Re: [PATCH] selftests/harness: Flush stdout before forking

[Max Filippov]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 9:16 PM Michael Ellerman <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The test harness forks() a child to run each test. Both the parent and
> the child print to stdout using libc functions. That can lead to
> duplicated (or more) output if the libc buffers are not flushed before
> forking.
>
> It's generally not seen when running programs directly, because stdout
> will usually be line buffered when it's pointing to a terminal.
>
> This was noticed when running the seccomp_bpf test, eg:
>
>   $ ./seccomp_bpf | tee test.log
>   $ grep -c "TAP version 13" test.log
>   2
>
> But we only expect the TAP header to appear once.
>
> It can be exacerbated using stdbuf to increase the buffer size:
>
>   $ stdbuf -o 1MB ./seccomp_bpf > test.log
>   $ grep -c "TAP version 13" test.log
>   13
>
> The fix is simple, we just flush stdout & stderr before fork. Usually
> stderr is unbuffered, but that can be changed, so flush it as well
> just to be safe.
>
> Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  tools/testing/selftests/kselftest_harness.h | 5 +++++
>  1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)

Tested-by: Max Filippov <jcmvbkbc@xxxxxxxxx>

-- 
Thanks.
-- Max