hellenchemtai

Hello world. I have been doing a lot after my internship with Outreachy. We are still working on some tasks :

1. I am working on running locales for my native language in live images.
2. I am also working on points to add to talk proposals for a Debian conference.

As I am moving around constantly, there are problems I had encountered when changing my networks. I had to connect my virtual machine to different networks and the network would not reflect within the machine. From terminal I edited the virtual machine XML settings:

su -// input password sudo virsh edit <machine_name> #its openqa for me// Look for the interface within devices and replace this:<interface type='network'>        <source network='default'/>        #some other code in here </interface>// With just this then restart your machine:<interface type='user'>    <model type='virtio'/></interface>

Hopefully the above will help someone out there. I am still working on a lot of tasks regarding the conference, so much to do and so little time. I am hoping I won’t get any burnout during this period. I won’t be updating much further till the conference. Have a nice time

Hello world . I’m Hellen Chemtai, an intern at Outreachy working with the Debian OpenQA team on Images Testing. This is the final week of the internship. This is just a start for me as I will continue contributing to the community .I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the Debian OpenQA team as an Outreachy intern. I have had the best welcoming team to Open Source.

I have been working on network install and live images tasks :

1. Install live Installers ( Ventoy , Rufus and Balenaetcher) and test the live USBs made by these live installers. – These tasks were completed and is running on the server.
2. Use different file systems (btrfs , jfs , xfs) for installation and then test. – This task was completed and running on the server. It still needs some changes to ensure automation for each file system
3. Use speech synthesis to capture all audio. – This task is complete. We are refining it to run well in server.
4. Publish temporary assets. – This task is being worked on.

I have enjoyed working on testing both live images and net install images. This was one of the goals that I had highlighted in my application. I have also been working with fellow contributors in this project.

As I had stated , I have had the best welcoming team to Open Source . They have been working with me and ensuring I have the proper resources for contributions. I am grateful to my three mentors and the work they have done.

1. Roland Clobus is a project maintainer. He is in charge of code review , pointing out what we need to learn and works on technical issues. He considers every solution we contributors think of and will go into detailed explanations for any issue we have.
2. Tassia Camoes is a community coordinator. She is in charge of communication, co-ordination between contributors and networking within the community. She on-boarded us and introduced us to the community.
3. Philip Hands is also a project maintainer. He is in charge of technical code , ensuring sources work and also working on server and its issues. He also gives detailed explanations for any issue we have.

I wish to learn more with the team. On my to do list, I would like to gain more skills on ports and packages so to contribute more technically. I have enjoyed working on the tasks and learning

The automated tests done by the team help the community in some of the following examples:

1. Check the installation and system behavior of the Operating System images versions
2. Help developers and users of Operating Systems know which versions of applications e.g live installers run well on system
3. Check for any issues during installation and running of Operating Systems and their flavors

I have also networked with the greater community and other contributors. During the contribution phase, I found many friends who were learning together with me . I hope to continue networking with the community and continue learning.

Hello world ! I am an intern at Outreachy working with the Debian OpenQA team on images testing. We get to know what career opportunities awaits us when we work on open source projects. In open source, we are constantly learning. The community has different sets of skills and a large network of people.

I entered the community with the these skills:

• MERN (Mongo DB, Express JS , React JS and Node JS) – for web development
• Linux and Shell Scripting – for some administrative purposes
• Containerization using Google Cloud
• Operating Systems
• A learning passion for Open Source – I contributed to some open source work in the past but it was in terms of documentation and bug hunting

I was a newbie at OpenQA but, I had a month to learn and contribute. Time is a critical resource but so is understanding what you are doing. I followed the installations instructions given but whenever I got errors, I had to research why I got the errors. I took time to understand errors I was solving then continued on with the tasks I wanted to do. I communicated my logic and understanding while working on the task and awaited reviews and feedback. Within a span of two months I had learned a lot by practicing and testing.

As of today, I gained these technical skills from my work with Debian OpenQA team.

• Perl – the tests that we run are written in this language
• Ansible configuration – ansible configurations and settings for the machines the team runs
• Git – this is needed for code versioning and diving tasks into different branches
• Linux – shell scripting and working with the Debian Operating system
• Virtual Machines and Operating Systems – I constantly view how different operating systems are booted and run on virtual machines during testing
• Testing – I keep watch of needles and ensure the tests work as required
• Debian – I use a Debian system to run my Virtual Machines
• OpenQA – the tool that is used to automate testing of Images

With open source comes the need of constant communication. The community is diverse and the team is usually on different time zones. These are some of the soft / social skills I gained when working with the team

• Communication – this is essential especially in taking tasks with confidence, talking about issues encountered and stating the progress of the tasks
• Interpersonal skills – this is for general communication within the community
• Flexibility – we have to adapt to changes because we are a community of different people with different skills

With these skills and the willingness to learn , open source is a great area to focus on . Aside from your career you will extend your network. My interests are set on open source and Linux in general. Working with a wider network has really skilled me up and I will continue learning. Working with the Debian OpenQA team has been very great. The team is great at communication and I learn every day. The knowledge I gain from the team is helping me build a great career in open source.

