Latest revision as of 08:42, 30 March 2011

Overview

The goal of this and its associated pages is provided to outline an informal testing program for LinuxMCE snapshots and major revisions. The work here is voluntary and all help, no matter how small is appreciated. That being said, with the complexity of LinuxMCE some form of structure must exist to get coherent feedback to improve our one of a kind open source project.

Looking for snapshot list?

Scope

Our goal is to provide feedback for:

• VM installation testing for development work.
• Physical hardware installation testing for end users.
  • Audio
  • Video
    • MythTV
    • VDR
  • Automation - Includes lighting, climate and other automated systems
  • Networking (NAS, File Server discovery, dhcp server, router functions)
  • Security
  • Telecom

Process

The process of testing builds will be split into two parts, both of which require volunteers. Both are key to help the project continue growing and moving forward. We encourage everyone to 'get in where they fit in' meaning there is no-one who needs to appoint you. The purpose of this page is to inform so that individuals can test and report back their results. So jump in, the water is fine. However, we do ask that you please report issues to the svn by opening a ticket to at least make someone aware of the problem. Critical information includes:

• What part of LinuxMCE it was. I.E. videos, music, hardware issues like video card or network card and so on.
• What were you doing? A lot of things in this system are logged and its easy to get to the log and send it to Pastebin.com or somewhere else and provide a link.
  • Logs can generally be found in /var/log or /var/log/pluto
• System information like
  • Processor
  • Motherboard
  • Number of Network Interface Cards (NIC)
  • Type of storage: NAS or internal
  • Video Card
  • Sound Card
  • Ram
  • Size of OS drive LinuxMCE is installed onto.

Feedback Tools

The SVN LinuxMCE SVN is where you can submit tickets about problems encountered. If you need to reference anything, there are tools to help you get and pass on this information.

To easily pastebin your logs

• install pastebinit 'sudo apt-get install pastebinit'
• when trying to send a log simply 'pastebinit /path/to/file'
• this can be used for other troubleshooting output such as lspci, aplay, etc

And lastly, if you know how to fix it, submit a patch. It can only help.

Development / VM Testing

Providing feedback on snapshots for Virtual Machine (VM) installation provides quick feedback on a number of things

• Installation process and any errors
• Initial bootup functions
• The ability to submit clean templates to the device database without worry about a production system.
• Various development functions such as build servers, code development, etc

As you can see, this is an important part of the process as it allows new user / developers to quickly experience the system (albeit on a _VERY_ limited scale) as well as develop for it without setting up additional physical systems. Please see the installation reports section to get a standardized (ish) form to assist you in providing structured feedback on the installation process.

End-User / Physical Testing

Providing feedback on the usage of a system no matter the scale is important to develop a home automation platform that is more akin to a traditional appliance than a computer system. That being said, there are many different parts and technologies in used, from powerline communication to HDMI audio / visual setups. For this reason, feedback from the end-user / physical hardware aspect is critical so that we work towards that truly smart appliance. Important feedback includes:

• Audio / Visual setup (i.e. types of devices)
• Automation feedback / tests. Technologies like zwave, x10 and insteon are the most popular, but all feedback is desired. This includes climate, security or any other device(s) you've automated via LinuxMCE. The more we know about how people use the system, the better.
• Networking - LinuxMCE provides websites on its internal network that serves vital functions. It also auto-discovers devices and shares.
  • LinuxMCE admin
  • Mythweb

Testing Spec

• Development testing form. Please fill this out in a very SPECIFIC manner. You are testing arent you :)

• End- User / Physical testing form. Please fill this out in a very SPECIFIC manner. Your Penguin will thank you.

• All - Start to finish, top to bottom. Many thanks for filling this out.