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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!uunet!in3.uu.net!194.221.49.2!news.julia.de!erbse!ralf From: ralf@infko.uni-koblenz.de (Ralf Baechle) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.misc Subject: Re: Measuring "stability" (was: Linux vs BSD) Date: 13 Feb 1997 19:19:48 GMT Organization: Uni Koblenz, Germany. Lines: 38 Message-ID: <5dvpgk$td$1@alles.intern.julia.de> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <slrn5fejrn.353.bet@onyx.interactive.net> <ywtn2te3olm.fsf@math.ucsb.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: erbse.uni-koblenz.de To: Axel Boldt <boldt@math.ucsb.edu> Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:159094 comp.os.linux.advocacy:84369 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2535 In article <ywtn2te3olm.fsf@math.ucsb.edu>, Axel Boldt <boldt@math.ucsb.edu> writes: |> |> I think crashme is a good start for testing stability, the only |> problem being that it does not test the networking code and the |> filesystems. Does a similar tool exist that rapidly sends garbage to |> random ports? Should be trivial to write in any case. |> |> We could then have a stability test that works something like this: |> |> - two crashmes running in parallel |> |> - repeatedly tar and untar a big directory (dir should not be |> writeable by the user running crashme) |> |> - one outside random network attacker |> |> - one httpd constantly being queried for a big doc (again, not |> writeable by crashme user). |> |> Clearly, we would have to specify which versions to test |> (I vote for the "stable" releases: Linux 2.0.x and FreeBSD 2.1, soon |> 2.2), which distributions (void in the case of FreeBSD, for Linux |> I would recommend Debian), and which network services to run |> (ftp,email,http,telnet,ping?) |> |> Since all of this depends heavily on hardware and network speed, the |> only thing that would make sense is to run the test twice on the same |> machine, switching OS's in between. Also, the test would have to be |> repeated several times because of the randomness involved. |> |> What do people think? I think that suggestion makes sense. I however'd like to see that project as a development tool that helps to ensure continued stability. Also bug that are in one OS tend to tunnel into the other's code, so including a as many tests of old and current bugs would be nice. Ralf