Hello world . I am an intern here at Outreachy working with Debian OpenQA Image testing team. The work consists of testing Images with OpenQA. The internship has reached midpoint and here are some of the highlights that I have had so far.

1. The mentors : Roland Clobus, Tassia Camoes and Philip Hands are very good mentors. I like the constant communication and the help I get while working on the project. I enjoy working with this team.
2. The community : The contributors, mentors and the greater SUSE OpenQA community are constantly in communication. I learn a lot from these meetings.
3. The women network : The women of Debian meet and network . The meetings are interactive and we are encouraged to interact.
4. The project : We are making progress one step at a time. Isoken Ibizugbe is my fellow intern working on start-stop tests. I am working on live installers tests.

I have learned a lot during my internship. I have always been on the silent path of life with little communication. I once told myself being a developer would hide me behind a computer to avoid socializing. Being in open source especially this internship has helped me out with communication and networking. The team work in the project has helped me a lot

1. My mentors encourage communication. Giving project updates and stating when we get stuck.
2. My mentors have scheduled weekly meetings to communicate about the project
3. We are constantly invited to the SUSE meetings by mentors or by Sam Thursfield who is part of the team.
4. Female contributors are encouraged to join Debian women monthly meetings for networking

I have had challenges , solved problems and learned new skills all this while

1. I have learned Perl, OpenQA configuration, needle editing and improved my Linux and Git skills
2. I have known how various Images are installed , booted and run through live viewing of tests
3. I have solved many test errors and learned to work with applications that are needed in the OS installations. e.g. rufus
4. I have learned how virtual machines work and how to solve errors in regards to them

So far so good. I am grateful to be a contributor towards the project and hope to continue learning.

Hello world . I am an intern at Outreachy and contributing to the Debian Images Testing project since October 2025. This project is Open Source and everyone can contribute to it in any way. The project uses Open QA to automatically install Operating System Images and test them . We have a community here of contributors that is always ready to help out. The mentors and project maintainers are very open to contributions. They listen to any innovative ideas and point out what they have been doing so far.

So far contributions have been in terms of:

• Documentation – Adding to install guides
• Pseudo Tests – Suggesting an idea after finding an error or idea
• Pointing out bugs / errors when trying out tests
• Work on tests
• Contribute towards the wider community / help out other contributors
• Heck, you can even create a screen-cast video doing the set up and add it to the guide / docs
• Developers with further understanding can try to work with the maintainers on packages

Contributing to this project requires some knowledge of Linux commands and Operating Systems. What we will learn later as we go on will be :

• Images / Operating System Installation through dual booting
• More Linux commands
• Images / Operating System Installation and testing on Virtual Machine
• Git commands
• Writing testing documentation
• Writing Pseudo Tests
• Writing test modules / code using Perl
• Working on configuration

Before any contribution begins, we would want to first try out the project and run a couple of tests. Get to understand what we are doing first. Let’s say you are starting out as a Windows or MacOS user and you want to start contributing. I would recommend dual partitioning your device first. Do enough research and prepare the resources. The network install image just needs at-least 4 GB USB flash drive for dual booting. You will use Debian as the second operating system. Give enough space to Debian, I recommend around 150 GB or more. Also assign at-least 1 GB space to the /boot/efi directory to prevent the low space warnings after a while.This will be a way good way to learn about image installation which is part of the work . I do not recommend Virtual Box because it will hinder full use of system resources. This process will take a day or two.

After dual booting. We log into our Debian System . The next step of instructions will take you through how we set up and run our tests. These instructions have many Linux commands. You will be learning if you are a newbie as you go through the steps. Try to understand these commands and do not blindly copy and paste. You can start your contributions here if you have a suggestion to add to the install docs. Run some tests then log in the Web UI as per the instructions to view your tests progress. Green means they’ve passed. Blue means its still running. Red means failed.

Kudos if you have reached this point. The community of contributors will help if you are stuck. We get to try out our own variations of tests using variables. We will also rely on documentation to understand the configurations / test commands like these

openqa-cli api -X POST isos ISO=debian-13.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso DISTRI=debian VERSION=stable FLAVOR=netinst-iso ARCH=x86_64 BUILD=1310 #This is the test you will run on the guide

openqa-cli api -X POST isos ISO=debian-13.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso DISTRI=debian VERSION=stable FLAVOR=netinst-iso ARCH=x86_64 BUILD=1310 TEST=cinnamon #I have added a TEST variable that runs only cinnamon test suite

You can check specific test suites from the WebUI :

We get some failures at times. Here are some failed tests from a build I was working on.

Here we find the cinnamon test failed at locale module. Click on any module above and it will lead us to needles and point to the where the test failed. You can check the error or try to add a needle if its needle failure.

Try editing a test module and test your changes. Try out some ideas. Read the documentation folder and write some pseudo code. Interact with the community. Try working on some tasks from the community . Create your tests and add them to the configuration. There is a lot of stuff that can you can work on in this community.

