Hellen Chemtai: The Last Week of My Journey as an Outreachy Intern at Debian OpenQA

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.

My tasks and contributions

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 almost complete. We are testing to ensure no errors will occur in the server.
4. Publish temporary assets. – This task is not a priority and will be worked on once we’ve wrapped up the other tasks.

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.

My team

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 impact of this project

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.