Hi there Firmware Testing Team! This week brings a couple of additions to the firmware test suite in the form of "Interactive Tests". Up until now, the test suite has been running in batch mode, that is, you start the tests and leave fwts to run until completion. Interactive tests require some form of user intervention, for example, pressing hot keys, opening/closing a laptop lid or observing state change such as LCD brightness changes.
By default, fwts runs just the batch mode (non-interactive) tests - this is equivalent to running fwts with the --batch option. However, one can turn on just the interactive tests by using the --interactive option. If you want both these tests, use both --batch and --interactive option flags. Specifying an interactive test by name will also run the test too. Examples: Run all interactive tests: $ sudo fwts --interactive Run all batch mode tests (default) $ sudo fwts or $ sudo fwts --batch Run all tests: $ sudo fwts --batch --interactive Run just the brightness interactive test: $ sudo fwts brightness This week I've added a chunk of functionality to do acpid event monitoring behind the scenes and added some more interactive keyboard handling library routines. === This weeks new interactive tests === 1. LID mode sensing For this test, one needs to disable the gnome power management settings that suspend or hibernate a laptop if you close the laptop lid before running this test. $ sudo fwts lid The test will emit some instructions that need following to run the test to completion. It will time out after 20 seconds if inactive. 2. Laptop Screen Brightness and Brightness hotkey tests The "brightness" test exercises several layers of functionality: a) kernel /sys/devices/virtual/backlight interface b) Min/Max brightness levels c) All brightness levels d) ACPI hotkeys that increase/decrease brightness levels === Other changes to fwts this week === 1. Regex scanning of kernel message log. The original kernel message log was fast, but clumsy. I've now re-written the scanner to use regular expressions. This leads to more flexible pattern matching, however it does run slower. However, for most kernel logs, this is not noticeable. It only becomes an issue when scanning thousands of kernel logs. I believe the added flexibility of regex pattern matching outweighs the reduced speed. 2. More kernel message log pattern matching. To compliment the regex feature, I've also added in many more kernel log error and warning messages to diagnose. I ran through ~2000 kernel message logs from Launch Pad and identified several hundred common messages and plugged the patterns into the kernel log scanning. 3. In addition to finer message checking, I've also added more advice feedback when a kernel error or warning is found. Some of the advice re- states the error message in a more understandable form. Some of the advice feedback suggests workarounds or BIOS features than need fixing. I hope to expand on this once I've dug into the kernel and figured out what all the kernel messages exactly mean and sorted out possible workarounds/fixes. As ever, this tool is only good if it's used and tested. So please keep testing and please feed back any bugs you find or improvements you want in this tool. Thanks! Colin _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~firmware-testing-team Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~firmware-testing-team More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
