1609102 - generic-worker: Concurrent headless tasks in multiuser engine

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1588799

(Taskcluster :: Workers, enhancement)

Description

[Pete Moore [:pmoore][:pete]]

Historically host machines have been able to run more than one task in parallel. In docker-worker this is achieved natively in the worker, in generic-worker this has been achieved by running multiple generic-worker instances on the host.

The multiuser engine requires reboots between tasks, since it assumes that tasks require access to the interactive desktop of the console session on the computer.

Although this is often the case, especially for tests that test graphical features, it usually isn’t true for all builds (although optimised builds typically may require an interactive desktop). For those tasks, it should be possible for tasks to run in a headless context without access to the interactive desktop of the console session, and thus not require reboots between tasks in order to gain a new interactive desktop session. Once reboots are no longer required, it becomes feasible again to run multiple tasks under different OS user accounts (multiuser engine) in parallel by running multiple generic-worker processes in parallel.

This bug represents goal G6 from the Worker Roadmap 2020.

Comment 1

[Pete Moore [:pmoore][:pete]]

Not actively working on this at the moment.

Comment 2

[Pete Moore [:pmoore][:pete]]

This is still needed.

Comment 3

[Pete Moore [:pmoore][:pete]]

We hope to tackle this in Q4 2023.

Comment 5

[Pete Moore [:pmoore][:pete]]

Fixed in https://github.com/taskcluster/taskcluster/pull/7247