stress2 is now in projects

[Peter Holm]

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 03:28:19PM +0200, Kostik Belousov wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 02:10:28PM +0100, Peter Holm wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 01:11:25PM +0100, Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav wrote:
> > > Peter Holm <pho at freebsd.org> writes:
> > > > The key functionality of this test suite is that it runs a random
> > > > number of test programs for a random period, in random incarnations
> > > > and in random sequence.
> > > 
> > > In other words, it's non-deterministic and non-reproducable.
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes, by design.
> > 
> > > You should at the very least allow the user to specify the random seed.
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes, it would be interesting to see if this is enough to reproduce a
> > problem in a deterministic way. I'll look into this.
> 
> I shall state from my experience using it (or, rather, inspecting bug
> reports generated by stress2), that in fact it is quite repeatable.
> I.e., when  looking into one area, you almost always get _that_ problem,
> together with 2-3 related issues.
> 
> Due to the nature of the tests and kernel undeterministic operations,
> I think that use of the same random seed gains nothing in regard with
> repeatability of the tests.

It is an old issue that has come up many times: It would be so great 
if it was possible to some how record the exact sequence that lead up 
to a panic and play it back.

But on the other hand, as you say, it *is* repeatable. The only
issue is that it may take 5 minutes or 5 hours.

But I'm still game to see if it is possible at all (in single user 
mode with no network activity etc.)

- Peter