ServerTestingProcedure

Revision 6 as of 2008-03-04 22:50:04

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This page explains how server hardware testing should be performed for the ServerTestingTeam.

How you can help

Server testing is not that hard. You just need a server and a few hours to do it. Here are the steps you need to follow:

  1. Install the current stable version of Ubuntu on it (currently 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake))

  2. Link/goto a new subpage of ServerTestingTeam named after your make and model. If you were working with a HP ProLiant DL380 G3, the page would be named ["ServerTestingTeam/HPProLiantDL380G3"]. If this page does not exist, you will be asked to select a Template from the list to use, please use ServerTestingTeamTemplate. If another tester has the same server model, please combine your results on one page.

  3. Add yourself to the table on ServerTestingTeam. The vintage should give a rough idea of the date the server was originally on sale or purchased. Just the year is fine.

  4. Fill out the table. If you need help, see the info below. Don't file any bugs at this point.
  5. Install the most current point release of the development version (currently 6.10 (Edgy Eft)).
  6. Fill out all the information. File bugs for anything that doesn't work, or worked in the stable release and doesn't work now (regressions).
  7. When a new point release for the development version comes out, install that and correct any information. File new bugs for items that are now broken and remember to close any bugs for things that now work.

The testing will be familiar to those who already help with LaptopTesting, and we hope to move to a centralized web application for all our hardware testing in the future.

Process

These are questions to help you test. Please fill out the table, as seen on ["ServerTestingTeamTemplate"].

  • Did the installer complete without errors?
  • Has the CPU layout been detected correctly?
    • Does 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' show what you expect?
    • When HT is enabled, your HT processors should show up twice.
    • Dual-core processors should show up twice.
    • Dual-core HT processors should (surprise!) show up four times.
  • Has the memory layout been detected correctly?
    • Look at the 'total' column, 'Mem:' row of free(1). Does this number equal the actual amount of RAM in the machine?
  • Has the physical hard drive layout been detected correctly?
    • You should be able to notice this in the installer (on an installed machine, peruse dmesg(8) output or look at 'ls /dev/hd*' or 'ls /dev/sd*' for SCSI drives)
    • If the server supports hot-swappable hard drives, after the machine boots fully, attempt to hot-swap a drive. Did you encounter any problems? Is the machine still reporting the correct drive layout? (This is generally only applicable if you're using Linux's software RAID. With hardware RAID, drive swapping should generally be transparent to the underlying OS.)
  • Does connecting a serial console work as expected?
  • Have any RAID and storage controllers been detected correctly?
    • Look at lspci(8) output, and see if your RAID and/or storage controllers are present
  • Have all the NICs been detected correctly?
    • Take a look at 'dmesg|grep eth' and 'ifconfig -a' output.

Reporting uncovered bugs

When reporting bugs for any problems uncovered during server testing, please be SURE to attach the output of at least dmesg(8) and lspci(8) as well as any other output relevant to the bug.