Re: [Qemu-devel] Publishing binary images for testing

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé]

Hi Cleber,

On 5/11/18 4:27 PM, Cleber Rosa wrote:
> On 05/11/2018 09:55 AM, Eduardo Habkost wrote:
>> (CCing Cleber and avocado-devel in case they have suggestions)
>>
>> On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 12:47:52PM -0300, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Ironically I have been using the Gumstix machines quite a lot for the SD
>>> 'subsystem' refactor, using the MMC commands in U-Boot (I am unable to
>>> reach the Linux userland since the kernel crashes), and plan to add SD
>>> integration tests via Avocado.
>>>
>>> This raises:
>>>
>>> - What will happens if I add tests downloading running on their compiled
>>> u-boot
>>> (https://downloads.gumstix.com/images/angstrom/developer/2012-01-22-1750/u-boot.bin)
>>> and the company decides to remove this old directory?
>>> Since sometimes old open-source software are hard to rebuild with recent
>>> compilers, should we consider to use a public storage to keep
>>> open-source (signed) blobs we can use for integration testing?
>>
>> I think a maintained repository of images for testing would be
>> nice to have.  We need to be careful to comply with the license
>> of the software being distributed, though.
>>
>> If the images are very small (like u-boot.bin above), it might be
>> OK to carry them in qemu.git, just like the images in pc-bios.
>>
>>>
>>> Avocado has a 'vmimage library' which could be extended, adding support
>>> for binary url + detached gpg signatures from some QEMU maintainers?
>>
>> Requiring a signature makes the binaries hard to replace.  Any
>> specific reason to suggest gpg signatures instead of just a
>> (e.g.) sha256 hash?
>>
>>>
>>> (I am also using old Gentoo/Debian packaged HPPA/Alpha Linux kernel for
>>> Avocado SuperIO tests, which aren't guaranteed to stay downloadable
>>> forever).
>>
>> Question for the Avocado folks: how this is normally handled in
>> avocado/avocado-vt?  Do you maintain a repository for guest
>> images, or you always point to their original sources?
>>
> 
> For pure Avocado, the vmimage library attempts to fetch, by default, the
> latest version of a guest image directly from the original sources.
> Say, a Fedora image will be downloaded by default from the Fedora
> servers.  Because of that, we don't pay too much attention to the
> availability of specific (old?) versions of guest images.
> 
> For Avocado-VT, there are the JeOS images[1], which we keep on a test
> "assets" directory.  We have a lot of storage/bandwidth availability, so
> it can be used for other assets proven to be necessary for tests.
> 
> As long as distribution rights and licensing are not issues, we can
> definitely use the same server for kernels, u-boot images and what not.
> 
> [1] - https://avocado-project.org/data/assets/

1/ How do we check for distribution rights?

Is it OK for:
- a Debian/Fedora image
- a compiled Linux kernel (for a Debian/Fedora release)

2/ Who to ask to add files to this assets directory?

3/ Can we use a 'webarchive' directory structure?

Such /site/date/original_site_path/file

4/ What are the chances that this website disappears? :S

(Someone has to pay for it, and the bandwidth...)

Thanks,

Phil.