1262954 - Explicitly set the "layers.acceleration.disabled" pref to true on Windows XP e10s test runs

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Testing :: General, defect)

Description

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Prior to bug 1237769, WinXP e10s test runs would automatically run w/ layers acceleration disabled due to bug 1237770. However, we're now seeing in multiple test suites that e10s is being disabled in favor of hardware acceleration, completely breaking e10s tests along the way. It appears to affect Talos, mochitest, and web-platform-tests from what I can see. Interesting, Marionette and reftest-based suites appear to still be working as expected.

We should detect at the harness level when we're running on WinXP w/ e10s and make sure that the testing profiles have layers.acceleration.disabled set to true in that case. Note that we'll need to be *very* careful that this is the ONLY situation that the pref gets set for, or else we'll have other hilarity waiting in store for us.

Comment 1

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Triage note: Until this bug is fixed, our Windows talos numbers are completely broken.

Comment 2

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Windows *XP*, sorry

Comment 3

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

first attempt at this on try:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=33d55a94c561

we will need to manually add the M(3) job and the W(1) job.

Comment 4

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

:ryanvm, does this pass your test:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=5eb81c5eb580c36d3062d26855509495924c29a9

Comment 5

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Looks great!

Comment 6

[George Wright (:gw280) (needinfo me!)]

\o/

Comment 7

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

Attachment: MozReview Request: Bug 1262954 - Explicitly set the 'layers.acceleration.disabled' pref to true on Windows XP e10s test runs. r?ahal

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/45541/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/45541/

Comment 8

[Andrew Halberstadt [:ahal]]

Comment on attachment 8740090 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1262954 - Explicitly set the 'layers.acceleration.disabled' pref to true on Windows XP e10s test runs. r?ahal

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/45541/#review42079

Lgtm!

::: testing/talos/talos/run_tests.py
(Diff revision 1)
> -    if browser_config['e10s'] and not title.endswith(".e"):
> -        # we are running in e10s mode
> -        title = "%s.e" % (title,)

Is this just some unrelated cleanup?

Comment 9

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

yeah, this was leftover stuff from graphserver, a simple cleanup.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/36ab144acccb

Comment 11

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/36ab144acccb

Comment 12

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

now that we have enough data, I am seeing all performance improvements/regressions back to normal, so this change is making talos work as expected.

There are 2 inconsistencies though:
kraken: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perf.html#/graphs?series=%5Bmozilla-inbound,7ca40063b3ec6529e235802862065bafd45d7c18,1%5D&selected=%5Bmozilla-inbound,7ca40063b3ec6529e235802862065bafd45d7c18,NaN,NaN,1%5D
tpaint: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perf.html#/graphs?series=%5Bmozilla-inbound,0bda8c20dbca1e0d32dcc952a4473e73ce7d4352,1%5D&selected=%5Bmozilla-inbound,0bda8c20dbca1e0d32dcc952a4473e73ce7d4352,NaN,NaN,1%5D

A few thoughts here, tpaint took a big win for e10s while we didn't have winxp coverage:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perf.html#/alerts?id=812

I suspect this is the explanation for tpaint.  As for kraken, there have been 2 overall regressions and 1 affected windows e10s only:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perf.html#/alerts?id=802

Comment 13

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Joel, should we uplift this fix to Beta 47 in preparation for our next e10s experiment?

Comment 14

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

I think we should- this is a test only change and affects e10s on winxp- iirc that is talos only on current 47.

Comment 15

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

Comment on attachment 8740090 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1262954 - Explicitly set the 'layers.acceleration.disabled' pref to true on Windows XP e10s test runs. r?ahal

Approval Request Comment
[Feature/regressing bug #]:
[User impact if declined]: n/a
[Describe test coverage new/current, TreeHerder]: actual e10s coverage on winxp as our current test machines do not support hw acceleration so we disable e10s.
[Risks and why]: 
[String/UUID change made/needed]: n/a

I am requesting this to be on 47, if this is aurora now, or beta in the near future.

Comment 16

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

We're going to want bug 1264062 as well if we take this one.

Comment 17

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

Comment on attachment 8740090 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1262954 - Explicitly set the 'layers.acceleration.disabled' pref to true on Windows XP e10s test runs. r?ahal

Hi Jmaher, you can uplift test changes without needing uplift approvals as these are auto-approved. Clearing the uplift flag.

Comment 18

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/803140bf65ab3dd48fdd9bfe01e4142c874277c0

Comment 19

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Marking status-firefox47=fixed as per Aurora uplift in comment 18.