Re: Fast testing

From: Andi Kleen
Date: Tue Apr 14 2009 - 09:53:37 EST


Dragoslav Zaric <dragoslav.zaric.kd@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

As others pointed out vmlinux is not demand paged.

> Since rebooting is a long process,

The trick is to not make it a long process. Some ways to do that:

- Test simple changes in emulation. Emulators tend to boot faster
than real systems.
- Use a stripped down Linux distribution that boots fast. I found
that just using a old Linux distribution (without udev with static /dev)
and minimal services boots dramatically faster. I use opensuse 10.0 for that.
- When you need to test on a real system use nfsroot with kernel
boot through PXE. First that saves you one iteration of rebooting/copying
to update a kernel. And then the NFS server can keep the small nfsroot cached
in memory and then deliver it immediately.

-Andi


--
ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- Speaking for myself only.
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