Re: [LSF/MM TOPIC] FS, MM, and stable trees

[Chuck Lever III <chuck.lever@oracle.com>]

> On Mar 10, 2022, at 6:59 PM, Steve French <smfrench@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 6:16 PM Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 01:04:05PM +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 12:08 PM Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 11:32:43AM +0200, Amir Goldstein wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 7:31 PM Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'd like to propose a discussion about the workflow of the stable trees
>>>>>> when it comes to fs/ and mm/. In the past year we had some friction with
>>>>>> regards to the policies and the procedures around picking patches for
>>>>>> stable tree, and I feel it would be very useful to establish better flow
>>>>>> with the folks who might be attending LSF/MM.
> 
> I would like to participate in this as well - it is very important
> that we improve
> test automation processes.  We run a series of tests, hosted with VMs in Azure
> (mostly xfstests but also the git fs regression tests and various ones
> that are fs specific
> for testing various scenarios like reconnect and various fs specific
> mount options)
> regularly (on every pull request sent upstream to mainline) for cifs.ko and
> also for the kernel server (ksmbd.ko) as well.
> 
> This does leave a big gap for stable although Redhat and SuSE seem to
> run a similar set of regression tests so not much risk for the distros.
> 
> In theory we could periodically run the cifs/smb3.1.1 automated tests
> against stable,
> perhaps every few weeks and send results somewhere if there was a process
> for this for the various fs - but the tests we run were pretty clearly listed
> (and also in the wiki.samba.org) so may be easier ways to do this.  Tests could
> be run locally on the same machine to ksmbd from cifs.ko (or to Samba if
> preferred) so nothing extra to setup.
> 
> Would be worth discussing the best process for automating something like
> this - others may have figured out tricks that could help all fs in this
> xfstest automation

It deserves mention that network file systems like Steve's and mine
have a slightly heavier lift because two systems at a time are needed
to test with -- client and server. I've found that requires more
infrastructure around Jenkins or whatever framework you like to drive
testing. Having a discussion about that and comparing notes about how
this particular issue can be resolved would be of interest to me.


>>>>>> I feel that fs/ and mm/ are in very different places with regards to
>>>>>> which patches go in -stable, what tests are expected, and the timeline
>>>>>> of patches from the point they are proposed on a mailing list to the
>>>>>> point they are released in a stable tree. Therefore, I'd like to propose
>>>>>> two different sessions on this (one for fs/ and one for mm/), as a
>>>>>> common session might be less conductive to agreeing on a path forward as
>>>>>> the starting point for both subsystems are somewhat different.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> We can go through the existing processes, automation, and testing
>>>>>> mechanisms we employ when building stable trees, and see how we can
>>>>>> improve these to address the concerns of fs/ and mm/ folks.
> 
> 
>>>>> Hi Sasha,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I think it would be interesting to have another discussion on the state of fs/
>>>>> in -stable and see if things have changed over the past couple of years.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Thanks,
> 
> Steve

--
Chuck Lever