Re: [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC] File system testing

[Ric Wheeler <ricwheeler@gmail.com>]

On 2/18/26 10:07 AM, Theodore Tso wrote:
> I'd like to propose a perennial favorite file system testing as a
> topic for the FS track.  Topics to cover would include:
>
> 1) Standardizing test scenarios for various file systems.
>
>     I have test scenarios for ext4 and xfs in my test appliance (e.g.,
>     4k, 64k, and 1k blocksizes, with fscrypt enabled, with dax enabled,
>     etc.)  But I don't have those for other file systems, such as
>     btrfs, etc.  It would be nice if this could be centrally documented
>     some where, perhaps in the kernel sources?
>
> 2) Standardized way of expressing that certain tests are expected to
>     fail for a given test scenario.  Ideally, we can encode this in
>     xfstests upstream (an example of this is requiring metadata
>     journalling for generic/388).  But in some cases the failure is
>     very specific to a particular set of file system configurations,
>     and it may vary depending on kernel version (e.g., a problem that
>     was fixed in 6.6 and later LTS kernels, but it was too hard to
>     backport to earlier LTS kernels).
>
> 3) Automating the use of tests to validate file system backports to
>     LTS kernels, so that commits which might cause file system
>     regressions can be automatically dropped from a LTS rc kernel.
>
>     	       	      		    	    	 - Ted


This is a very interesting topic to me as well.  I also am interested in 
testing on larger and aged file systems, not just file systems that are 
newly created for test runs....

Ric