Introduction

This page will walk through participating in a cadence testing week. It will demonstrate how to use a live session from a development image or an installed development system to run through testcases found on the QAtracker and submit a result.

Cadence Testing Images

NOTE: This covers testing of packages during the cadence week. If you wish to help test images during a cadence week, you can follow this tutorial instead.

Video Screencast of Tutorial

A video version of this tutorial can be seen here.

Requirements

• Launchpad/Ubuntu SSO account

  • Sign up if needed

• Updated daily image of ubuntu (development) or up to date installed version of ubuntu (development)
  • Instructions for obtaining below

Prerequisites

Make sure you understand what the QATracker is -- read that page first! Be comfortable with burning the image to a dvd or usb drive.

Setup your testing environment

Using an installed version of ubuntu (development)

If you already running the development version of ubuntu, login to your system and make sure your up to date by running

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

You are now set to perform the tests.

Grabbing a live image

If your not running a development version of ubuntu, head over to the cdimage repository and download the latest image matching your hardware. For most new hardware, this will be the 64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop image.

Burning the live image

Now, in order for you to test you will use the live image in a 'live session' environment by booting up a pc or virtual machine using the image. Once booted, select 'Try ubuntu without installing' to boot into a live session.

• If you wish to use your computer to run the live session, follow the guides to burn the image to a dvd or usb drive. Then reboot your machine with the media in place.

• If you wish to use a virtual machine to run the live session, create a new virtual machine with the image as the cd-rom and boot the machine.

Logging in to the package tracker

• Open a browser and navigate to http://packages.qa.ubuntu.com/

• Click the login link located on the lefthand side of the page

• Enter your ubuntu sso account information

Selecting the milestone

Once logged into the package tracker, you should see a list of milestones. The cadence week you wish to help test for should be listed, as shown below. Select the cadence milestone you wish to test. NOTE: Only milestones with a status of 'Testing' can have test results submitted. If the status is set to released, no new results can be contributed.

Select the milestone that matches your cadence week with a status of 'Testing'

Packages

You should now see a list of packages ready for testing. Select the package you wish to test.

Testcases

This page shows the testcases to perform for the selected package.

Reporting a bug

Additionally, there is a link to the bug reporting instructions. This page will detail how to report a bug and/or provide a link to help report bugs found properly. If a bug is found while testing, refer to that link for instructions on reporting.

Executing the testcase

Select a testcase and a page containing instructions to follow to execute the test will appear. Most of the testcases follow a simple format - perform an action, and then expect a result. A step in this format is shown below.

Alternatively the testcase may appear as the form of yes/no questions, where the expected result is a generally a yes. This is called a smoke test.

For more information on the testcase formats, have a look at testcase formats page.

Go through each step of the testcase and follow the instructions. Perform the action, and ensure the expected result occurs, or that you are able to positively answer each question. If something different occurs, note it as a bug, but continue the testcase.