Gorman: Continual testing of mainline kernels

[Posted July 21, 2015 by corbet]

Mel Gorman introduces SUSE's kernel performance-testing system. "Marvin is a system that continually runs performance-related tests and is named after another robot doomed with repetitive tasks. When tests are complete it generates a performance comparison report that is publicly available but rarely linked. The primary responsibility of this system is to check SUSE Linux for Enterprise kernels for performance regressions but it is also configured to run tests against mainline releases."

Gorman: Continual testing of mainline kernels

Posted Jul 21, 2015 9:05 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (4 responses)

Fascinating stuff.

From his article:

This is probably not a task that will never finish.

I wonder if he meant that it probably is a task that will never finish (or not / ever)?

Big thanks to Mel for doing this.

Gorman: Continual testing of mainline kernels

Posted Jul 21, 2015 9:37 UTC (Tue) by mel (guest, #5484) [Link] (3 responses)

> I wonder if he meant that it probably is a task that will never finish (or not / ever)?

s/never/ever/ . Thanks for the correction.

s/never/ever

Posted Jul 21, 2015 16:13 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for the quick fix, yet I still wish to apologize to LWN readers and our editor[s] for suggesting a typo correction here in the comments section.

But, that sentence in particular had me curious, especially after I saw not just the sheer number of machines you're running these tests on, but also their hardware specs—are you being owned by the electric bill?? (Rhetorical question)

I can just imagine all the lights dimming and electric fans slowing down in the neighborhood right when you commenced the tests...

P.S. When the weather turns cold there'll be no need to run a heater in the server room! :-)

s/never/ever

Posted Jul 21, 2015 18:30 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

None of this stuff is cheap or easy, which is why it's the sort of thing that is relatively rare among open source projects.

This sort of testing is a huge asset to the Linux community.

s/never/ever

Posted Jul 21, 2015 19:07 UTC (Tue) by graemes (subscriber, #3788) [Link]

Totally agree that is is the sort of thing that never gets the recognition it deserves.

Also have to doff my hat to the names of the components (Marvin & Bob). As someone who believes that humour belongs in naming systems/components (along with music) I had a wry smile when I read the article

Update link for article

Posted Feb 16, 2018 9:18 UTC (Fri) by pevik (subscriber, #112535) [Link]

The link has changed to
http://techsingularity.net/blog/?p=5