Re: [RFC PATCH] check: try to fix the test device if it gets corrupted

Eryu Guan
2017-03-03T09:05:22Z

On Thu, Mar 02, 2017 at 06:20:50PM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> If the test device gets corrupted all subsequent tests will fail. To
> prevent this from causing all subsequent tests to be useless, try
> repair the file system on TEST_DEV if possible. We don't need to do
> this with the scratch device since that file system gets recreated
> each time anyway.
>
> Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
> ---
>
> This is a quick hack that I needed while debubgging some research
> code[1]. It turns out that when the grad student is up against a
> paper deadline is an, this becomes amazing evolutionary process which
> creates file system modifications which are optimized for running
> postmark and file bench --- and falls over very easily otherwise. So
> when TEST_DEV is getting corrupted very frequently, it's nice to be
> able to continue running other tests in the quick or auto group.
>
> So please consider this a proof-concept-patch; would people consider
> it worthwhile to have this in xfstests upstream?

This idea looks reasonable to me, and TEST_DEV is supposed to be aging,
perhaps being currupted & repaired is kind of aging too :)

Thanks,
Eryu