Re: Kernel testing

Seth M. Landsman (seth@job.cs.brandeis.edu)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:51:48 -0400 (EDT)


On 14 Apr 1997, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

>
> > Just a quick note. Most UNIX vendors have a directory full of stress
> > test toys, each test is geared specifically towards a certain
> > subsystem of the kernel. Essentially when you change stuff you go
> > into there and say "If you dicked with the buffer cache, run one of
> > test X Y or Z, if you changed the locking code in the networking run A
> > or B"
>
> We could probably write our test suite of programs by making simple
> small programs that get linked with the kernel object files and a set
> of stub libraries.
>
> The stub libraries would just provide the missing functionality in the
> kernel.
>
> The test suite then could actually stress test the kernel code without
> even booting the kernel.

Exactly. It would save a whole lot of problems for many people if
they could test the integrity of the kernel before they installed it.
This wouldn't save everyone from installing a kernel that didn't boot, but
it would save some ...

-Seth