Recruiting Help in Smashing Kernel Bugs?

Orm asks: "As we all know, Linux version 3.0 (or 2.6) is about to get a feature freeze, meaning that it is bug hunting time. And as we saw on the kernel-summit, some people are afraid that not enough people are willing to try this new kernel, to help get those bugs smashed. My idea to get more people into this hunting, is to write a good paper on how to do it. Not a standard 'how to locate and fix bugs' but a document targeted towards people using 2.4.x today, who will want to help out. So what things should one need to know when testing a new kernel?"

"First: What is new? When I am running menuconfig/xconfig, is there something new I should look into? Will the old /dev directory be replaced with the new devfs-magic?

Second: What needs testing? I guess this is hand in hand with what is new, but you never know. The non-kernel-dev people may not know everything that has happened since 2.4.x., and there may be particular features that should be focused on more than others.

Finally: How do we do it? How should we test? What are the best ways to localize the bugs? How should we write a bug report? Whom should we send it to?

You do want our help, don't you?

I do hope to see this document at the same time as the feature-freeze. I also hope it will be a well-written piece, so many will feel the 'urge' to test the new kernel and give good feedback."

Comments

Cover the basics first

[Sherloqq]

1. Make sure software compiles! (judging from some replies, even that can't be taken for granted...)
2. Make sure software runs! (ditto)
3. Make sure all the functionality you expect from the kernel is there (i.e. if you compiled a driver for a network card, it better work and be backwards compatible, unless it's not supposed to anymore)
4. Make sure the software is stable (test the bejeezus out of the features -- if your cdrom or a scsi card requires a particular setting to work, or there are three ways for you to reference a device, test all of them (or at least the ones you care about)
5. If you encounter any bugs (related or unrelated), report them in enough detail for them to be reproducible. Keep it to the point and relevant to the topic. Use spell and grammar checkers :)
6. When updates/bugfixes come out, lather, rinse, repeat.

Re:2.5.44 doesn't compile for me...

[pruneau]

Me too !

The problem is that it's not a easy-to-track down feature into a remote far-not-likely-to-be-used-anyway-freaking-mysterio us-device-driver. No, it's something into the basic kernel code (/usr/src/linux/kernel/ or /usr/src/linux/include/linux).
I know enough of C/compilation to locate the problem and even attempt to quick-patch it, but I do not have the knowledge (nor the time, I'm afraid) to correct that and submit a patch by myself.

The point is, short of posting that on the kernel mailing list (which maybe I should do), is there a better way to get around that ? I'm quite willing to help, drat I tested about 7 to 10 .config file before giving up, but what in hell can I do !?!

I mean I know, the open-source model is suppose to work in a way where I should try hard to figure things out, but hey, if they want a broad testing audience, they cannot force everybody to learn the kernel.

There should be a middle ground here, should'nt it ???

Testing 2.5.

[heikkih]

How about checking out Dave Jones' introduction to 2.5? :) It will probably be updated as things move along, most notably is LVM2 already included.