It may seem hard to grasp at first as a newbie to Open Source. The community will help you through out even if the problem seems small. We are very friendly and the code maintainers have extensive knowledge. Get to sit with us during one of our meetings and you will learn so much about the project. Learning , networking and communicating is part of contributing to the broader community.

Hello there . Today will be an in depth review on my work with the Debian OpenQA images testing team. I will highlight the struggles that I have had so far during my Outreachy internship.

The OpenQA images testing team uses OpenQA to automatically install images e.g. Gnome Images. The images are then tested using tests written in Perl. My current tasks include speech install and capture all audio. I am also installing Live Gnome image to Windows using BalenaEtcher then testing it. A set of similar tasks will also be collaborated on. While working on tasks, I have to go through the guides. I also learn how Perl works so as to edit and create tests. For every change made, I have to re-run the job in developer mode. I have to create needles that have matches and click co-ordinates. I have been stuck on some of these instances:

1. During installation, my job would not process a second HDD I had added. Roland Clobus , one of my mentors from the team gave me a variable to work with. The solution was adding “NUMDISKS=2” as part of the command.
2. While working on a file, one of the needles would only work after file edits. Afterwards it would fail to “assert_and_click”. What kept bugging me was why it was passing after the first instance then failing after. The solution was adding a “wait_still_screen” to the code. This would ensure any screen changes loaded first before clicking happened.
3. I was stuck on finding the keys that would be needed for a context menu. I added “button => ‘right’ ” in the “assert_and_click ” code.
4. Windows 11 installation was constantly failing. Roland pointed out he was working on it so I had to use Windows 10.
5. Windows 10 Virtual Machine does not connect to the internet because of update restrictions. I had to switch to Linux Virtual Machine for a download job.

When I get stuck, at times I seek guidance from the mentors. I still look for solutions in the documentation. Here are some of the documentation that have helped me get through some of these challenges.

1. Installation and creating tests guide – https://salsa.debian.org/qa/openqa/openqa-tests-debian/-/tree/debian/documentation . These guides help in installation and creating of tests.
2. OpenQA official documentation – https://open.qa/docs/ . This documentation is very comprehensive. I used it recently to read about PUBLISH_HDD_n to save the updated version of a HDD_n I am using.
3. OpenQA test API documentation – https://open.qa/api/testapi/ . This documentation shows me which parameters to use. I have used it recently to find how to right click on a mouse and special characters.
4. OpenQA variables file in Gitlab – https://salsa.debian.org/qa/openqa/openqa-tests-debian/-/blob/debian/VARIABLES.md . This has explanations of the most commonly used variables .
5. OpenQA repository in Gitlab – https://salsa.debian.org/qa/openqa/openqa-tests-debian . I go through the Perl tests. Understand how they work . Then integrate my tests using the a similar manner so that it would look uniform.
6. OpenQa tests – https://openqa.debian.net/tests. I use these tests to find machine settings. I also find test sequences and the assets I would need to create similar tests. I used it recently to look at how graphical login was being implemented then shutdown.

The list above are the documentation that are supposed to be used for these tests and finding solutions. If I don’t find anything within these, I then ask Roland for help. I try to go through the autoinst documentation that are from the links provided in the Gitlab README.md file : https://salsa.debian.org/qa/openqa/openqa-tests-debian/-/blob/debian/README.md . They are also comprehensive but are very technical .

In general, I get challenges but there is always a means to solve them through documentation provided. The mentors are also very helpful whenever we get challenges. I have gained team contribution skills , upgraded my git skills, learned Perl and how to test using OpenQA. I am still polishing on how to make my needles better. My current progress is thus good. We learn one day at a time.

Hello there . I am a software developer and tester. Some of my interests include bash scripting , website full-stack development and also open source software contribution.

Outreachy is dedicated to the open source community. The OpenQA community in itself had the right project I wanted to contribute to. It was a really great match for my interests and skills. The project is Debian Images testing with OpenQA.

The contribution period was very intense. It was a learning phase at first. I made adjustments to my computer to ensure it would handle the tasks. I also had many trials , failures and problem solving to do. There was a lot of questions asked. My mentors were really helpful.

What worked for me in the end was:

1. Communicating in the social network with fellow contributors and helping out whenever they got stuck.
2. Writing the small steps I made during the contribution period, from dual booting to all errors encountered and the ways I solved them in a google docs application.
3. The small steps I made and the word application were then added to the list of contributions I made.
4. I also wrote and edited the main application in small phases and was detailed on my experiences
5. Last but not least I did work on my first task. It was speech testing and capturing all audio. I got a lot help from the mentors through out the process.

Every week is a learning phase to me. I encounter newer issues , lets say my latest issue was connecting the Virtual Machine to a newer Wi-Fi network. It took a whole day to get a solution but I eventually solved it. I regularly share my issues and write the solutions so that it would be helpful to anyone in the future.

By the end of the internship period, I hope to have contributed to the Debian OpenQA Open Source community.This is by working on the tasks and working with the Opensuse broader community on any issues. I want to build a network with my mentors: Philip, Tassia, Roland and other mentors in the community in order to create future opportunities for contributions, mentoring and just general communication.