, Fedora 16 release validation took up almost all of the QA team's time during the last few months, with very challenging Beta and Final releases. There were a total of 12 candidate builds for Beta and Final combined, and the whole team put in tireless work running the set of validation tests against each build and then investigating and verifying the large number of blocker bugs identified. The team was able to contribute to the release eventually going ahead with only a one week slip to the Beta schedule and no slip of the Final schedule, a considerable achievement in the light of the many complex changes in the Fedora 16 feature list.


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=== Sample data and configurations for testing ===
=== Release criteria updates ===


Samuel Greenfeld asked whether the group had a repository of sample items of data and configuration files for testing updates<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-April/099337.html</ref>. [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]] replied that there was not such a repository, and suggested that such files could be added to the Wiki and incorporated in appropriate test cases<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-April/099353.html</ref>. Samuel explained that he thought such files could be useful in multiple cases, so a separate structure from the test case setup was required<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-April/099374.html</ref>.
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>.
 
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>.
 
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>.


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=== Problematic glibc update ===
=== Update policy changes ===


The group (along with the development team) was quick to catch a problematic glibc update<ref>http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/glibc-2.13.90-13</ref> which constituted a significant ABI break shortly before Fedora 15 release. This was spotted both on the mailing list<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-May/099636.html</ref> and via the Bodhi update feedback system<ref>http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/glibc-2.13.90-13</ref>. The updates policy<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Updates_Policy</ref> ensured that the update was not accepted until the ABI change had been reverted.
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>.
 
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.


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=== Triage scripts updated ===
=== Update candidate notification ===


[[User:Mcepl|Matej Cepl]] announced the release of a major update to his Firefox extension to aid in bug triage, bugzilla-triage-scripts 1.0 RC1<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-May/099784.html</ref>. He asked all Bugzappers with Firefox 4 to update to it and report back on how it worked.
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>.


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=== Desktop release criteria revisions ===
=== 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>.


[[MatthiasClasen|Matthias Clasen]] proposed several revisions to the desktop-related release criteria<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-May/099787.html</ref>, prompted by discussions about a then-release-blocking bug report on the presence of an Other category in the Shell's applications view<ref>http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=697834</ref>. He proposed removing the criterion requiring there to be no Other category in the application menus, among other changes. [[User:Adamwill|Adam Williamson]] commented on the proposed changes<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-May/099789.html</ref>, as did [[User:Jlaska|James Laska]]<ref>http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-May/099792.html</ref>.  
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.


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=== AutoQA ===
=== QA group representation at FUDCon Pune ===
 
During the QA meeting of 2011-05-02<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20110502</ref>, [[User:Kparal|Kamil Paral]] explained that the AutoQA team had decided the upcoming 0.5.0 release would have a tight focus on making AutoQA feedback more friendly to developers, following several comments from developers on the verbosity and usefulness of current AutoQA results. [[User:Tflink|Tim Flink]] provided minutes from the meeting where this plan was discussed<ref>http://fedorahosted.org/autoqa/wiki/Planning050series</ref>. Plans include reducing the number of AutoQA comments in Bodhi and improving the structure and contents of the dependency check test log. The group had also fixed a problem with disk space exhaustion resulting in the deletion of recent test logs, which turned out to be caused by tests stuck in a loop writing huge logs.


During the meeting of 2011-05-16<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20110516</ref>, Kamil reported that he had implemented package caching in AutoQA, which can drastically speed up dependency check test runs when enabled. [[User:Jskladan|Josef Skladanka]] said that he had introduced an algorithm to filter out key information from the dependency check test log explaining why a given package has dependency issues. The team had started to document its test cases, beginning with the upgradepath test<ref>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AutoQA_tests/Upgradepath</ref>. Tim was working further on the looping tests issue, and Vitezslav Humpa created a template for future test reports<ref>http://vhumpa.fedorapeople.org/prettylog_upgradepath_example2.txt</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!


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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!