Hey all, I just wanted to introduce to everyone to my summer of code<http://code.google.com/soc/2007/>project vlosuts<http://code.google.com/soc/2007/debian/appinfo.html?csaid=24C7766EC4271F15>(Virtual Live OS Upgrade Testing Suite). In short vlosuts is used to test the upgrade of a system from one releaso/repo to another. Through virtualization, logs of a full upgrade with running daemons can be generated. It's my hope that Debian developers will find this useful in indentifying upgrade problems.
There are many options avaiable, such as using a package list or installing all packages with a given priority. You can also choose between QEMU and Xen, and other virtualization options should be easily pluggable. If you have your own specialized tests you would like to run either before or after the upgrade, such as probing certain daemons or program functionality, there is an option to run those tests. In order to get vlosuts, just check out the svn repository via svn co svn://svn.debian.org/vlosuts/vlosuts Before running vlosuts, you may want to: 1) Install prereqs: debootstrap, python-apt, qemu. (Optional if you build/install the vlosuts package) 2) (Optional) Install and modprobe kqemu 3) (Optional) Change default.cfg to point to local/faster Debian mirrors Then you will be able to run vlosuts from the source directory by running ./vlosuts upgrade -c default.cfg Alternatively you can build the package with dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc and then install vlosuts with dpkg. We will shortly be submitting vlosuts to the Debian repo. So if some of you guys wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you tried it out and let me know if it works or if you encounter any problems, and tell me if you think this can help etch to lenny upgrade go more smoothly than previous upgrades or if there are features missing that you think could really help. Feel free to email me with any comments/problems/suggestions. Thanks everyone, Ian
