Re: [Patch] Workaround for NFS issue when using cross-test-ssh.sh

[Steve Ellcey <sellcey at imgtec dot com>]

On Fri, 2016-02-12 at 22:38 +0000, Joseph Myers wrote:
> I don't think it makes sense to put such workarounds for a fundamentally 
> unreliable environment in particular tests.  You simply need to find 
> appropriate NFS mount settings on all systems involved to ensure that no 
> problematic caching occurs, or flush caches explicitly in 
> cross-test-ssh.sh (and I think it will be a lot easier if the build system 
> exports its filesystem to the test system, rather than both getting a 
> filesystem from a third system).

In an ideal world I would agree with you.  But to do that I must
restrict my builds and my testing to machines I have root access to so
that I can do the NFS mounts in the required manner.  I have some
machines like that but I also have access to a second set of machines
where I cannot change the NFS settings or make other root level changes
because I share them with other groups, these machines do all have
access to shared filesystems like /users that live on dedicated NFS
servers and I could use them for builds and testing if it were not for
this one problem.

The other option of course is to create a branch and put my changes
there for use locally, but I would also like to avoid that if possible
since I think doing builds and testing directly on the main branch is
preferable to using a local branch.  It is too easy to put patches or
other fixes on a local branch and never get them upstreamed if you do
all your work on local branches.

Steve Ellcey
sellcey@imgtec.com