Friday 17 February 2012

Introducing the Firmware Test Suite Live (fwts-live)

Firmware Test Suite Live (fwts-live) is a USB live image that will automatically boot and run the Firmware Test Suite (fwts) - it will run on legacy BIOS and also UEFI firmware (x86_64) bit systems.

fwts-live will run a range of fwts tests and store the results on the USB stick - these can be reviewed while running fwts-live or at a later time on another computer if required.

To install fwts-live on to a USB first download either a 32 or 64 bit image from http://odm.ubuntu.com/fwts-live/ and then uncompress the image using:

 bunzip2 fwts-live-*.img.bz2  

Next insert a USB stick into your machine and unmount it. Now one has to copy the fwts-live image to the USB stick - one can find the USB device using:

 dmesg | tail -10 | grep Attached  
 [ 2525.654620] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk  

..so the above example it is /dev/sdb, and copy using:

 sudo dd if=fwts-live-oneiric-*.img of=/dev/sdb  
 sync  

..and then remove the USB stick.

To run, insert the USB stick into the machine you want to test and then boot the machine.  This will start up fwts-live and then you will be shown a set of options - to either run all the fwts batch tests, to select individual tests to run, or abort testing and shutdown.


If you chose to run all the fwts batch tests then fwts will automatically run through a series of tests which will take a few minutes to complete:


and when complete one can chose to view the results log:


if "Yes" is selected then one can view the results. The cursor up/down and page up/down keys can be used to navigate the results log file.  When you have completed viewing the results log, fwts-live will inform you where the results have been saved on the USB stick (so that one can review them later by plugging the USB stick into a different machine).


A full user guide to fwts-live is available at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareEnablementTeam/Documentation/FirmwareTestSuiteLive

To help interpret any errors or warnings found by fwts we recommend visiting  fwts reference guide - this is has comprehensive description of each test and detailed explanations of warnings and error messages.

Below is a demo of fwts-live running inside QEMU:

 
 
Kudos to Chris Van Hoof for producing fwts-live

5 comments:

  1. How about uploading that to Debian?

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    Replies
    1. That will happen once we are happy with the quality and maturity of the tool. As it stands, it's still beta quality.

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  2. Just ran the batch tests: 60 failed on my ThinkPad T510, 100 on my Z68-based desktop system - going to spend the rest of the day reading the reference guide. :D

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  3. Is it useful to have these submitted from the general community?We have a global jam coming up and it'd be great to have Local Teams pass around this test on a stick and upload results.

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    Replies
    1. Jorge, we are hoping to use this tool for testing for example and UEFI plugfests and the like. So lets see how that works out first before we start passing it around Local Teams.

      Delete