About Me

Contact

• Email: <paul DOT larson AT SPAMFREE canonical DOT com>
  Freenode IRC Nick: plars
  LP: pwlars

Background

I started using Linux during the Summer of 1993, downloading it one floppy image at a time through a shell account I had over a 1200 baud modem. I was hooked on it immediately and shortly recompiling the kernel (0.99-pl12 at the time I think).

Most of my background has been in test. I was the first release maintainer of LTP when we moved it to Sourceforge, and I participated heavily in this project for many years, integrating tests, taking patches, writing new tests, making releases, and doing advocacy work to get new partners in the community involved in the project. I also worked extensively in kernel testing. I started some very early efforts to do nightly build and ltp testing of kernels when Linux first moved to Bitkeeper. I've also contributed some patches to the kernel. I did some test automation work for other projects, such as Xen. I also worked on Linux clusters and IO device driver bringup, testing, and fixing for ppc64.

Publications

• [01/2009 Redbooks] SystemTap: Instrumenting the Linux Kernel for Analyzing Performance and Functional Problems - http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4469.html

• [02/2004 Developerworks] Kernel comparison: Improvements in kernel development from 2.4 to 2.6 - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-dev26/

• [03/2004 Developerworks] Kernel comparison: Improved memory management in the 2.6 kernel - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-mem26/

• [2004] Using Code Coverage Tools in the Linux Kernel - http://ltp.sourceforge.net/docs/UsingCodeCoverage.pdf

• [2005 OLS] Testing the Xen Hypervisor and Linux Virtual Machines - http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2005/linuxsymposium_procv1.pdf

• [2003 OLS] Improving the Linux Test Project with Kernel Code Coverage Analysis - http://archive.linuxsymposium.org/ols2003/Proceedings/All-Reprints/Reprint-Larson-OLS2003.pdf

• [2002 OLS] Testing Linux with Linux Test Project http://ltp.sourceforge.net/docs/ols2002/ltp.pdf

Contributions

Bugs

https://bugs.launchpad.net/~pwlars

Package Uploads

https://launchpad.net/~pwlars/+related-software

Jaunty Jackalope

• Testing of daily images of MID, UNR, and ARM builds
• Writing testplans for ISO Tracker for UNR
• ISO testing and reporting of MID, UNR, ARM, and Moblin images
• Contribution of tests to Checkbox
• Bug reporting, triaging, and testing of fixes

Karmic Koala

• Worked to define and document a bug workflow for the Ubuntu Mobile team
• Developed testplans
• Performed testing on daily images for UNR and ARM images
• Lots of bug reporting and triaging
• Wrote a new testsuite for finding apps that misbehave on small screen sizes
• Did some packaging of things needed for the Moblin remix

Lucid Lynx

• Packaged moserial for Ubuntu
• Worked on some bug fixes for bootchart, libgvfscommon0, and the omap kernel
• Improved suspend/resume testing in checkbox
• Lots of testing, in particular on ARM images including the new Beagleboard image

Future Plans

• Create new and improved QA and Automation tools to fill different needs
• Increase availability of test suites and QA tools
• Support and improve the state of Ubuntu running on ARM processors