Re: [KVM-AUTOTEST PATCH 0/5] KVM test: Support for Parallel install of guest OS

[Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues <lmr@redhat.com>]

On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 11:54 -0600, Ryan Harper wrote:
> * Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues <lmr@redhat.com> [2010-02-10 11:14]:
> > On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 21:53 +0530, yogi wrote:
> > > Hello everyone,
> > > 
> > > I like to submit a set of patches to enable installing multiple guests
> > > in parallel.
> > 
> > Hi Yogi, great to receive your patches!
> > 
> > > To install multiple guests in parallel the role of the host and the
> > > guest need to be changed. In this patch host acts as a client and the
> > > guest acts as server, enabling us to install multiple guest at same
> > > time. 
> > 
> > I see your point, but I am concerned that we already have a parallel
> > test execution implementation (see control.parallel), so either your
> > patchset needs to fit in with the control.parallel approach or we might
> > think of another approach. I have thought of some ideas, will check your
> > approach and comment about it soon.
> 
> If I've read the patches right,  I believe Yogi is relying upon
> control.parallel; these changes are needed to ensure that the
> unattended_install test invoked in parallel doesn't clobber itself.
> Yogi hit all of the major issues:

Yes, after reading the patches more carefully I realized that I was too
hasty in making that comment :)

> 1) tftp code uses the same path and filename for each guest; Yogi
> switched that to include a per-guest path so we can have multipl
> kernel/initrd pairs in flight at the same time
> 
> 2) only one service side listening server and no way agreeing upon a
> port number; Yogi moved the listen to the guest, and now the host pokes
> at the pre-defined port in each guest to see if it has completed.

Yes, the last months I've been running the tests on a internal test
grid, as there were a lot of details to take care, I decided to keep
serial execution until I was completely comfortable with all the tests,
so I haven't run into this issue yet. Good point, let's fix this as soon
as possible.