Document the first run's time and logs; say why the VMs use -vga std

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-11-05 06:59:55 -07:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5.5
parent 9e4b78bb88
commit cb3fe79aa0
2 changed files with 14 additions and 1 deletions
+11 -1
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@@ -65,7 +65,8 @@ RAM and 4 CPUs per VM (`SMOKETEST_MEMORY`, `SMOKETEST_CPUS`), and disk space in
`~/.cache/coredesktop-dev/smoketest`: VM disks grow as large as a real install,
about 50 GB, and each run's VM disk is deleted when it's done.
The first run builds two images, which takes a while:
The first run builds two images before any scenario runs: base in a few
minutes, installed in an hour or more. Later runs reuse them.
- **base**: Arch's official cloud image, with GNOME added the way archinstall's
desktop profile installs it. The user `tester` (password `tester`) logs in to
@@ -81,6 +82,15 @@ VM, so they download once. Flatpaks aren't cached.
To watch a VM's screen, set `SMOKETEST_VNC=1` and connect a VNC viewer to
`127.0.0.1:5901`.
The terminal can stay quiet for many minutes while a VM boots or installs. To
follow along, `tail -f` the logs in `~/.cache/coredesktop-dev/smoketest`:
- `build-base/` and `build-installed/`, while an image builds: `build.log` is
what the build printed, and `serial.log` is the VM's console, the place to
look when a VM doesn't boot or doesn't answer on SSH.
- `runs/<date>-<time>/<scenario>/`: `scenario.log` for each scenario, and
`serial.log` for its VM.
## Developing this project
```