[Clfs-dev] coreutils-7.1 expensive test failure and solution

[Steve Jones]

I found a problem and the solution to an error in coreutils-7.1
expensive tests.  Irrelevant book info: svn current x86_64 pure 64.

the error:
> make[5]: Entering directory `/srv/x86_64-64/build/coreutils-7.1/gnulib-tests'
> gcc -std=gnu99  -I. -I../lib  -I. -I. -I.. -I./.. -I../lib -I./../lib -g -O2 -MT read-file.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/read-file.Tpo -c -o read-file.o read-file.c
> read-file.c:136: fatal error: opening dependency file .deps/read-file.Tpo: Permission denied
> compilation terminated.
> make[5]: *** [read-file.o] Error 1

This is a simple permissions problem.  Since we preform the make as root
and then run the expensive tests as user dummy, I just ran:

# chown -R dummy *

before the 

# src/su dummy -c "make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check"

command.  This fixed the problem and all tests passed successfully.

I know that this a hammer approach where a little finesse would be
better but I didn't want to fight the testsuite.  The third test in
the expensive tests, rm/ext3-perf, is very expensive.  It creates 400000
( yes, that is four hundred thousand ) files just to time the deletion
of the files.  It takes about 30 minutes on my system just to touch all
those files,, and seconds to delete them.

-- 
Steve Jones
sljones at slohj.org