On Sun, 31 Oct 2021 at 07:50, Peter Boy <pboy(a)uni-bremen.de> wrote:
We are officially distributing a Fedora Server Edition disk image for ARM, typically used
for SBCs. I just tried to install this image on a Radxa Rock Pi 4 and failed miserably.
That SBC device is part of the installation procedure provided by the ARM team. With the
F34 image I ended up with a black screen, no display, no chance to get the device working
in the normal way (I got it to work in tricky detours). With F35 Beta I got a working
display, but no network connection. I haven't found a solution for that yet.
And then I remembered F33, where it was discovered by chance (!) at the last minute, that
in the x86_64 version Cockpit did not work properly (and probably also in the aarch64
default install version, we didn't and probably couldn’t even check that afterwards).
We have not solved the underlying issue for this until today, although the factual reason
has been clear for a long time (issue #32).
Similar problems had emerged after the release with the switch to systemd-resolved, where
"surprisingly" problems with some server configurations were encountered,
especially with elaborate use of KVM virtualization on a server.
These events are clear violations of our release criteria. In principle, a release must
be at least successfully installable and basically working.
For me, this brings up a few questions:
(1)
Did any of us actually have Fedora Beta installed on a ARM device (SBC or other) using
the image file and on which model?
Or are we just flying blind with that deliverable?
(2)
What about the two aarch64 install iso files that target SBSA hardware? Does anyone have
such a beast at hand and tested the isos? Or is that (also) flying blind?
(3)
And what about x86_64 installation? Most of us will be in possession of this hardware.
But what about tests? When I started a discussion about testing a year ago, Adam reassured
us, release building and testing is heavily automated these days. No need to worry too
much about testing it manually ourselves. But did anyone of us at least worry a bit?
I would like to discuss how we can gain some improvement.
Regarding arch architecture, could some kind of cooperation with arm group be beneficial?
And what can we offer? Is it testing? Is it documentation? Or something else?
If we want to take SBC devices seriously, perhaps we could identify a few reference
systems where we can actually ensure, i.e. test, whether a successful installation and
basic functionality is met. If we don't want that, we should not distribute the image
file under the Fedora Server Edition branding.
The issue is that SBC devices vary a lot even when they are the same
'brand'. Many of these boards are made in small shipments and so you
find that StonePi-X board 1 uses a slightly different chipset than
StonePi-X board 4309. This makes bug checking on them really hard
because 'it works for me' but 'may not work for you'. Larger build
boards like the raspberry-pi4 have different issues that the broadcom
chipset is not fully open and so a lot of reverse engineering is
needed. Thus they usually all require various post-install steps to
make the system 'fully functional'. We can probably at best say we
support 'ARM system-ready(TM)' systems without post-install but would
need to focus with the Fedora ARM group on outlining all the steps for
other boards.
And in terms of our "main" architecture, we should agree on
what QA actually expects in terms of non-automated testing and how we want to tackle that
in the next round. Based on Adam's comments, we have relied heavily on automation for
the last few releases. So it's not clear to me what, for example, the page
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_35_RC_1.2_Server means in detail in
terms of work.
Basically the way to supplement automated testing is to call specific
"Test Days" where a specific matrix for testing a specific tool or set
of architectures is done.
Happy Sunday
Peter
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--
Stephen J Smoogen.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Flame wars in
sci.astro.orion. I have seen SPAM filters overload because of Godwin's
Law. All those moments will be lost in time... like posts on a BBS...
time to shutdown -h now.