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The email mentions that normal testing didn't catch it as it's not a typical use-case for the devs apparently.

• gpvos 6y ago
  Which is exactly why automated testing exists, to catch cases like this.
  • _-___________-_ 6y ago
    If the devs foresaw the set of conditions that trigger the bug and wrote a test that produces those conditions.
  • unionpivo 6y ago
    Automated testing is not magic. it only tests things you make it test. And since kernel is basically involved into everything that computer does, you would have to test everything, to find every error. Linux kernel is also extremely customizable, so that it can run from watches, to mars rowers, to HPC and cloud. Linux kernels are continuously heavily tested on various different hardware architectures, by various organizations (RH, IBM, Oracle, Google). So there are automated tests done. It's just seems nobody tested this.
    • gpvos 6y ago
      Of course. Thanks for stating a lot of mostly obvious things. Assuming there is a test suite (I really don't know enough about Linux kernel testing, sorry), it is a matter of testing that on a representative set of configurations. Apparently no-one thought of having one with a swap file instead of a swap partition. That's okay, it's an understandable oversight, but one that clearly should be remedied.