Hi Anubis
So your mission is:
1. To set up a number of PCs to act as test stations to check out a piece of hardware.
2. Centralize the test software so that revision control can be done at a server.
The right tool for the job is a remote directory that gets mounted locally. That means NFS, Samba, or any of the
other file sharing packages that may be out there. Here's a basic layout with the following assumptions:
1. The test stations should be identical, including the USB drives.
2. You want to save records of the test results.
3. This might be a military contract, in my day, they wanted printouts of everything.
The test station:
1. Mount the remote directory, lets call it ATE, to /mnt/ATE
2. Add /mnt/ATE/bin to the END of your path so your test programs/scripts can be found.
3. Add a link to /mnt/ATE/results to /home/tc/testresults
4. Add a link to /mnt/ATE/printqueue to /home/tc/printqueue
The test program would query the operator for the test station number and the serial number of the UUT before the
test begins. At the end of the test, the program sends the results file to testresults. If a hardcopy is required, it also
sends a copy to printqueue. If you use a file naming format something like:
TS#.YYMMDDHHMM.SERIALNUMBER.results
it makes it easy to retrieve test results at a later date based on test station number, timestamp, and/or serial number.
This may be important if you find out during production one of the test stations behaved incorrectly and you need to
find out the serial numbers of the effected units.
The server:
1. Shares the ATE directory containing subdirectories bin, testresults, and printqueue
2. Runs a script, let's say once a minute, that prints out whatever it finds in ATE/printqueue