X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/50cc7c6d27421a46083e22a692356fae006c37cc..5fd18b89763079586a75506e9849070d38f8b3cf:/blog/archive/2013/06/06.rss diff --git a/blog/archive/2013/06/06.rss b/blog/archive/2013/06/06.rss index 3018000310..de9c905089 100644 --- a/blog/archive/2013/06/06.rss +++ b/blog/archive/2013/06/06.rss @@ -6,6 +6,51 @@ http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ + + The value of a good distro wide test suite... + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html + Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200 + <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / +Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite, +which check that services are running, working, and return the +expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on +test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production +installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is +operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are +online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is +configured, which is the topic of this post.</p> + +<p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian +Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a +complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to +happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test +suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to +cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages. +When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to +using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require +working packages to get it working. And ad the packages changed name +from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to +debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the +packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we +would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed +right after we got the ISOs operational.</p> + +<p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system +administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the +test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if +any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing +the problem.</p> + +<p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create, +please join us on +<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on +irc.debian.org</a> and the +<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing +list.</p> + + + Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html