Re: [Announce] LPC 2018: Testing and Fuzzing Microconference

From: Dmitry Vyukov
Date: Thu Oct 11 2018 - 05:42:12 EST


On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 10:54 AM, Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 8 Oct 2018 19:02:51 +0200
>>> Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> > On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Dhaval Giani <dhaval.giani@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> > > Hi folks,
>>> > >
>>> > > Sasha and I are pleased to announce the Testing and Fuzzing track at
>>> > > LPC [ 1 ]. We are planning to continue the discussions from last
>>> > > year's microconference [2]. Many discussions from the Automated
>>> > > Testing Summit [3] will also continue, and a final agenda will come up
>>> > > only soon after that.
>>> > >
>>> > > Suggested Topics
>>> > >
>>> > > - Syzbot/syzkaller
>>> > > - ATS
>>> > > - Distro/stable testing
>>> > > - kernelci
>>> > > - kernelci auto bisection
>>> > > - Unit testing framework
>>> > >
>>> > > We look forward to other interesting topics for this microconference
>>> > > as a reply to this email.
>>> >
>>> > Hi Dhaval and Sasha,
>>> >
>>> > My syzbot talk wasn't accepted to main track, so I would like to do
>>> > more or less full-fledged talk on the microconf. Is it possible?
>>>
>>> Hi Dmitry,
>>>
>>> Note, microconfs are not for full-fledged talks. They are to be
>>> discussion focused. You can have a 5-10 minute presentation that leads
>>> up to discussion of future work, but we like to refrain from any talks
>>> about what was done if there's nothing to go forward with.
>>
>> Dmitiry,
>>
>> Can you clarify the scope of what you want to discuss during the
>> microconference? Further to what Steven said, we don't want
>> presentations (So 3, maybe 4 slides). We want discussions about future
>> work.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Dhaval
>
>
> Hi Steven, Dhaval,
>
> Acknowledged.
>
> Then smaller topic that would benefit from discussion are:
>
> the main one being:
>
> 1. syzbot: developer process; unfixed bugs; bug triage; what's
> working? what's not? why? how can we make more parts work? collecting
> feedback

+Paul as Plumbers committee representative
And +Greg is already here as Kernel Summit representative

Re syzbot talk (around process and feedback).
I've submitted this as proposal to Plumbers, it did not make it to
main track but it's in backlog (I am a reserve speaker).
Sergey suggested to submit this as proposal for Kernel Summit TECH
TOPIC. It would probably benefit from more kernel maintainers in the
room.

Now I am somewhat troubled, if I submit the talk for Kernel Summit and
then suddenly I materialize as speaker on Plumbers too. It's not a
good idea to do the same talk twice, right?
The questions are:
1. Is it a good fit for Kernel Summit TECH TOPIC?
2. What should I do if I suddenly accepted to both Summit and
Plumbers? I probably could prepare a second, different talk for
Plumbers then (it wasn't announced yet).
3. If the talk is accepted to Summit, what should we do with Testing
MC part? Withdraw?


> 2. how to increase test coverage/find more bugs, in particular:
> - adding manual spot KASAN/KMSAN checks into kernel codebase
> - stubbing hardware/external inputs to kernel for testing
> - description of kernel interfaces (again)
>
> 3. dealing with kernel console output mess
> - intermixed/split lines
> - understand when/how kernel crashed
> - and where is that message
> - crash identity