Re: [KVM-AUTOTEST PATCH 0/2] Add KSM test

[Uri Lublin <uril@redhat.com>]

On 08/31/2009 12:29 PM, Lukáš Doktor wrote:
> This patch adds KSM test. We faced many difficulties which weren't
> solvable by regular ways so please take a look and comment.

Hello Lukas,

Can you please provide reviewers with some more information:
1. What does your test do. Please briefly outline the test.
    What are the different steps, what are parallel/serial, etc.
2. What do the configuration parameters represent.
    - Also, is there a name mismatch ksm_ratio ?
3. Why do you communicate with your guest application using sockets ?
    I think it would be better to communicate with stdin/stdout (on the
    application) and session.sendline/session.read_until_last_line_matches.
4. With regards to the allocator program on the guest:
    - What is the difference between "random" and "static random"
       - is it just the seed ?
       - how do you use them ?
    - Why do you implement your own rand functions?
5. Why don't you define the first VM in the configuration file, and
    clone it for all other VMs (memory is calculated during test ?).
    Also please use an existing function to find a "free" port, instead
       of hard coding the port number. (you don't need it if you
       switch to using stdin/stdout)
6. Please replace os.popen('cat file') with directly opening/reading the file.
    - same for grep commands.
    - we should probably write a util-function for grepping a file, if one
      does not already exist.
7. What were the difficulties you encountered and how did you solve them ?
    - Host out-of-memory condition kills python program is one I saw.
      I think leaving some memory to the host is a good solution.

Thanks,
     Uri.