Ubuntu Manpage: plainbox-run

NAME

       plainbox-run - run a test job

SYNOPSIS

          plainbox run [-h] [--non-interactive] [-n] [--dont-suppress-output]
                       [-f FORMAT] [-p OPTIONS] [-o FILE] [-t TRANSPORT]
                       [--transport-where WHERE] [--transport-options OPTIONS]
                       [-T TEST-PLAN-ID] [-i PATTERN] [-x PATTERN] [-w WHITELIST]

DESCRIPTION

Run a test job

This command runs zero or more Plainbox jobs as a part of a single session and saves the test results.
Plainbox will follow the following high-level algorithm during the execution of this command.

1. Parse command line arguments and look if there's a session that can be resumed (see RESUMING below).
If so, offer the user a choice to resume that session. If the resume operation fails move to the next
qualifying session. Finally offer to create a new session.

2. If the session is being resumed, replay the effects of the session execution from the on-disk state.
This recreates generated jobs and re-introduces the same resources into the session state. In other
words, no jobs that have run in the past are re-ran.

If the resumed session was about to execute a job then offer to skip the job. This allows test
operators to skip jobs that have caused the system to crash in the past (e.g. system suspend tests)

If the session is not being resumed (a new session was created), set the incomplete flag.

3. Use the job selection (see SELECTING JOBS below) to derive the run list. This step involves resolving
job dependencies and reordering jobs if required.

4. Follow the run list, executing each job in sequence if possible. Jobs can be inhibited from execution
by failed dependencies or failed (evaluating to non-True result) resource expressions.

If at any time a new job is being re-introduced into the system (see GENERATED JOBS below) then the
loop is aborted and control jumps back to step 3 to re-select jobs. Existing results are not discarded
so jobs that already have some results are not executed again.

Before and after executing any job the session state is saved to disk to allow resuming from a job
that somehow crashes the system or crashes Plainbox itself.

5. Remove the incomplete flag.

6. Export the state of the session to the desired format (see EXPORTING RESULTS) and use the desired
transport to send the results (see TRANSPORTING RESULTS).

7. Set the submitted flag.

SELECTING JOBS
Plainbox offers two mechanisms for selecting jobs. Both can be used at the same time, both can be used
multiple times.

Selecting jobs with patterns
The first mechanism is exposed through the --include-pattern PATTERN command-line option. It instructs
Plainbox to select any job whose fully-qualified identifier matches the regular expression PATTERN.

Jobs selected this way will be, if possible, ordered according to the order of command line arguments.
For example, having the following command line would run the job foo before running the job bar:
plainbox run -i '.*::foo' -i '.*::bar'

Selecting jobs with whitelists
The second mechanism is the --whitelist WHITELIST command-line option. WhiteLists (or test plans, which
is somewhat easier to relate to). Whitelists are simple text files composed of a list of regular
expressions, identical to those that may be passed with the -i option.

Unlike the -i option though, there are two kinds of whitelists. Standalone whitelists are not associated
with any Plainbox Provider. Such whitelists can be distributed entirely separately from any other
component and thus have no association with any namespace.

Therefore, be fully qualified, each pattern must include both the namespace and the partial identifier
components. For example, this is a valid, fully quallified whitelist:

2013.com.canonical.plainbox::stub/.*

It will unambiguously select some of the jobs from the special, internal StubBox provider that is built
into Plainbox. It can be saved under any filename and stored in any directory and it will always select
the same set of jobs.

In contrast, whitelists that are associated with a particular provider, by being stored in the
per-provider whitelists/ directory, carry an implicit namespace. Such whitelists are typically written
without mentioning the namespace component.

For example, the same "stub/.*" pattern can be abbreviated to:

stub/.*

Typically this syntax is used in all whitelists specific to a particular provider unless the provider
maintainer explicitly wants to include a job from another namespace (for example, one of the well-known
Checkbox job definitions).

GENERATED JOBS
Plainbox offers a way to generate jobs at runtime. There are two motivations for this feature.

Instantiating Tests for Multiple Devices
The classic example is to probe the hardware (for example, to enumerate all storage devices) and then
duplicate each of the store specific tests so that all devices are tested separately.

