User space networking test suite

Overview

The network application testing project consinst of an easy to use test framework for IPv4 and IPv6 features in applications and libraries. It is based on network namespaces and the ptrace() syscall. Each piece of software is tested in different network configurations and evaluated for features and bugs.

Installation

Dependencies:

• Python 2.7/3.4
• python-ptrace 0.9 with patches
• netresolve-compat from git master
• iproute2 with netns support
• python-json
• python-jinja2 (for HTML reports)

You can use the project directly from git. Just clone the repository and run the tests and generate html reports.

git clone https://github.com/pavlix/network-testing.git
cd network-testing
sudo ./test-client-server
./test-client-server-genhtml

Python distutils are supported so that you can easily package the project for any distribution.

Fedora and EPEL

There is a Fedora COPR repository for Fedora and EPEL distributions. Just enable the COPR repository and install the test suite.

dnf copr enable pavlix/network-testing
dnf install network-testing

Then install packages required for your desired test and run the test. You can ask the test driver for the names of the packages required for your desired test and generate html.

dnf install `test-client-server --deps ssh`
test-client-server ssh
test-client-server-genhtml

Alternatively, you may want to install available packages for all tests. In case your version of Fedora doesn't provide some of the packages, those tests would fail. Then you can run all tests and generate html.

for pkg in `test-client-server --deps`; do dnf -y install $pkg; done
test-client-server
test-client-server-genhtml

Client and server software tests

Test driver for testing client-server applications is located in network_testing/client_server.py and the individual tests are defined in subdirectories of testcases/client-server directory. Each subdirectory defines one test case consisting of a client script and a server script.

The test driver is written in Python in order to be reasonably simple but at the same time have access to all low-level operating system APIs. It uses the ptrace() system call via python-ptrace library to trace the client and server processes. Any subprocesses are traced as well. The scripts are run in network namespaces configured for several network configuration scenarios..

Running tests in Git working directory

Run individual test (for netresolve):

sudo ./test-client-server netresolve

Run all tests:

sudo ./test-client-server

Writing tests

The preferred form of test cases is a pair of short shell scripts that use exec to run the client or server scripts in the same process. But any form of test is supported including scripts in Python and other languages. For inspiration look at netresolve, ssh, python and python3-asyncio testcases.

The test should maintain the following properties:

• The server must run on foreground, accept connections and wait until being killed by the framework.
• The client must run on foreground, perform a query on the server and exit.
• No modification of system files. If you perform actions that change files e.g. in /etc or /var, use private copies under /run/network-testing instead.