737282 - Image a rev 3 mini with win7 32bit for PDF.js acceptance tests

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Infrastructure & Operations :: RelOps: General, task)

Description

[cmtalbert]

= tl;dr =
I have an old rev3 mac mini that I would like to get imaged to win7 32bit.

= Details =

I have a rev3 mini left over from previous automation that is no longer needed.  I'd like to give it to the PDF.js team to use as their pre-merge test automation.

Here's how the automation solution will work.
1. PDF.js is an extension that lives in github. When someone submits a pull request to the github, the PDF.js team causes that to run their reftests.
2. These reftests run on a system (ideally that system is this mini)
3. Once the PDF.js team has a new version of their extension, they merge to mozilla-central.

So, to make the merge in step 3 as painless as possible, the system they run those reftests on in step 2 should be as close to the hardware we are running in production as possible. They are mostly concerned about windows support, since hardware acceleration of windows is pretty much on-everywhere by default.

If we get windows working, might extend this solution later for mac testing (using a newer, more available mac mini).

The mac mini is the one on my standup desk beneath the A*team poster that has a yellow post-it on it saying "PDF.JS".

Comment 1

[Amy Rich [:arr] [:arich]]

Hi, clint, what's the priority on this?  Unless it's tied to a high priority q1 goal, we likely won't get to it for a few weeks.

Comment 2

[Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] (he/him)]

We *really* should not be putting more minis into service for random tasks like this.  Minis are truly an abomination and a HUGE time-sink for us -- the old ones more so.  Can this run in a VM?

Comment 3

[cmtalbert]

(In reply to Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] from comment #2)
> We *really* should not be putting more minis into service for random tasks
> like this.  Minis are truly an abomination and a HUGE time-sink for us --
> the old ones more so.  Can this run in a VM?

I heartily agree with you. However, the PDF system uses hardware acceleration to display its graphics (which is what this would be testing). That means that if we are to use a VM (that's what they currently do - they use an EC2 VM) then there is a very large chance that the pre-merge test will pass and then when we actually merge this into mozilla-central the tests will fail due to hardware rendering differences that we could (and should) have caught earlier.

I would love for us to move away from mac mini's wholesale for windows and linux testers. But that's a larger issue that's been going on for over two years now. Current work on that appears stalled in bug 691856.

Arr: this isn't a Q1 goal. We can do this in Q2.

Comment 4

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

(In reply to Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] from comment #2)
> We *really* should not be putting more minis into service for random tasks
> like this.  Minis are truly an abomination and a HUGE time-sink for us --
> the old ones more so.  Can this run in a VM?

I'm not sure Clint is advocating putting this single mini into the existing automation, he simply wants it re-imaged with a different OS so he can use it as required for PDF.js. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

(In reply to Clint Talbert ( :ctalbert ) from comment #3) 
> I would love for us to move away from mac mini's wholesale for windows and
> linux testers. But that's a larger issue that's been going on for over two
> years now. Current work on that appears stalled in bug 691856.

Yes, that work is stalled only in that there are a limited number of releng people that could work on it, and the ones that can are currently busy doing the critical path work for the in-progress colo move by IT. I'll follow-up in bug 691856 with more details.

Comment 5

[cmtalbert]

(In reply to Chris Cooper [:coop] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] from comment #2)
> > We *really* should not be putting more minis into service for random tasks
> > like this.  Minis are truly an abomination and a HUGE time-sink for us --
> > the old ones more so.  Can this run in a VM?
> 
> I'm not sure Clint is advocating putting this single mini into the existing
> automation, he simply wants it re-imaged with a different OS so he can use
> it as required for PDF.js. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
That's exactly correct.

> (In reply to Clint Talbert ( :ctalbert ) from comment #3) 
> > I would love for us to move away from mac mini's wholesale for windows and
> > linux testers. But that's a larger issue that's been going on for over two
> > years now. Current work on that appears stalled in bug 691856.
> 
> Yes, that work is stalled only in that there are a limited number of releng
> people that could work on it, and the ones that can are currently busy doing
> the critical path work for the in-progress colo move by IT. I'll follow-up
> in bug 691856 with more details.

Ah cool. Thanks Coop.

Comment 6

[Amy Rich [:arr] [:arich]]

Clint, please put these minis on Jake's desk.

Comment 7

[cmtalbert]

Thanks Amy and Jake. The mini is over there. I added bug numbers to my post-its to make things clear.  Let me know if you need anything else.

Comment 8

[Jake Watkins [:dividehex]]

Clint: we were unable to image this mini since it is actually an r2.  The only win7 image we have was built on the r3 hardware.  I gave it a shot but as suspected it won't work on an r2.

Comment 9

[Jake Watkins [:dividehex]]

Clint: I will leave this mini in AFK for you