At this time jobs can be generated only from jobs using the plugin type local. Jobs of this kind are
expected to print fully conforming job definitions on stdout. Generated jobs cause a few complexities and
one limitation that is currently enforced is that generated jobs cannot generate additional jobs if any
of the affected jobs need to run as another user.

Another limitation is that jobs cannot override existing definitions.

Creating Parent-Child Association
A relatively niche and legacy feature of generated jobs is to print a verbatim copy of existing job
definitions from a local job definition named afer a generic testing theme or category. For example the
Checkbox job definition __wireless__ prints, with the help of cat (1), all of the job definitions defined
in the file wireless.txt.

This behavior is special-cased not to cause redefinition errors. Instead, existing definitions gain the
via attribute that links them to the generator job. This feature is used by derivative application such
as Checkbox. Plainbox is not using it at this time.

RESUMING
Plainbox offers a session resume functionality whereas a session that was interrupted (either
purposefully or due to a malfunction) can be resumed and effectively continued where it was left off.

When resuming a session you may be given an option to either re-run, pass, fail or skip the test job that
was being executed before the session was interrupted. This is intended to handle both normal situations,
such as a "system reboot test" where it is perfectly fine to "pass" the test without re-running the
command. In addition it can be used to handle anomalous cases where the machine misbehaves and re-running
the same test would cause the problem to occur again indefinitely.

Limitations
This functionality does not allow to interrupt and resume a test job that is already being executed. Such
job will be restarted from scratch.

Plainbox tries to ensure that a single session is consistent and the assumptions that held at the start
of the session are maintained at the end. To that end, Plainbox will try to ensure that job definitions
have not changed between two separate invocations that worked with a single session. If such a situation
is detected the session will not be resumed.

EXPORTING RESULTS
Plainbox offers a way to export the internal state of the session into a more useful format for further
processing.

Selecting Exporters
The exporter can be selected using the --output-format FORMAT command-line option. A list of available
exporters (which may include 3rd party exporters) can be obtained by passing the --output-format ?
option.

Some formats are more useful than others in that they are capable of transferring more of the internal
state. Depending on your application you may wish to choose the most generic format (json) and process it
further with additional tools, choose the most basic format (text) just to get a simple summary of the
results or lastly choose one of the two specialized formats (xml and html) that are specific to the
Checkbox workflow.

Out of the box the following exporters are supported:

html
This exporter creates a static HTML page with human-readable test report. It is useful for communicating
with other humans and since it is entirely standalone and off-line it can be sent by email or archived.

json
This exporter creates a JSON document with the internal representation of the session state. It is the
most versatile exporter and it is useful and easy for further processing. It is not particularly
human-readable but can be quite useful for high-level debugging without having to use pdb and know the
internals of Plainbox.

rfc822
This exporter creates quasi-RFC822 documents. It is rather limited and not used much. Still, it can be
useful in some circumstances.

text
This is the default exporter. It simply prints a human-readable representation of test results without
much detail. It discards nearly all of the internal state though.

xlsx
This exporter creates a standalone .xlsx (XML format for Microsoft Excel) file that contains a
human-readable test report. It is quit similar to the HTML report but it is easier to edit. It is useful
for communicating with other humans and since it is entirely standalone and off-line it can be sent by
email or archived.

It depends on python3-xlsxwriter package

hexr
This exporter creates a rather confusingly named XML document only applicable for internal Canonical
Hardware Certification Team workflow.

It is not a generic XML representation of test results and instead it carries quite a few legacy
constructs that are only retained for compatibility with other internal tools. If you want generic
processing look for JSON instead.

Selecting Exporter Options
Certain exporters offer a set of options that can further customize the exported data. A full list of
options available for each exporter can be obtained by passing the --output-options ? command-line
option.

Options may be specified as a comma-separated list. Some options act as simple flags, other options can
take an argument with the option=value syntax.

Known exporter options are documented below:

json
with-io-log:
Exported data will include the input/output log associated with each job result. The data is
included in its native three-tuple form unless one of the squash-io-log or flatten-io-log options
are used as well.

