Once again The Kernel Testing & Dependability Micro-conference will be taking place at LPC 2023, to discuss testing and dependability related topics.

Please submit proposals for discussion via LPC submission system.

The Linux Plumbers 2023 Kernel Testing & Dependability track focuses on advancing the current state of testing of the Linux Kernel and its related infrastructure. The main purpose is to improve software quality and dependability for applications that require predictability and trust.

The goal of this micro-conference is making connections between folks working on similar projects, and help individual projects make progress.

This track is intended to promote collaboration between all the communities and people interested in the Kernel testing & dependability. This will help move the conversation forward from where we left off at the LPC 2022 Kernel Testing & Dependability MC.

We ask that any topic discussions focus on issues/problems they are facing and possible alternatives to resolving them. The Micro-conference is open to all topics related to testing on Linux, not necessarily in the kernel space.

Suggested topics:

• KernelCI: Topics on improvements and enhancements for test coverage
• Growing KCIDB, integrating more sources
• Sanitizers
• Using Clang for better testing coverage
• How to spread KUnit throughout the kernel?
• Building and testing in-kernel Rust code
• Explore ways to improve testing framework and tests in the kernelwith a specific goal to increase traceability and code coverage
• Explore how do SBOMs figure into dependability?

List of accomplishments this past year after LPC 2022:

• Developed a new, modern API for KernelCI with Pub/Sub interface
• Added Rust coverage in KernelCI
• KCIDB is continuing to gather results from many test systems: KernelCI, Red Hat’s CKI, syzbot, ARM, Gentoo, Linaro’s TuxSuite etc. The current focus is on generating common email reports based  on this data and dealing with known issues.
• KFENCE is continuing to aid in detecting Out-of-bound OOB accesses, use-after-free errors (UAF),  Double free and Invalid free and so on.
• Clang: CFI, weeding out issues upstream, etc.
• Kselftest continues to add coverage for new and existing features and subsystems.
• KUnit is continuing to act as the standard for some drivers and a de facto unit testing framework in the kernel
• The Runtime Verification (RV) interface from Daniel Bristot de Oliveira was merged.

Proposals can be submitted here, by August 20th:

MC leads can be reached for question and further information::
Shuah Khan (shuah@kernel.org)
Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
Guillaume Tucker <guillaume.tucker@collabora.com>