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+LAVA CI
+=======
+
+`LAVA <https://lavasoftware.org/>`_ is a system for functional testing
+of boards including deploying custom bootloaders and kernels.  This is
+particularly relevant to testing Mesa because we often need to change
+kernels for UAPI changes (and this lets us do full testing of a new
+kernel during development), and our workloads can easily take down
+boards when mistakes are made (kernel oopses, OOMs that take out
+critical system services).
+
+Mesa-LAVA software architecture
+-------------------------------
+
+The gitlab-runner will run on some host that has access to the LAVA
+lab, with tags like "lava-mesa-boardname" to control only taking in
+jobs for the hardware that the LAVA lab contains.  The gitlab-runner
+spawns a docker container with lava-cli in it, and connects to the
+LAVA lab using a predefined token to submit jobs under a specific
+device type.
+
+The LAVA instance manages scheduling those jobs to the boards present.
+For a job, it will deploy the kernel, device tree, and the ramdisk
+containing the CTS.
+
+Deploying a new Mesa-LAVA lab
+-----------------------------
+
+You'll want to start with setting up your LAVA instance and getting
+some boards booting using test jobs.  Start with the stock QEMU
+examples to make sure your instance works at all.  Then, you'll need
+to define your actual boards.
+
+The device type in lava-gitlab-ci.yml is the device type you create in
+your LAVA instance, which doesn't have to match the board's name in
+``/etc/lava-dispatcher/device-types``.  You create your boards under
+that device type and the Mesa jobs will be scheduled to any of them.
+Instantiate your boards by creating them in the UI or at the command
+line attached to that device type, then populate their dictionary
+(using an "extends" line probably referencing the board's template in
+``/etc/lava-dispatcher/device-types``).  Now, go find a relevant
+healthcheck job for your board as a test job definition, or cobble
+something together from a board that boots using the same boot_method
+and some public images, and figure out how to get your boards booting.
+
+Once you can boot your board using a custom job definition, it's time
+to connect Mesa CI to it.  Install gitlab-runner and register as a
+shared runner (you'll need a gitlab admin for help with this).  The
+runner *must* have a tag (like "mesa-lava-db410c") to restrict the
+jobs it takes or it will grab random jobs from tasks across fd.o, and
+your runner isn't ready for that.
+
+The runner will be running an ARM docker image (we haven't done any
+x86 LAVA yet, so that isn't documented).  If your host for the
+gitlab-runner is x86, then you'll need to install qemu-user-static and
+the binfmt support.
+
+The docker image will need access to the lava instance.  If it's on a
+public network it should be fine.  If you're running the LAVA instance
+on localhost, you'll need to set ``network_mode="host"`` in
+``/etc/gitlab-runner/config.toml`` so it can access localhost.  Create a
+gitlab-runner user in your LAVA instance, log in under that user on
+the web interface, and create an API token.  Copy that into a
+``lavacli.yaml``:
+
+.. code-block:: yaml
+
+  default:
+    token: <token contents>
+    uri: <url to the instance>
+    username: gitlab-runner
+
+Add a volume mount of that ``lavacli.yaml`` to
+``/etc/gitlab-runner/config.toml`` so that the docker container can
+access it.  You probably have a ``volumes = ["/cache"]`` already, so now it would be::
+
+    volumes = ["/home/anholt/lava-config/lavacli.yaml:/root/.config/lavacli.yaml", "/cache"]
+
+Note that this token is visible to anybody that can submit MRs to
+Mesa!  It is not an actual secret.  We could just bake it into the
+gitlab CI yml, but this way the current method of connecting to the
+LAVA instance is separated from the Mesa branches (particularly
+relevant as we have many stable branches all using CI).
+
+Now it's time to define your test runner in
+``.gitlab-ci/lava-gitlab-ci.yml``.