IO logs are representations of the data produced by the process created from the shell command
associated with some jobs.

squash-io-log:
When used together with with-io-log option it causes Plainbox to discard the stream name and
time-stamp and just include a list of base64-encoded binary strings. This option is more useful
for reconstructing simple "log files"

flatten-io-log:
When used together with with-io-log option it causes Plainbox to concatenate all of the separate
base64-encoded records into one large base64-encoded binary string representing the whole
communication that took place.

with-run-list:
Exported data will include the run list (sequence of jobs computed from the desired job list).

with-job-list:
Exported data will include the full list of jobs known to the system

with-resource-map:
Exported data will include the full resource map. Resources are records of key-value sets that are
associated with each job result for jobs that have plugin type resource. They are expected to be
printed to stdout by such resource jobs and are parsed and stored by Plainbox.

with-job-defs:
Exported data will include some of the properties of each job definition. Currently this set
includes the following fields: plugin, requires, depends, command and description.

with-attachments:
Exported data will include attachments. Attachments are created from stdout stream of each job
having plugin type attachment. The actual attachments are base64-encoded.

with-comments:
Exported data will include comments added by the test operator to each job result that has them.

with-job-via:
Exported data will include the via attribute alongside each job result. The via attribute contains
the checksum of the job definition that generated a particular job definition. This is useful for
tracking jobs generated by jobs with the plugin type local.

with-job-hash:
Exported data will include the hash attribute alongside each job result. The hash attribute is the
checksum of the job definition's data. It can be useful alongside with with-job-via.

machine-json:
The generated JSON document will be minimal (devoid of any optional whitespace). This option is
best to be used if the result is not intended to be read by humans as it saves some space.

rfc822
All of the options have the same meaning as for the json exporter: with-io-log, squash-io-log,
flatten-io-log, with-run-list, with-job-list, with-resource-map, with-job-defs, with-attachments,
with-comments, with-job-via, with-job-hash. The only exception is the machine-json option which doesn't
exist for this exporter.

text
Same as with rfc822.

xlsx
with-sys-info:
Exported spreadsheet will include a worksheet detailing the hardware devices based on lspci,
lsusb, udev, etc.

with-summary:
Exported spreadsheet will include test figures. This includes the percentage of tests that have
passed, have failed, have been skipped and the total count.

with-job-description:
Exported spreadsheet will include job descriptions on a separate sheet

with-text-attachments:
Exported spreadsheet will include text attachments on a separate sheet

xml
client-name:
This option allows clients to override the name of the application generating the XML document. By
default that name is plainbox. To use this option pass --output-options client-name=other-name
command-line option.

TRANSPORTING RESULTS
Exported results can be either saved to a file (this is the most basic, default transport) or can be
handed to one of the transport systems for further processing. The idea is that specialized users can
provide their own transport systems (often coupled with a specific exporter) to move the test results
from the system-under-test to a central testing result repository.

Transport can be selected with the --transport option. Again, as with exporters, a list of known
transports can be obtained by passing the --transport ? option. Transports need a destination URL which
can be specified with the --transport-where= option. The syntax of the URL varies by transport type.

Plainbox comes equipped with the following transports:

launchpad
This transport can send the results exported using xml exporter to the Launchpad Hardware Database. This
is a little-known feature offered by the https://launchpad.net/ website.

certification
This transport can send the results exported using the xml exporter to the Canonical Certification
Website (https://certification.canonical.com).

This transport is of little use to anyone but the Canonical Hardware Certification Team that also
maintains Plainbox and Checkbox but it is mentioned here for completeness.

OPTIONS

       Optional arguments:

       --non-interactive
              skip tests that require interactivity

       -n, --dry-run
              don't really run most jobs

       --dont-suppress-output
              don't suppress the output of certain job plugin types

       -f, --output-format
              save test results in the specified FORMAT (pass ? for a list of choices)

       -p, --output-options
              comma-separated list of options for the export mechanism (pass ? for a list of choices)

       -o, --output-file
              save test results to the specified FILE (or to stdout if FILE is -)

       -t, --transport
              use TRANSPORT to send results somewhere (pass ? for a list of choices)

              Possible choices: ?

       --transport-where
              where to send data using the selected transport

       --transport-options
              comma-separated list of key-value options (k=v) to be passed to the transport

       -T, --test-plan
              load the specified test plan

       -i, --include-pattern
              include jobs matching the given regular expression

       -x, --exclude-pattern
              exclude jobs matching the given regular expression

       -w, --whitelist
              load whitelist containing run patterns

AUTHOR

       Zygmunt Krynicki & Checkbox Contributors

COPYRIGHT