365424 - automatically submit talkback for performance tests

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Release Engineering :: General, defect)

Description

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

If there is a crashing during a performance test, the talkback dialog is launched and prevents further tests from running. This has happened several times on bl-bldxp01.

Comment 1

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

We probably do not see this on the build machines because tests are run before talkback is installed, while bl-bldxp01 is downloading and unpacking hourly builds.

Here is one option for disabling:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_QA_Community:Talkback:FAQ#How_do_I_disable_Talkback.3F_.28not_recommended.29

Comment 2

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

Alternatively, we could allow silent reporting so we capture crashes. Timeless
suggests looking into the following:

    12:55 < timeless> firefox\extensions\[e-mail]\components\master.ini
    12:55 < timeless> DisableDontAsk = 0
    12:55 < timeless> DisableUI = 0
    12:55 < timeless> DisableWizard = 0

We'd also want to set the email address appropriately so we can tell which host it came from.

Comment 4

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

Happened again, bug 365349; I tried disabling talkback, not sure if that setting is stored in the talkback-specific profile or not.

The problem is that talkback.exe and a couple other talkback files cannot be deleted while talkback is running, so the "test-only-tinderbox" mode in tinderbox fails when trying to clear this out to make way for a new build.

Comment 6

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

Happened again in bug 365459, disabling talkback as per http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_QA_Community:Talkback:FAQ#How_do_I_disable_Talkback.3F_.28not_recommended.29
 did not seem to work (not sure where this setting is stored, doesn't seem to be in the profile or the master.ini though).

Comment 7

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

This setting seems to be stored under ${APPDATA}\Talkback\MozillaOrg\Firefox{Version Number}\Win32\{Build ID}\Talkback.ini under "SpiralEnabled = 0" (or 1 for Talkback enabled). talkback.ini gets created the first time you run talkback.exe. The SpiralEnabled setting is written to talkback.ini when you click on either "Turn Agent On" or "Turn Agent Off".

Comment 8

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

bc has some scripts to automate this; I am going to take a look at those (e.g. http://test.bclary.com/bin/edit-talkback.pl)

Comment 9

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

bc's code is a good starting point, but it does a lot of stuff from first principles (OS lookup, etc.) that we don't need to do if we're already in the tinderbox code. Taking.

Comment 10

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Attachment: Modify talkback settings to automatically submit talkback reports without any interaction.

It's a biggee. I debated adding this as a separate library, but we would have to go into every build tree and add new links that way.

This code should degrade gracefully if it can't find talkback for whatever reason, so we should not be any worse than now.

I have this code installed right now on bl-bldxp01 (both trunk and branch) and will leave it running over the weekend. That should be a good trial-by-fire.

Comment 11

[Robert Helmer [:rhelmer]]

Comment on attachment 258848 [details] [diff] [review]
Modify talkback settings to automatically submit talkback reports without any interaction.

Looks good, submitting the test name with the talkback report is a nice touch. It's annoying that there isn't just one place to set things like the current test being run :/

Have you seen this actually work yet? :) I haven't seen crashes during tests lately.

Comment 12

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

I'm loath to say that it's actually working since I have yet to find a Talkback report that has actually been submitted. I have watched it alter the Talkback config files to the correct state for auto-submit, and it *has* stopped Talkback from holding things up on bl-bldxp01, although other unrelated failures seem to be stepping up to take its place now.

Checking in build-seamonkey-util.pl;
/cvsroot/mozilla/tools/tinderbox/build-seamonkey-util.pl,v  <--  build-seamonkey-util.pl
new revision: 1.355; previous revision: 1.354
done

Comment 13

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Sometimes I love being wrong. Here are Talkback reports that have been auto-submitted:

http://talkback-public.mozilla.org/search/start.jsp?search=1&searchby=url&match=contains&searchfor=tinderbox:&vendor=MozillaOrg&product=All&platform=Win32&sortby=bbid&rlimit=500