Re: Fast testing

Andi Kleen
2009-04-14T13:53:37Z

Dragoslav Zaric <dragoslav.zaric.kd@gmail.com> writes:

As others pointed out vmlinux is not demand paged.

> Since rebooting is a long process,

The trick is to not make it a long process. Some ways to do that:

- Test simple changes in emulation. Emulators tend to boot faster
than real systems.
- Use a stripped down Linux distribution that boots fast. I found
that just using a old Linux distribution (without udev with static /dev)
and minimal services boots dramatically faster. I use opensuse 10.0 for that.
- When you need to test on a real system use nfsroot with kernel
boot through PXE. First that saves you one iteration of rebooting/copying
to update a kernel. And then the NFS server can keep the small nfsroot cached
in memory and then deliver it immediately.

-Andi

--
ak@linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only.