An automated xfstests infrastructure using kvm

An automated xfstests infrastructure using kvm

[Theodore Ts'o]

As I had mentioned during the LSF/MM workshop, I have an automated
infrastructure which allows me to boot a kernel out of my build tree,
and run xfstests under a variety of ext4 file system configurations
(i.e., with a 4k block size, 1k block size, in no-journal mode, etc.,
etc.)

Once I've built a kernel, all I need to run is "kvm-xfstests smoke" or
"kvm-xfstests full" and the test infrastructure takes care of the rest!
The smoke test takes about 30 minutes, while the full set of tests takes
around 16-18 hours.

The git tree where this can be found is here:

	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/ext2/xfstests-bld.git

Previously, "some assembly was required", but I've automated the
construction of the kvm test appliance image so it's now much easier to
get things set up.  It does require a Debian system to built the virtual
root file system (or you can download the pre-built KVM image if you are
using some other distro and drop it into the kvm-xfststs/test-appliance
directory).  Give it a try and let me know what you think!

If you are intersted in adding support so this infrastructure can be
used for other file systems as well, feel free to send me patches.

For more information, please see:

* https://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/xfstests-bld.git/tree/README
* https://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/xfstests-bld.git/tree/kvm-xfstests/README
* https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tytso/kvm-xfstests/README