Merge bitcoin/bitcoin#24707: doc: Speed up functional test runs using ramdisk

17648493df478fa9316cc9ed66fe6bc1c2c820a4 doc: Speed up functional test runs using ramdisk (willcl-ark)

Pull request description:

  Using a ramdisk for the functional tests can give noticable speedups for developers and reviewers.

  Local testing with an 8GB ramdisk saw a full test run using `test/functional/test_runner.py --jobs=100 --cachedir=/mnt/tmp/cache --tmpdir=/mnt/tmp` reduced from ~280 seconds to ~99 seconds.

  Possible bikeshedding opportunity to be had over whether this might best fit into `doc/productivity.md`, but IMO more people will likely see it (and it will therefore be more useful) if it is here.

  It seems best to select `tmpfs` over `ramfs` as `ramfs` can grow dynamically (good) but cannot be limited in size and might cause the system to hang if you run out of ram (bad), whereas `tmpfs` is size-limited and will overflow into swap.

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MarcoFalke 2022-03-31 08:34:55 +02:00 committed by pasta
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@ -108,6 +108,34 @@ how many jobs to run, append `--jobs=n`
The individual tests and the test_runner harness have many command-line
options. Run `test/functional/test_runner.py -h` to see them all.
#### Speed up test runs with a ramdisk
If you have available RAM on your system you can create a ramdisk to use as the `cache` and `tmp` directories for the functional tests in order to speed them up.
Speed-up amount varies on each system (and according to your ram speed and other variables), but a 2-3x speed-up is not uncommon.
To create a 4GB ramdisk on Linux at `/mnt/tmp/`:
```bash
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/tmp
sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=4g tmpfs /mnt/tmp/
```
Configure the size of the ramdisk using the `size=` option.
The size of the ramdisk needed is relative to the number of concurrent jobs the test suite runs.
For example running the test suite with `--jobs=100` might need a 16GB ramdisk, but running with `--jobs=4` will only need a 4GB ramdisk.
To use, run the test suite specifying the ramdisk as the `cachedir` and `tmpdir`:
```bash
test/functional/test_runner.py --cachedir=/mnt/tmp/cache --tmpdir=/mnt/tmp
```
Once finished with the tests and the disk, and to free the ram, simply unmount the disk:
```bash
sudo umount /mnt/tmp
```
#### Troubleshooting and debugging test failures
##### Resource contention