Comment 100 for bug 525154

Excerpts from Brian J. Murrell's message of Tue Jun 21 10:18:06 UTC 2011:
> On 11-06-20 07:10 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> > Christian, if you're using NFS root, you probably have an issue. But it
> > is probably not *this* issue, as this one was not specific to nfs root
> > configurations. It would be quite helpful if you were to raise a new bug
> > report against nfs-utils that detailed what you expect to have happen,
> > and what is actually happening.
>
> But the question that begs to be asked is why are common configurations
> like NFS-root and separate /var and /usr filesystems STILL not part of
> Ubuntu's standard QA processes?
>
> These are not entirely "esoteric" configurations you know and they have
> been shown to have problems in past releases so why are current QA
> processes not testing for these?
>
> You do understand that effective QA means that when a configuration is
> shown to have a potential for regressions that such a configuration be
> added to the battery of tests that QA runs. It's simply not effective
> to identify a configuration that doesn't work, (think that you have)
> fix(ed) it and simply move on and not ever test that configuration again
> during a regular release cycle. That's exactly how regressions leak
> into GA product. It's embarrassing.

Brian, much of our QA is still community driven. We devote significant
resources to testing the base system, but multi-server setups like NFS
root are taxing to manually test, and more complex to automate. I'd love
to say we write a regression test for every issue we fix and run it on
every possible configuration. Clearly, we don't.

If NFS root is important to you, I would suggest that you help us out
by gathering other interested users, and putting together a blueprint
for the next UDS. Lets get automated tests setup for this configuration.

I'd support this 100%, but I don't think we can do it without some help
from the actual users of NFS root systems.