Posts tagged Testing

A quick little guide on helping and getting involved with the future releases of Sabayon.  I know and see people asking what they can do to be more involved in Sabayon.  If you have some experience, time and capabilities, you can help test the weekly iso images or add the entropy limbo repository and test packages.  I wouldn’t recommend this for or on your production system.  You can and will run into broken stuff, but that is the fun in testing!  I like to use rsync as it saves on bandwidth of having to re-download the entire ISO.  With rsync you only download the changes.  So how does one do this you may ask.  It’s pretty easy, find a mirror on our download page that supports rsync.

Let’s for example use Italy – Garr mirror.  You will notice rsync://na.mirror.garr.it/sabayonlinux [1000Mbit/sec].

This is what you are looking for.  I myself have created in my home directory two directory structures /home/wolfden/isos/x86 and /home/wolfden/isos/64.  You have the option to rsync the entire directory which will grab all the iso images from the server.  I do not want to do that.  I only want the 64 bit ones as that is all I use.  So I rsync the Gnome and KDE editions of the x86_64 isos.  You will have to decide what you want to do.  Either do all or pick the one(s) you want.

Now I just need to run a simple command via terminal:

rsync –progress -av rsync://na.mirror.garr.it/sabayonlinux/iso/daily/Sabayon_Linux_DAILY_x86_G.iso /home/wolfden/isos/x86  (it’s a double dash in front of progress)

That will go out and fetch the iso file and place it into the directory.  I always grab the md5 file also and check the iso image.  Just like this:

rsync –progress -av rsync://na.mirror.garr.it/sabayonlinux/iso/daily/Sabayon_Linux_DAILY_x86_G.md5 /home/wolfden/isos/x86

than to verify

md5sum -c Sabayon_Linux_DAILY__x86_G.iso

Now that you have the file, in the future when you run the above commands, it will update your iso and md5 by downloading only the changes instead of the entire iso file again.  You can of course download your first iso(s) off the ftp side of the server and move it to the correct directory and than run the rsync.  As long as the iso and path all point correctly it will update.

If you want to download all the isos, you can simple do something like:

rsync –progress -av rsync://na.mirror.garr.it/sabayonlinux/iso/daily/ /home/wolfden/isos

That will grab everything in the directory.  To get a directory listing:

rsync –list-only rsync://na.mirror.garr.it/sabayonlinux/iso/daily/

I like to use unetbootin and a flash drive for testing iso.  Save a blank cd/dvd-r and use a flash drive if you can.

Maybe you don’t want to test iso(s) and just want to test packages.  We have the entropy limbo repository that is the testing ground for packages before they get moved into the main line repository. One of the entropy team members will give a shout out here and there for specific testing of limbo packages even.  You can enable the limbo repository through sulfur or by editing the /etc/entropy/repositories.conf, please see our wiki for that.  Also make sure you are on the Sabayon Dev Mailing List to stay in touch with announcements and changes for testing.  Getting on the Dev ML should be your first step.

So now you are testing and find an issue or bug and need to report it.  You can use the Sabayon Dev ML, Sabayon Bugzilla or discuss testing in the special forum section devoted to just testing. When reporting, try to keep in mind a few important things that are needed:

• Which Sabayon Linux are you running – x86, x86_64, gnome, kde, core ?
• How to reproduce the issue? Give us the steps on what you did to get the issue(s) so we can try and reproduce it.
• Any and All Log files that pertain to the issue.
• Hardware List

The more information you submit, the easier it is for us and there is no cat and mouse chasing to get the required information.  Stating that the latest entropy limbo update crashed your desktop isn’t what we want to see.  Reports like that are usually deleted as they are useless.  So try and remember that the more information you can give, the better.  Someone will usually try and recreate the issue to confirm or deny the issue.  Feel free to confirm or deny the issue(s) as they are posted.

Being a tester is usually for experienced users and you usually don’t want to run it as your main operating system.  Some ask that they don’t have enough hard drive space to test and want to know if they can use Virtual Box.  Yes you can.  We need all aspects tested.  This includes things like virtualization, running it in live mode, and doing actual installs.  New users are gonna get their first impression from the Live mode, so we need that working flawlessly.  I like to use unetbootin for this.  Just let us know how you are running it, again, the more information you can provide, the better.  Test anyway you can and help make a stronger Sabayon and be apart of that.

Thanks to all that do already and will be in the future.