On 01/25/2011 10:27 PM, rypedge...@operamail.com wrote:
I understand no hardware testing can be done in VM's... With only the /daily releases sized for a cd, I'm limited. So off I go...to re-install a foobar'ed daily, on my second partition!
You are correct, however don't let that stop you from testing. There's no reason you couldn't test ANY of the daily ISO builds using VBox. While we like having the ISOs tested on as many different types of systems as possible, the act of ISO testing itself is valuable. I'd be willing to bet that at least 75% of all installer bugs are found on VMs by people participating in ISO testing days.
Also, you can test any of the ISOs on your laptop directly, regardless of ISO size. You can use usb-creator (it's under the System/Administration menu) or unetbootin to make a bootable USB stick from any of the ISO images. Provided your laptop supports booting from USB storage (most, if not all, modern ones do) it's easy.
But like I said, do not discount the value of ISO testing on VMs. We use VMs a lot for testing the installer and other bits of Ubuntu that aren't hardware specific. There are just a few caveats to testing this way. For example, you can't do Wubi testing in VMs. But most other methods work just fine, including the rescue mode tests, as long as your VM's disk file is big enough to support multiple partitions. I usually make mine about 22GB.
Also, depending on your laptop hardware, don't count on being able to run more than one at a time. I can run 2 simultaneously, but slowly due to disk I/O bottlenecks, but if I put them on external storage devices (usb disks, I can run 3 or 4 in sync.
In fact, I've even built small clouds to do some light UEC testing in VMs and build development environments in VMs.
Cheers Jeff -- Ubuntu-qa mailing list Ubuntu-qa@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-qa
