Friends in testing

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HowTo [ID# 170947]  +/-

Current test image: 11.3.1

Introduction

We're coming up on the next major release called 8.2.0. Draft release notes are available.

Your assistance would be invaluable in improving the quality of this release.

Send your friends with XOs to this Wiki page, which will be updated regularly. This is your opportunity to help give better software to hundreds of thousands of children next year as well as to future G1G1 donors!

Finally, if you have questions about this effort, please leave them in Talk:Friends in testing or browse our other testing pages.

Caveats

This procedure asks you to install alpha software. You may lose all your data. Please back up personal files to another source if you would like to keep them.

Preparation

1. Get a developer key for your XO laptop — you don't need a developer key to upgrade to official-os860 as it is a "signed" build.
2. Backup your XO (optional -- you decide).
3. Clean-install or upgrade your XO to the official-os860 build.
   • If you clean-install, you will lose all your data.
4. Install activities with your favorite activity installation method.
5. Help test the OS and activities as described below.
6. Should you need them, recovery instructions are available.

Several other test preparation instructions are available, for example in OS images and in Emulating the XO, and other pages in Category:Preparing for testing.

Exploratory Testing

• Known issues are recorded in the release notes for a release; check both the current stable release's notes and/or the in-progress release notes for the development release you're testing.
• Sometimes people enumerate problems in Test group release notes.
• People report problems on the testing mailing list

You should report new issues in our bug-tracking system. You can also send any issues or comments to the development list, devel at lists.laptop.org.

Test 1: Wifi Testing

Can Current test image: 11.3.1 associate with your (encrypted?) access point?

If not, let us know!

Test 2: Explore the Smoke Test

Try out parts of the release's smoke test that appeal to you.

(Older tests are available.)

Systematic Testing

In addition to our freeform exploratory testing effort, we also engage in systematic testing efforts designed to achieve the test coverage necessary to make release decisions around future releases, much like past releases.

Systematic testing consists of several basic tasks:

• Reviewing a test plan.
• Writing the test cases, if needed.
• Executing the test cases and recording test results.
  • To record results on a particular test case page, click on the "Edit with form" button in the top of the page, and use the "Add Another" button just above the "Add New Results" section (i.e. at the bottom of the page).
• Contributing patches to the Tinderbox or Sugarbot automated testing platforms.

Test 1: Multiple Key Support

We are particularly interested, this week, in systematically testing OFW's new multiple key support.

Recovery

• If your machine becomes unbootable after a clean-install, you can recover by clean-installing an official build.
• If your machine becomes unbootable after an upgrade, you can recover by holding the 'O' gamepad key during your next boot.

Alternately, you could help test an even newer Joyride build!