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

[Tim.Bird at sony.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Hart
> On 25 January 2018 at 06:46, Robert Schwebel
> <r.schwebel at pengutronix.de> wrote:
> > 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.
> You've pretty much exactly described what the kernelci project is all about.
> [1]
> We build 50+ trees [2] including mainline and LTS, then use LAVA [3]
> to boot test them.
> 
> >>
> >> 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.
> LAVA can drive grub, the default method is to network load a kernel and
> ramdisk.
> Collabora (who are involved in KernelCI) have a turbot running in LAVA
> already [4]

OK - I figured someone had to be doing this somewhere.

Has any of this been upstreamed to LAVA?  Where would I look
to find the scripts or programs that are doing this?
I'm a little leery of installing LAVA, as it seems like a complete test
framework, rather than just a board manager, and I don’t want
to add too much overhead to my Fuego setup.  I believe LAVA has
both target-side and host-side dependencies that are a bit onerous.
(But I don't know).

Do you know the name of the person at Colabora who I could
ask about the details of this?

> The job output is a little confusing but you should be able to see the
> commands being sent and the board booting to a prompt.

> [4] https://lava.collabora.co.uk/scheduler/job/1053943

Indeed - I can see some of the commands, but there is obviously more
programmatic logic (expect-like behavior) going on behind the scenes
that I'd need to reproduce to make this generic, which I presume
are embedded in or included in LAVA.

I guess my question is: is there any way to get the provisioning
functionality without having to install LAVA.  If not, then maybe I'll just
do that.
 -- Tim