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.Dd July 29, 2015
.Dt TESTS 7
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm tests
.Nd introduction to the NetBSD test suite
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nx
test suite provides a collection of automated tests for two major purposes.
On the one hand, the test suite aids
.Em developers
in catching bugs and regressions in the code when they are performing
modifications to the source tree.
On the other hand, the test suite allows
.Em end users
(and, in particular, system administrators) to verify that fresh installations
of the
.Nx
operating system behave correctly in their hardware platform and also to ensure
that the system does not suffer from regressions during regular system
operation and maintenance.
.Pp
The
.Nx
tests are implemented using the
.Em Automated Testing Framework (ATF) ,
a third-party package shipped with
.Nx ;
see
.Xr atf 7
for details.
The
.Nx
test suite is distributed as a separate installation set, named
.Pa tests.tgz ,
and the test programs are all installed under the
.Pa /usr/tests
hierarchy.
.Pp
This manual page describes how to execute the test suite and how to configure
some of its optional features.
.Ss When to run the tests?
Before diving into the details of how to run the test suite, here are some
scenarios in which you should be running them:
.Bl -bullet -offset indent
.It
After a fresh installation of
.Nx
to ensure that the system works correctly on your hardware platform.
.It
After an upgrade of
.Nx
to a different version to ensure that the new code works well on your
hardware platform and that the upgrade did not introduce regressions in your
configuration.
.It
After performing changes to the source tree to catch any bugs and/or regressions
introduced by the modifications.
.It
Periodically, maybe from a
.Xr cron 8
job, to ensure that any changes to the system (such as the installation of
third-party packages or manual modifications to configuration files) do not
introduce unexpected failures.
.El
.Ss Installing the tests
If you chose to install the
.Pa tests.tgz
distribution set while setting up your
.Nx
system, the tests are already available in
.Pa /usr/tests .
Otherwise, install the set now by running:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
# cd /
# tar xzpf /path/to/tests.tgz
.Ed
.Ss Running the tests
Use the following commands to run the whole test suite:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ cd /usr/tests
$ atf-run | atf-report
.Ed
.Pp
The above will go through all test programs in
.Pa /usr/tests
recursively, execute them, and, at the very end, show a report of
the results of the test suite.
These results include the count of tests that succeeded (passed), the names of
the tests that failed, and the count of the tests that were not executed
(skipped) because the system configuration did not meet their requirements.
.Pp
If you are interested in saving the whole output of the test suite execution so
that you can later investigate failures, use the following idiom instead:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$ cd /usr/tests
$ atf-run | tee ~/tests.log | atf-report
.Ed
.Pp
The above command will save the raw output of the test suite in
.Pa ~/tests.log ,
which you can later inspect manually to look for failures.
Note that the file contains a copy of the
.Sq stdout
and
.Sq stderr
of each test case, which becomes valuable during debugging.
.Pp
It is also possible to restrict which tests to execute so that only a small
subsystem is tested; see
.Xr atf-run 1
for details.
Additionally, it is also possible to run the test programs themselves by hand;
see
.Xr atf-test-program 1
for more details, but be aware that you should only be doing this if you are
debugging failing tests.
.Ss Test environment considerations
Tests can be invoked as an unprivileged user, in which case tests that
require privileges will be skipped.
If run as root, an unprivileged user will be used for tests that
do not require privileges.
For maximal coverage, the standard approach is to invoke tests as root.
.Pp
Ideally, tests are self-contained and do not either depend on or
perturb the host environment, aside from skipping tests when optional
facilities are not available.
In reality, tests load and unload modules, and do other things that
might cause problems.
While it is not entirely safe to run tests on a multi-user system,
permanent problems or crashes from doing so are viewed as bugs and
should be reported.
.Ss Configuring the tests
Some test cases in the
.Nx
test suite require the administrator to manually set up some configuration
properties before they can run.
Unless these properties are defined, the tests that require them will be marked
as skipped and thus they will not be really executed.
.Pp
Each test suite is configured through a separate file that lives under
.Pa /etc/atf/
and that carries the name of the test suite.
Henceforth, to configure the properties that affect the execution of the
.Nx
test suite, you need to edit
.Pa /etc/atf/NetBSD.conf .
The suite-specific configuration file implicitly depends on
.Pa /etc/atf/common.conf ,
which contains properties shared among all test suites.
These files conform to the configuration file format described in
.Xr atf-formats 5 .
.Pp
The following configuration variables are available in the
.Nx
test suite:
.Bl -tag -width "unprivileged-user"
.It fstype
When set to a filesystem type, restrict tests programs from the
.Pa /usr/tests/fs/vfs/
tree to only run test cases for the given type.
.It unprivileged-user
This variable allows setting an unprivileged user login name to be used by
tests.
Defaults to
.Sq _tests .
.El
.Ss What to do if something fails?
If there is
.Em any failure
during the execution of the test suite, please considering reporting it to the
.Nx
developers so that the failure can be analyzed and fixed.
To do so, either send a message to the appropriate mailing list or file a
problem report.
For more details please refer to:
.Bl -bullet -offset indent -compact
.It
.Lk http://www.netbsd.org/mailinglists/ "NetBSD mailing lists"
.It
.Lk http://www.netbsd.org/support/send-pr.html "NetBSD Problem Reports"
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -compact -width etcXatfXNetBSDXconfXX
.It Pa /etc/atf/NetBSD.conf
Configuration file for the
.Nx
test suite.
.It Pa /etc/atf/common.conf
Configuration file for all test suites.
.It Pa /usr/tests/
Location of the test suites.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr atf 7
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
manual page first appeared in
.Nx 6.0 .
.Pp
The ATF testing framework was first distributed with
.Nx 5.0
and the collection of test programs in
.Pa /usr/tests
has been growing since then.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Julio Merino Aq Mt jmmv@NetBSD.org