[Automated-testing] Looking for a Debian kernel provisioning solution

[Robert Schwebel]

Hi Tim,

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 10:21:01PM +0000, Bird, Timothy wrote:
> So, I want to test LTS kernels on a MinnowBoard Turbot....
> 
> I'm looking for a board farm solution that can handle
> building a mainline (or LTS) kernel, and deploy it to the MinnowBoard,
> and reboot the board to a Linux shell prompt.
> 
> The board is running Ubuntu 16.04.3, using a 4.4 Linux kernel by default,
> and uses grub2, with OS software coming from a micro-SD card.
> I have power control of the board, and serial console, and a network
> connection (with ssh).
> 
> The upstream kernels archive of Ubuntu have the software that I'll need.
> 
> But I'm wondering if there's existing board farm software (e.g. labgrid)
> that can handle the intricacies of installing a newly built kernel onto
> the board, and rebooting it.

We use the Minnowboard Max for realtime testing with labgrid, and for
the automatic setup we use an SD-USB-Mux:

https://www.pengutronix.de/en/2017-10-23-usb-sd-mux-automated-sd-card-juggler.html

In fact, we still don't have a proper way of selling them, but if you
send me your address, you'll probably be added to our beta tester
program :-)
 
> I'm about to write what I need using ttc and some custom scripts, but
> I wanted to check if there was existing software out there to do this.

In the blog post, Chris describes how to use it.

> My current strategy is to toggle booting between a known-good kernel,
> and a kernel under test, using the known-good kernel to write the
> kernel-under-test to the sdcard, update the grub entries, reboot
> the board, and navigate the grub entries to select the kernel-under-test.
> 
> Thanks for any tips or pointers you might have.

Jan might want to comment on the labgrid side.

rsc
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