Volunteering For Testing

Development Development Testing
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Hi everyone.

I’m not absolutely sure that this is the proper category to post this message in, as I am not familiar enough with your overarching internal structure divisions. (I was originally leaning toward QA, but I did locate a reference to seeking testers in here, and that was the best indicator I was able to find.)

I wanted to approach you with the prospect of volunteering as a tester.

Originally I became involved with pre-PC computers via the Burroughs 5500 and the IBM 360/370 series. Through the advent of the PC, I’ve been using OpenMandriva since its inception, Mandriva previous to that, and originally Mandrake 8.0 on 5-1/4" floppies. I have dabbled with quite a few Linux/Unix variants during that time, and still do, but the Mandrake/Mandriva/OM lineage stands out as the sole constant I’ve remained with continuously.

I currently am running Lx 3.03 and 2014.2 on separate bootable dedicated drives on a desktop machine and laptop notebook, and I already have another dedicated drive prepared for Lx 4.0 as soon as it becomes available.

I would like to offer my services as a tester, beta or otherwise. I don’t know how well I would be able to provide testing focused by directive, but I would be glad to provide information covering my experiences with the range of software that I use in furtherance of my purposes, which presently involves scientific, engineering, design, writing, and general purpose standard business applications.

I wanted to cooperate with the OM venture, because I benefit from the success of the project, and the forum community has been most helpful to me. This arrangement might prove to be reciprocally beneficial.

If this idea would be of interest to you, please let me know, and thank you all for your continued efforts resulting in a consistently fine O/S and distribution package.

PS - I started out wanting to make a suggestion regarding a feature that I would like to see implemented in future releases, but I have no idea where that post belongs.

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Hi @deltakprime, thanks.

I tend to believe this one that you chose can fit.
I may also call @Cooker in case anyone in cooker miss the thread.

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Thanks for the reply.

If there is a standard way to volunteer, how is that typically done?

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Hi deltakprime,
Thank you for your offer of help and yes we would welcome you as a member of our QA team. My name is Colin and I am the current QA lead. There are two other regular members of the team Ben (nick ben79) and Chris (nick christann) you’ll find a full list of members on the QA link below. We have others who help out from time to time particularly with dual boot issues (some of us don’t have anything but Linux on our boxes). Normally the QA team hang out with the dev team on irc #openmandriva-cooker@freenode.net. We meet on a weekly basis (apart from regular chit chat) at the TC meeting held on a Wednesday at 17:00 CEST. There are standing items on the agenda as well as new items which can be introduced prior to the next meeting. I presume you are a member of the OMA if not please email me a request at itchka@bero.openmandriva.org.
There are some details of the QA team and their operatrions here QA - Wiki [en] OpenMandriva which will get you started. I hope to see you on our irc channel soon so that you can be introduced to everyone.

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@deltakprime FYI to be OMA member is good, and we encourage membership, as Colin suggests, but it’s not at all a mandatory requisite for people just willing to provide their valued help.

In fact any help is very much appreciated, in any way the users feel confortable to provide it :wink:

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Hi,

As an alternative you also can also join oma-cooker:matrix.org matrix room, it’s the same place.

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Hello @deltakprime. Some of the information here has already been said.

OpenMandriva is an all volunteer organization (OpenMandriva Association) and all are encouraged to join but that is not required to contribute to the distribution. All are welcome to help.

The QA-Team is active we would love to have you. Development testing begins with our Cooker branch. Of course package testing and ISO testing is done by QA-Team and any users that wish to contribute.

Also the main daily communication channel for Developers and QA-Team is @ #openmandriva-cooker on Freenode IRC. The QA-Team and Developers hangout and do work here and folks from other teams or those just curious are welcome to observe or to join in and help get things done. Like any small group the IRC channel goes through busy periods and quiet periods so be patient for a while and you’ll get the gist of what’s going on. So we use both the Forum and IRC to communicate.

Also you are welcome to attend our weekly TC-meetings on Wednesdays at 17:00 CEST also on #openmandriva-cooker on Freenode IRC.

We also have a #openmandriva channel on Freenode for users to use for problems, general communication, and whatever.

Hope this helps.

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Just a quick mention about next weeks TC-Meeting here.

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Either Support forum or here seems fine to me.

You might want to request to join the Cooker forum as well. Just ask here or on Support and someone will get that done.

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Thanks Colin.

I will take a look at the link you sent.

I’m not available on week nights until after 9:00pm CEST, so I hope to be able to stay informed by other means.

I look forward to it.

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Thanks!

Already a member.

Looking forward to connecting up with everyone.

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Ok, thanks, I’ll check it out.

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Hi Ben.

I told Colin, I can’t make meetings on week nights until after 9:00pm CEST, so I’ll have to find another way to stay in touch.

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Basically you can stay in touch here mainly on Development or QA forums and on #openmandriva-cooker on Freenode IRC. #openmandriva-cooker is the daily communications channel. You can access with a chat client like Quassel, KVIRC, or Konversation. Also can be accessed with:

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Thanks, Ben.

Not familiar with those chat clients, but worth looking into.

If I need any assistance, hope I can check back with you.

Thanks again.

Mike

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Yes, anytime. If I don’ t answer right away I will as soon as I can. You can use the forums PM (Personal Message) feature if needed.

I like Quassel myself for IRC, it seems a lot of the devs like KVIRC. KVIRC is very configurable but will take longer to get set up. In my experience both work very well. I’m not a fan of Konversation but it has plenty of fans as well.

Post-edit: One advantage of the three listed IRC clients is they are Qt based. OM is Qt based as well, we have devs that would like to get rid of everything GTK if they could.

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Ben:

Sorry for the long absence.

Both of my previously usable machines are down, and I’ve been limping along on the live version of Lx 3.03 since last talking with you.

I have encountered so many problems with this installation that I have for all practical purposes abandoned any further attempts with 3.03 for now.

This has resulted in a significant reduction of my available time, as well as a struggle to keep up with daily requirements.

However, one encouraging note is that I downloaded the 4.0 Alpha version, and so far, have encountered NO problems, as in ZERO!

The sole possible exception is that I cannot establish an Internet connection; hopefully, that is caused by the lack of inclusion of the network software in the Alpha version and will be eliminated in a future release.

(I certainly hope so!)

Is there any projected date for the full 4.0 release at this time?

I am reluctant to get my hopes up but am so eager to try it out.

Thanks,

Michael Orlando

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Hi, welcome back! Glad to see someone is having the same experiences with 3.x vs. 4.x as me. :wink:

Unfortunately the 4.0 is aren’t missing any network bits (in fact there may be a little too much - systemd-networkd and networkmanager fighting over the interface) – so we need to figure out why your connection isn’t working.

There’s an issue with /etc/resolv.conf not being created correctly under some circumstances - breaking name resolution. Does your connection work if you talk to machines by their IP instead of their name? e.g. can you “ping 8.8.8.8”?

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Bero:

Thanks for the reply.

Maybe I have not been precise about describing the problem.

I do not know if I can ping as you suggest, as I have not attempted to do so.

I know when I open Firefox, no matter what address I try, I get the same “unable to locate” screen.

I know the Intenet connection is good because as soon as I reboot to the Live 3.03 system, it works normally.

Also, there is no icon for the network connection appearing in the system tray, and there is no “configure your computer” option under “System Tools” in the launch menu.

I can try the ping test and see what happens.

(Browser, console, or both?)

Thanks again for the reply.

TTYL

Mike

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No worries. And while I’m about to make a suggestion to try we both keep in mind that @bero is more knowledgeable on this that I am.

First ‘Configure your Computer’ aka MCC, OMCC, or drakconf is not what you want to use to create a network connection as that is now taken over by NetworkManager. One place you’ll find it is the ‘Network’ icon in system tray and right click on the icon on the right that (when your mouse hovers over) will say ‘Configure Network Connections’. The same thing is found in ‘Configure your Desktop’ aka ‘System Settings>Network>Connections’. Maybe that will work for you.

If not my understanding is that for some reason in Cooker/Lx 4 at the moment we have 2 competing services for establishing dynamic network connection on boot. They are ‘NetworkManager.service’ and ‘systemd-networkd.service’. My thought is to disable them one at the time and see if things will work out on one or the other. Like:

# systemctl disable systemd-networkd.service

and reboot and see if we get lucky and you have a connection or can establish one with ‘System Settings>Network>Connections’. If not then:

# systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service

# systemctl disable NetworkManager.service

and repeat the process. It any on that works great. If not then:

# systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

Puts your system back and it was and we listen to @bero and other devs. Hope this in some way helps.