Bug 59562 – new-run-webkit-tests should disable/enable spindump on mac

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: FIXED
• Component: Tools / Tests

[Stephanie Lewis]

new-run-webkit-tests should disable/enable spindump on mac.  It can hog the available memory and cpu

to disable:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump.plist
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump_symbolicator.plist 
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump_starter.plist 

to enable:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump_symbolicator.plist 
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump_starter.plist

[Dirk Pranke]

hm. Sorry for not looking at this before now ... 

This is a problematic idea for me, since sudo would prompt for passwords and hence presumably cause problems on the bots, unless the commands were specially treated in sudoers.

Unless there's another way to solve this, the best I can come up with is to add a --disable-spindump flag that would do this only on request, but I'm not sure if that's really better than just doing this yourself in a wrapper script around new-run-webkit-tests.

WDYT?

[Stephanie Lewis]

For the bots it would probably just be easier for each bot to disable spindump permanently (there's a good chance we already do this on the mac bots).  

I was thinking more of people running the tests on their machines.  Spindump, when it gets going, can dramatically reduce performance particularly when symbolicating custom builds.  I haven' t tested it recently so I should get some numbers on cpu usage on a recent build.

I don't like the idea of a wrapper, it seems like it would add an extra layer of complexity for a small benefit.

[Dirk Pranke]

maybe we should add a separate script for enabling/disabling spindump so people can run it when they want?

[Dirk Pranke]

I'm going to close this as WONTFIX, since I don't see a good way of doing this without prompting for passwords, and I don't think that's a good idea. Let me know if you disagree.