Next Generation Posix Threads

Verification Summary Report

Introduction

This document describes the methods used by the IBM Linux Technology Center Test Team to perform verification on Next Generation Posix Threads. For more information about the LTC Test Team, see http://ltp.sourceforge.net. For More information about NGPT, see http://oss.software.ibm.com/pthreads.

Test Environment

This section describes the hardware and software environments used in testing NGPT.

Unresolved Issues

There is a load balancing issue that randomly appears in SMP environments. In some situations, load may not be evenly balanced among kernel threads, or a hang may occur with all threads stuck in do_select. This issue is being addressed by the NGPT development team.

Further Testing

• NGPT would benefit from additional testing on 8-way and higher machines, as well as on other supported hardware platforms such as IA64 and S/390.
• Standards testing should be performed with VSTHlite.
• A more complete regression suite for the pth functions should be written and executed against NGPT.

Test Cases

• Test_sig

  Description:	Pth test with signal handling
  Duration:	Basic regression
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_select

  Description:	Pth test using select
  Duration:	Basic regression
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_pthread_segv

  Description:	Pthreads signal handling test
  Duration:	Basic regression
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_mp

  Description:	Pth test for message port handling
  Duration:	Basic regression
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_misc

  Description:	Tests miscellaneous pth functions
  Duration:	Basic regression
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_httpd

  Description:	Simulated httpd daemon using pth
  Duration:	Basic regression
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Pth_str01

  Description:	Creates a large tree of threads
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	All
  Distributions:	All

• Pth_str02

  Description:	Creates a large number of threads sequentially
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	All
  Distributions:	All

• Pth_str03

  Description:	Creates a tree of threads, each child performs calculations and returns the result to the parent
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	All
  Distributions:	All

• Test_std

  Description:	Pth standard test program
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_pthread

  Description:	General test of Pthread API
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_pthread_cancel

  Description:	Test for pthread_cancel()
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_pthread_sig

  Description:	Test signal handling in pthreads
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Test_philo

  Description:	Pth test application showing the 5 philosophers problem
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	Up1, Up2
  Distributions:	All

• Ltp

  Description:	The LTP project testsuite
  Duration:	72 Hours
  Hardware:	Smp1
  Distributions:	Smp1

Observations

NGPT was very stable on single processor machines. A problem was found in early testing where any test that used pthread_create() would generate a segmentation fault when a call to exit() was made. This issue has already been corrected before the 1.0 release. A minor problem was discovered with Test_mp that prevented the test from running. In this test, and many others, pth_init() was used, but in Test_mp, the return value was checked. The pth_init() function is no longer needed and returns a failed value. This function was removed from all the testcases that used it without any loss of function. This change was also made prior to the final 1.0 release. There is still an unresolved issue where tests will hang in do_select on smp. This issue is being addressed by the NGPT development team.

Test team:

Paul Larson plars@austin.ibm.com