OpenBSD Journal

Call for testers: packages snapshots

Contributed by jose on from the bug-hunters dept.

Peter Valchev has posted a call for testers for packages now that ProPolice is in the tree. A lot of software has minor bugs which just can't show up with only a handful of people looking at the software. According to Peter:
... the main issue we have is actually _running_ the packages that are produced, because that is the only way to run into eventual problems. It is important that the community helps here, since the number of packages is huge, and discovering the problems that surely lurk is important!
Now's as good a time as any to upgrade to -current (which is pretty stable in most regards for a development box) and try out the new packages. If you can, use a freshly installed box and when you find a bug, notify the maintainer.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward () on

    Anyone know offhand what packages are currently broken w/propolice besides bind8/9?

    Thanks.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

    2. By Anonymous Coward () on

      KDE/QT was broken the last time I tried it a week ago.

    3. By Anonymous Coward () on

      Bind9 is not broken because of propolice.
      (It's a broken software but that is another story)

  2. By Anonymous Coward () on

    that current is an awful lot of trouble to run and keep up to date, and it would probably be near impossible without following all the apropriate lists.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      Not at all, I ran snapshots in production for lots of versions on our name servers that handled several thousand names in the domain. I never had troubles with stability. Of course, since the servers stayed up for several hundred days at a time, I didn't need to constantly (U)pdate these snapshots.

      Compiling current is a different story, I almost never compiled anything, just installed snapshots. And further, I just tried installing the latest snapshot this afternoon in the last hour at work. On a Dell 266 pentium 3, it installed flawlessly and I left on time. Tomorrow I'll test some packages.

      So if you have a machine to spare, go for it. You will grow from the experience. On the other hand, I now have to be a little more careful with the production servers, so I have stable compiled and installed on the 10 or so. Management is a little more sensitive to downtime, so I use a test machine for new versions.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

        okay that makes sense.

        I guess every time I've reviewed the "upgrade to current" faq, all the extra things needed that might have changed structurally (new users/groups, /etc changes, and so on) since the last release seemed somewhat daunting, and that I would probably miss stuff :)

  3. By jose () on http://monkey.org/~jose/

    late last night i took my devel laptop and did a fresh install of the jan5 snapshots and packages from the weekend, too. its almost complete (had to go to sleep, and this morning had to go to work; the key things work right now). so far no crashes, but i haven't given it extensive testing.

    the process was rather painless, and i'm working on improving my automated update methods. it feels good to have a fully updated system though ... probably ok for devel boxes, but boxes which need to be reliable i wouldn't move to -current quite yet. it still has a few kinks lurking around.

    as for "what's broken?" we know some of what's broken, but much of it we don't. we need to find those subtle bugs. looks like a double free cropped up in a command somewhere, hopefully we can isolate it and whack it. stuff like that. like i said, just upgrade if you can, give your system a good thorough use and keep an eye out for bugs.

  4. By jaeger () nshinobi@yahoo.com on mailto:nshinobi@yahoo.com

    the current snapshot packages of XMMS worked for about 15 minutes then began to "race" through my mp3 depository.......
    so this package needs to be looked at tis broken
    also any chance that the sound effects pluggins could be included in the next package release for 3.3.............
    jaeger

    Comments
    1. By jose () on

      write to the maintainer (Wilbern Cobb [wcobb@openbsd.org]) with some info (mp3s you were using and their characteristics, dmesg, and if they work with other mp3 players). as for the plugins, find out what doesn't exist and submit a port. its probably popular enough you can probably get some help with the port.

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