FreeBSD Testing Facility

Dear All ,

During development of FreeBSD , testing is very vital .

To my knowledge ( which may not be correct ) , at present ,
Tinderbox is used to only compilation correctness ,
means "Syntax" is tested .

I have downloaded

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.0/FreeBSD-10.0-CURRENT-amd64-20130216-r246877-release.iso


and tried to install it on an Intel DG965WH main board .

During the first booting , it generated a panic message and entered into
debug mode .

For me it has crashed , because I do not know what to do in debug mode .



On this main board , it is possible to completely install and successfully
run

Windows 7 ,
Fedora 15 , 17 , 18 ,
Mageia
OpenSuSE

and some others , all of them being 64 bits .

The above failure shows that "Semantics" of FreeBSD is NOT tested well .


My suggestion is as follows :


Establish a mailing list only devoted to FreeBSD testing activities .

To the subscribers , present a form to get information which parts of the
FreeBSD
he/she can test by selecting from supplied parts list .

Establish a testing ftp site and introduce into it testing scripts and
their parts , or iso
files , etc. , directed toward testing a whole or a part . In that site ,
classify tests
in directories such as


 FATAL ( requires a new , complete install , or can not be applied in a
production system )
 DANGEROUS ( can not be applied in a production system )
 HARMLESS



With respect to forms filled by the testing list subscribers , send a mail
to inform that a
testing step is available with related links .


The subscriber , may download the testing parts and apply them .


If it is planned and implemented to return a mail showing test results on
behalf of user
approval , it may be very good . In that way , automated analysis of
returned mails will
be possible .


If this is not easy , the user may send a message about result . Due to
irregular message structure  ,
automatic processing of such messages will be difficult .


With the above structure , it will be possible to test the FreeBSD as much
as possible .


The subscribers may maintain a USB hard disk or stick or memory card to be
used only for testing
purposes .
Some subscribers may have free computers to apply tests .
Some subscribers may disconnect power of a production hard disk and apply
tests on a spare disk , etc. ,
if they can find time .
Any testing step in any way conceived by the subscribers will be useful .


There are such community testing programs , for example , using BOINC .
There is a port about this already .


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC_client%E2%80%93server_technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

http://www.freshports.org/net/boinc-client/
http://www.freshports.org/net/boinc_curses/

http://www.freshports.org/astro/boinc-astropulse/
http://www.freshports.org/astro/boinc-setiathome-enhanced/
http://www.freshports.org/biology/boinc-simap/





Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk