ReleaseEngineering/Projects/PandaBoards

What is the goal?

• To test on android 4.0
• To enable us to test NEON support (a graphics subsystem these cards have)
• To test a different chipset architecture than the tegras
  • Tegra is largely a dying platform in mobile space
• To have a mobile automation platform that is more reliable and easier to flash than the tegras (less IT management cost)
• To have a mobile platform that can live in a lights-out datacenter
• To have a mobile platform that is faster than the tegras

What does the a-team need/know?

• How do we do flashing of these devices so that you can flash with all required software from the get-go
• Does it run through our test systems without dying?
• How much faster is it than a tegra?

What does IT need/know?

• know: we don't have room for a production quantity of these in haxxor, only in real datacenters which necessitates a rakcmount enclosure with proper remote management.
• need: blocked on the exact specs on the board(s) we're ordering/supporting
• need: blocked on at least two physical boards/power supplies for enclosure prototyping
  • must determine: how many panda boards can we fit in a custom 4U chassis, and how do we connect them to relay boards for remote administration?
  • how is imaging handled, will be able to do it remotely like we have planned with the tegras?
• need: a defined timeline/gantt chart that shows when we'll need each phase done by and what it's requirements are (e.g. one board to play with in haxxor, N boards to play with in a datacenter (where N needs to be defined)), and a full blown production setup).
• need: a good ballpark estimation of how many boards we will be putting into production and whether that is phased over several months or needs to be done all at once.
  • how much space does this require in the dc
  • how many buildbot masters does this require, and of what configuration
  • how many foopies does this require, and of what type/configuration (minis are harder, linux is better, none is best)?
  • will these also connect to the tegra dashboard or something similar? Does that scale? what are the spec requiremetns for a machine/vm to make this work if this is the plan?
• need: do 9 month cycle OS builds mean SD card swapouts/reimages every 9 months? What's that process look like? tree closure, rolling upgrades?

What does releng need/know?

Point of contact: armenzg

• a panda board
• hook up the panda-board to the automation
• know if the setup is the same as tegras (SUT agent, foopies)
  • clint: Exact same setup.
• what suites are going to be run on it
  • clint: Everything we run on the tegras
• imaging process
  • Ateam to define
• ordering schedule
• how many boards?
  • do we really know if the model we follow is scalable?? does the tegra model work?
  • ordering these many boards is simply ridiculous for manufacturers
• do they have to be racked in haxxor?
  • clint: No. These are wired devices, no reason to use haxxor for this.

Roadmap/Timeline

• ateam gets for releng a working board in the week of February 12th
• releng to setup a master/foopy to make this setup work - ETA?? owner??

Action items

• ctalbert: will build an Android 4.0 OS image and flash to panda board. Largely doing this to see what the steps are, ensure they are clear and repeatable (Brad already proved it's possible) and to see where we'd modify these steps in order to create an OS with our tools pre-installed.
• ctalbert: once he has the panda board running, he is going to do a quick sanity test run on the pandaboard to verify that it makes it through reftest/mochitest etc.
• ctalbert: Once it runs through the tests without fizzling out, he is going to go rack it in haxxor so that the releng can put it into their staging environment and start doing preliminary tests on it to work through the changes that will be required in buildbot to handle another android device type reporting test results, as well as doing a true stability assessment.
• ??: provide specs of panda board(s) to relops
• ??: provide 2 panda boards of the appropriate spec to relops
• ??: provide requirements for dev, testing, and production phases to relops

Bugs/Links

• http://pandaboard.org/content/buy