Re: Kernel testing

Paul H. Hargrove (hargrove@sccm.Stanford.EDU)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 15:54:52 -0700 (PDT)


Seth M. Landsman writes:
[snip]
> A number 3 axe does wonders to introduce errors ... A hammer, a
> two year old or the neighbor's dog will also go a long way to stress
> testing a kernel ... :-)
[snip]

I was being serious (well the paint shaker idea was going a little too
far, but the magnet, needle and SGT4MAT ideas were serious). The
filesystem and drive controller drivers are mostly tested on perfect
media. There is some utility to ensuring that a bad sector or two on
media doesn't cause the kernel to crash or hang. I don't think any
one expects the kernel to survive an axe passing through any piece of
harware, or the neighbors dog urinating on the keyboard.

What I want to ensure is that a bad sector (or even a whole track or
head) on magnetic media or dirty heads can't crash the kernel. The
consequences for the user programs which get errno=EIO back from
read() or write() is not a kernel issue. However, ensuring that the
kernel doesn't fall over before that happens is.

-- 
Paul H. Hargrove                   All material not otherwise attributed
hargrove@sccm.stanford.edu         is the opinion of the author or a typo.