QA on Arm

Focus

The focus of the ARM QA team is to ensure the same user experience on mainstream desktops/servers is available on this new architecture. To that end, we are focusing on building and automating tests for the Ubuntu images on ARM platforms.

Difficulties

Testing on ARM has been extra difficult as the architecture currently doesn't support virtualization and emulation doesn't hit issues discovered with various platforms. And until recently, hardware that supported the targeted build arch (armV7 - thumb2 - SMP) has been scarce on the market. Our goal is for when the platforms becomes more available to consumers, improvements to Ubuntu will be there in a solid user friendly form, just like it is on more mainstream desktops/servers.

Testing 123

Desktop Testing

* Installing the development image on a pandaboard

Server Testing

Server tests and results can be found here.

SRU Testing (updates)

Currently, there is not a lot of testing done here, but this is improving rapidly. First priority is kernel SRU testing, as it is the most frequent and there are test suites readily available.

Kernel SRU testing

1. Run netinstall to test kernel installation. Testcases are:
   1. Install from main only, then enable -updates and -proposed on running system and dist-update.

   2. Install from main & -updates, then enable -proposed on running system and dist-update.

   3. Install from main, -updates, and -proposed, using the proposed updates at install time.
2. Run QRT-test-kernel* from the lp:qa-regression-testing bzr tree.
3. Check video/audio on updated system to ensure regression from previous status.
   • More tests to be added as we continue to strengthen our test suites.

Application SRU testing

Not much testing is done here, largely due to resources available. Package installation testing is done as part of the above kernel installation testing. This has proven beneficial already, catching an installation issue with a package in proposed.

Bugs

Please follow the additional instructions for bug workflow and triaging here.