Linux development evolves rapidly. The performance and scalability of the OS kernel has been a key part of its success. However, discussions have appeared on LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) regarding large performance regression between kernel versions. These discussions underscore the need for a systematic and disciplined way to characterize, improve, and test Linux kernel performance.

Our goal is to work with the Linux community to further enhance the Linux kernel with consistent performance increases (avoiding degradations) across releases. The information available on this site gives community members better information about what 0-Day and LKP (Linux Kernel Performance) are doing to preserve performance integrity of the kernel.

We are a group of dedicated Linux kernel engineers who are taking on the challenge of testing the Linux kernel. To track performance, we run a large set of benchmarks which cover core components of the Linux kernel: virtual memory management, I/O subsystem, process scheduler, file system, network, device drivers, and more. Benchmarks are run on a variety of platforms every week, as we test the latest snapshot of Linus' git development tree. Comprehensive performance data from our tests will be hosted here for easy access.

The infrastructure we developed to test the Linux kernel is called 0-Day. It is a service and test framework for automated regression-testing that intercepts kernel development at its earliest stages, and is available to the worldwide Linux kernel community. This project provides a further “shift-left” by testing key developers’ trees before patches move forward in the development process.

Some key features of 0-Day are:

Provides 1-hour response time around the clock, hence the 0-Day name.

Performs patch-by-patch tests

Covers all branches of a developer’s tree

Performs kernel build and static semantics-level testing using industry static source code analyzers

Performs boot tests, functional and performance tests on a variety of IA-based platforms in our labs

Bisects code automatically when tests fail, or when performance regresses, enabling us to identify which patch caused the failure.

How to Participate

We look forward to your feedback and input; please feel free to contact us directly via our project email: <lkp@lists.01.org>

Or follow updates by subscribing to our list: https://lists.01.org/postorius/lists/lkp.lists.01.org

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Boot and Performance issues: https://lists.01.org/pipermail/lkp/

Build issues: https://lists.01.org/pipermail/kbuild-all/