Kernel related problem (randomly failing tests), where to discuss?

From	Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.kernel
Subject	Kernel related problem (randomly failing tests), where to discuss?
Date	2022-01-15 00:20 +0100
Message-ID	<DFE1r-57s-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization	Connecting Knowledge

Show all headers | View raw

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] - view raw

Hi,

In https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1003536 I described the 
problem in more detail, but I'll give the TL;DR here to determine the best 
place/ML to discuss the issue further.

TL;DR: The iwd program deliberately/explicitly uses kernel features/modules 
for some of its functionality. It also has a number of tests, but they fail 
(or succeed) a bit (too) random, because whether a kernel module is loaded or 
not depends on several factors:
- kernel configuration, which differs per ARCH and kernel version
- detected (virtual) hardware which causes the (auto-)loading of loadable (=m) 
kernel modules
(- 'environmental' factors like other processes that run or ran on that 
machine?)

In 'extremis' this can mean that a test performed on arm64-buildd-1 fails, 
while it succeeds on arm64-buildd-2, because of a (slight) HW difference.

On my own hardware I have complete freedom to fix that by modprobe-ing needed 
kernel modules. But (AFAIK) I have less freedom on Salsa CI, even less on 
autopkgtest/ci.debian.net and (essentially?) none on buildd, assuming it's 
even (technically) possible.

OTOH, you want tests to consistently fail or succeed and not be dependent on 
chance. (Reproducible Builds may be relevant here too)

Has this problem been discussed before? If so, could someone point me to that? 
If not, where would the best place be to discuss this?

Cheers,
  Diederik

Back to linux.debian.kernel | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Kernel related problem (randomly failing tests), where to discuss? Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> - 2022-01-15 00:20 +0100
  Re: Kernel related problem (randomly failing tests), where to  discuss? Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> - 2022-01-23 16:50 +0100
    Re: Kernel related problem (randomly failing tests), where to discuss? Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> - 2022-01-24 16:40 +0100

csiph-web