* Test Hardware @ 2014-08-30 20:47 nick 2014-08-30 23:17 ` Hugo Mills 0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread From: nick @ 2014-08-30 20:47 UTC (permalink / raw) To: kernelnewbies Hey Guys, I am wondering what test system(s)/hardware specs I need for testing btrfs code as I am wondering due to thinking about a future budget for it. Cheers Nick ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Test Hardware 2014-08-30 20:47 Test Hardware nick @ 2014-08-30 23:17 ` Hugo Mills 2014-08-31 1:01 ` nick 0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread From: Hugo Mills @ 2014-08-30 23:17 UTC (permalink / raw) To: kernelnewbies On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 04:47:07PM -0400, nick wrote: > Hey Guys, > I am wondering what test system(s)/hardware specs I need for testing btrfs code as I am wondering > due to thinking about a future budget for it. If your current hardware can do virtualisation, and you have a few (tens of) gigabytes of free disk space, then you don't need anything more. You can set up a virtual machine with a single disk image for the OS files, install a Linux distribution of your choice on it, and then create a bunch of sparse disk images: $ truncate -s 10G test-image.{1,2,3,4} Pass those to the VM as disk images, and you'll have four 10G disks in the VM to run xfstests on. I recommend using qemu for this, because once you've done the base install, you can use the -kernel, -append and -initrd options to the qemu-system-x86_64 command to pass your test kernel directly to the VM. This bypasses the BIOS emulation, and speeds up the boot process by a few seconds. The other thing I recommend doing is taking a copy of the base disk image after you've done the basic OS install -- that way, if something goes wrong, you can just delete the original and restore from the backup. If your machine doesn't have virtualisation support (and most machines made in the last few years do), then you can still do the above, but it'll just run rather more slowly. The above will take a few hours of fiddling and reading through qemu options, but once it's done, you can write a one-liner shell script to start your test VM, and you're all ready to run. Hugo. > Cheers Nick > > _______________________________________________ > Kernelnewbies mailing list > Kernelnewbies at kernelnewbies.org > http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies -- === Hugo Mills: hugo at ... carfax.org.uk | darksatanic.net | lug.org.uk === PGP key: 65E74AC0 from wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net or http://www.carfax.org.uk --- Great oxymorons of the world, no. 6: Mature Student --- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 811 bytes Desc: Digital signature Url : http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/pipermail/kernelnewbies/attachments/20140831/3856869e/attachment.bin ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Test Hardware 2014-08-30 23:17 ` Hugo Mills @ 2014-08-31 1:01 ` nick 0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread From: nick @ 2014-08-31 1:01 UTC (permalink / raw) To: kernelnewbies On 14-08-30 07:17 PM, Hugo Mills wrote: > On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 04:47:07PM -0400, nick wrote: >> Hey Guys, >> I am wondering what test system(s)/hardware specs I need for testing btrfs code as I am wondering >> due to thinking about a future budget for it. > > If your current hardware can do virtualisation, and you have a few > (tens of) gigabytes of free disk space, then you don't need anything > more. You can set up a virtual machine with a single disk image for > the OS files, install a Linux distribution of your choice on it, and > then create a bunch of sparse disk images: > > $ truncate -s 10G test-image.{1,2,3,4} > > Pass those to the VM as disk images, and you'll have four 10G disks > in the VM to run xfstests on. > > I recommend using qemu for this, because once you've done the base > install, you can use the -kernel, -append and -initrd options to the > qemu-system-x86_64 command to pass your test kernel directly to the > VM. This bypasses the BIOS emulation, and speeds up the boot process > by a few seconds. > > The other thing I recommend doing is taking a copy of the base disk > image after you've done the basic OS install -- that way, if something > goes wrong, you can just delete the original and restore from the > backup. > > If your machine doesn't have virtualisation support (and most > machines made in the last few years do), then you can still do the > above, but it'll just run rather more slowly. > > The above will take a few hours of fiddling and reading through > qemu options, but once it's done, you can write a one-liner shell > script to start your test VM, and you're all ready to run. > > Hugo. > >> Cheers Nick >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Kernelnewbies mailing list >> Kernelnewbies at kernelnewbies.org >> http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies > Thanks Hugo, I really appreciate your answer :). Seems I need to pick up a new hard drive , how big is good? I am thinking of 2 TB because price is only 100 dollars and seems good if I need to use the disk later for other things. Cheers Nick ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
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