Linux Test Project
------------------

08-21-2000

The Linux Test Project is a project that has the noble goal of building a set
of functionality regression tests for the kernel.  To date (21-AUG-2000), this
is our goal, but additional goals have been suggested: stress testing,
benchmarking, and standards conformance.  For the basic reason that this project
is still in its infancy, we're going to the leave the others in the 'suggested' list
for future consideration.  If you have ideas on ways of bringing a member of the
'suggested' list under the Linux Test Project, by all means, show us the code!

The Linux Test Project home is located on the SGI Open Source Software site,
oss.sgi.com.  The project web URL is at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ltp/.  The
project also has an email list which can be subscribed to by sending an email
to majordomo@oss.sgi.com with the string 'subscribe ltp your@email.addr' where
'your@email.addr' is your email address.  More information and an email archive
can be found at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ltp/mail.html.

About the Code
--------------

Here's a bit of a description of the current directory structure.  For now this
structure is simple.

doio/
	  The doio directory contains three tools: doio, iogen, and growfiles.
	  These are elaborate filesystem tests for stressing and testing the
	  functionality of the filesystem.  There is also a wrapper for doio
	  and iogen called rwtest.  Command examples for these tools can be
	  found in the cmdlines in the root of the ltp directory.

include/
lib/
          The include and lib directories contain headers and codes for common
          routines used by many of the tests.

tests/
	  To date the tests directory contains a number of simple tests called
	  'quickhitters'.  These tests are designed to be simple and quick and
	  be run in conjunction with each other.  They have some use as stand
	  alone tests, but when run many-at-a-time, interesting issues can come
	  up.

doc/
	  The doc directory contains mainly man pages for mainly the library
	  codes.

runtest/
	  The runtest directory contains a simple test harness that Aaron
	  Laffin hacked up in Python.  It runs tests from a file in sequential
	  order.  It is meant to be an example of a simple test harness.
pan/
	  The pan directory contains a simple, lightweight test harness.  pan
	  has the ability to run tests randomly and in parallel.  See pan's man
	  page for more information.


Notes
-----
Be careful with these tests!

Don't run them on production systems.  Growfiles, doio, and iogen in particular
stress the I/O capabilities of systems and while they should not cause problems
on properly functioning systems, they are intended to find (or cause) problems.