Re: [Ubuntugnome-qa] Semi-Automated QA Testing

[Erick Brunzell <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/18/2014 09:08 AM, Keith I Myers wrote:

Hello All,

I have a spare dedicated server sitting in a colo space that I pay for. The server is powered off and is pretty much going to waste. I was thinking of setting up a VM host to find a better way of performing some high level QA tests in a semi-automated fashion. Has anyone toyed with this idea in the past?

(Server Specs : 2x Quad Core L5420 Processors | 36 GB RAM | 2x 1 TB Hard Disks)

--

Keith I Myers

+Keith I Myers

Mobile : (305)-929-3475

 

Hi Keith,

Sorry for the enormously long delay but this kept getting pushed further and further down on my to-do list :^(

I've not personally played with automated testing and my testing machines lack the RAM capacity to make use of a virtual machine ATM, but I did several years ago use VirtualBox for all of my distro upgrade testing. The clear benefit was the ability to use snapshots so if an upgrade test failed I could easily restore the snapshot and then repeat the test when the devs released a potential bug fix.

Upgrade tests (using the release-upgrader) are by far the most time consuming  because it requires beginning with a fully updated prior version so you have the installation time of the old release + the time to apply updates + applying a few tweaks (such as importing or creating browser & email client profiles) + importing a few files/pics to be sure no data is lost during the upgrade. Then after that the actual upgrade usually takes 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours.

Anyway, does anyone else on the list know anything about setting up automated testing? If not maybe someone could contact balloons via IRC chat for some resources regarding that. I believe the lions share of Ubuntu's own testing is now automated so I'm sure resources exist, I'm just not sure where to begin looking.

Lance