TESTS(7)					       BSD Miscellaneous Information Manual						  TESTS(7)

NAME

     tests -- introduction to the NetBSD test suite

DESCRIPTION

     The NetBSD test suite provides a collection of automated tests for two major purposes.  On the one hand, the test suite aids developers in
     catching bugs and regressions in the code when they performing modifications to the source tree.  On the other hand, the test suite allows
     end users (and, in particular, system administrators) to verify that fresh installations of the NetBSD 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.

     The NetBSD tests are implemented using the Automated Testing Framework (ATF), a third-party package shipped with NetBSD; see atf(7) for
     details.  The NetBSD test suite is distributed as a separate installation set, named tests.tgz, and the test programs are all installed under
     the /usr/tests hierarchy.

     This manual page describes how to execute the test suite and how to configure some of its optional features.

   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:

	   o   After a fresh installation of NetBSD to ensure that the system works correctly on your hardware platform.

	   o   After an upgrade of NetBSD 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.

	   o   After performing changes to the source tree to catch any bugs and/or regressions introduced by the modifications.

	   o   Periodically, maybe from a 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.

   Installing the tests
     If you chose to install the tests.tgz distribution set while setting up your NetBSD system, the tests are already available in /usr/tests.
     Otherwise, install the set now by running:

	   # cd /
	   # tar xzpf /path/to/tests.tgz

   Running the tests
     Use the following commands to run the whole test suite:

	   $ cd /usr/tests
	   $ atf-run | atf-report

     The above will go through all test programs in /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.

     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:

	   $ cd /usr/tests
	   $ atf-run | tee ~/tests.log | atf-report

     The above command will save the raw output of the test suite in ~/tests.log, which you can later inspect manually to look for failures.  Note
     that the file contains a copy of the 'stdout' and 'stderr' of each test case, which becomes valuable during debugging.

     It is also possible to restrict which tests to execute so that only a small subsystem is tested; see atf-run(1) for details.  Additionally,
     it is also possible to run the test programs themselves by hand; see atf-test-program(1) for more details, but be aware that you should only
     be doing this if you are debugging failing tests.

   Configuring the tests
     Some test cases in the NetBSD 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.

     Each test suite is configured through a separate file that lives under /etc/atf/ and that carries the name of the test suite.  Henceforth, to
     configure the properties that affect the execution of the NetBSD test suite, you need to edit /etc/atf/NetBSD.conf.  The suite-specific con-
     figuration file implicitly depends on /etc/atf/common.conf, which contains properties shared among all test suites.  These files conform to
     the configuration file format described in atf-formats(5).

     The following configuration variables are available in the NetBSD test suite:

     fstype		When set to a filesystem type, restrict tests programs from the /usr/tests/fs/vfs/ tree to only run test cases for the
			given type.

     unprivileged-user	This variable allows setting an unprivileged user login name to be used by tests.  Defaults to '_tests'.

   What to do if something fails?
     If there is any failure during the execution of the test suite, please considering reporting it to the NetBSD 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:
	   o   http://www.netbsd.org/mailinglists/
	   o   http://www.netbsd.org/support/send-pr.html

FILES

     /etc/atf/NetBSD.conf   Configuration file for the NetBSD test suite.
     /etc/atf/common.conf   Configuration file for all test suites.
     /usr/tests/	    Location of the test suites.

SEE ALSO

     atf(7)

HISTORY

     The tests manual page first appeared in NetBSD 6.0.

     The ATF testing framework was first distributed with NetBSD 5.0 and the collection of test programs in /usr/tests has been growing since
     then.

AUTHORS

     Julio Merino <jmmv@NetBSD.org>

BSD
								  August 5, 2011							       BSD