Linux Kernel Selftests The kernel contains a set of "self tests" under the tools/testing/selftests/ directory. These are intended to be small unit tests to exercise individual code paths in the kernel. Running the selftests ===================== To build the tests: $ make -C tools/testing/selftests To run the tests: $ make -C tools/testing/selftests run_tests - note that some tests will require root privileges. To run only tests targetted for a single subsystem: $ make -C tools/testing/selftests TARGETS=cpu-hotplug run_tests See the top-level tools/testing/selftests/Makefile for the list of all possible targets. Contributing new tests ====================== In general, the rules for for selftests are * Do as much as you can if you're not root; * Don't take too long; * Don't break the build on any architecture, and * Don't cause the top-level "make run_tests" to fail if your feature is unconfigured.