Checkbox

Checkbox is a flexible test automation software. It’s the main tool used in Ubuntu Certification program.

You can use checkbox without any modification to check if your system is behaving correctly or you can develop your own set of tests to check your needs. See Checkbox tutorials for details.

Installation

Checkbox can be installed from a PPA (recommended) or pypi on Ubuntu Precise (12.04) or newer.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hardware-certification/public && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install checkbox-ng

Table of contents

Using Checkbox

Contents

• Using Checkbox
  • Getting Started
  • Checkbox Command Line
    • checkbox-cli startprovider
    • checkbox-cli list
      • Output Formatting
    • checkbox-cli list-bootstrapped
    • checkbox-cli tp-export
    • checkbox-cli launcher
    • checkbox-cli run
  • Looking Deeper
    • Providers

Getting Started

You’ve got Checkbox installed, right? Installation

To run command line version of Checkbox, in your terminal run checkbox-cli. You should be greeted with test plan selection screen:

With a test plan selected, you can choose the individual tests to run:

When the tests are run, the results are saved to files and the program prompts to submit them to Launchpad.

Checkbox Command Line

When checkbox is run without any arguments, i.e.:

$ checkbox-cli

Interactive session is started with the default options.

checkbox-cli startprovider

startprovider subcommand creates a new provider, e.g.:

$ checkbox-cli startprovider com.acme:example

The command will also add example units to that provider, to create an empty provider, use --empty option, e.g.:

$ checkbox-cli startprovider --empty com.acme:another-example

checkbox-cli list

list command prints out all units of the following type.

Currently there are following types you can list:

• job
• test plan
• category
• file
• template
• file
• manifest entry
• packaging meta-data
• exporter
• all-jobs (this special type list both, jobs and templates generating jobs and has a different output formatting)

Example:

$ checkbox-cli list job

$ checkbox-cli list "test plan"

$ checkbox-cli list all-jobs

Note

For multi-word types like ‘test plan’ remember to escape the spaces in between, or enquote the type name.

Output Formatting

For the ‘all-jobs’ group, the output may be formatted to suit your needs. Use --format option when listing all-jobs. The string will be interpolated using properties of the listed jobs. Invoke checkbox-cli list all-jobs --format ? to see available properties. If the job definition doesn’t have the specified property, <missing $property_name> will be printed in its place instead. Additional property - unit_type is provided to the formatter when listing all jobs. It is set to ‘job’ for normal jobs and ‘template job’ for jobs generated with a template unit.

Example:

$ checkbox-cli list all-jobs -f "{id}\n\t{tr_summary}\n"

$ checkbox-cli list all-jobs -f "{id}\n"

$ checkbox-cli list all-jobs -f "{unit_type:12} | {id:50} | {summary}\n"

Note

\n and \t in the formatting string are interpreted and replaced with new line and tab respectively.

When using own formatting, the jobs are not suffixed with a new line - you have to explicitly use it.

checkbox-cli list-bootstrapped

This special command list all the jobs that would be run on the device after the boostrapping phase, i.e. after all the resource jobs are run, and all of the templates were instantiated.

It requires an argument being the test plan for which the bootstrapping should execute.

Example:

$ checkbox-cli list-bootstrapped com.canonical.certification::default

Similarly to the checkbox-cli list all-jobs command, the output of checkbox-cli list-bootstrapped can be formatted using the -f parameter. See checkbox-cli list Output Formatting section for more information.

checkbox-cli tp-export

tp-export exports a test plan as a spreadsheet document. Tests are grouped by categories and ordered alphabetically with the full description (or the job summary if there’s no description). I addition to the description, the certification status (blocker/non-blocker) is exported.

The session is similar to list-bootstrapped but all resource jobs are returning fake objects and template-filters are disabled to ensure instantiation of template units. By default only one resource object is returned. The only exception is the graphics_card resource where two objects are used to simulate hybrid graphics.

The command prints the full path to the document on exit/success.

Example:

$ checkbox-cli tp-export com.canonical.certification::client-cert-18-04

It can be used to automatically generate a test case guide using a pdf converter:

Example:

$ checkbox-cli tp-export com.canonical.certification::client-cert-18-04 | xargs -d '\n' libreoffice --headless --invisible --convert-to pdf

checkbox-cli launcher

launcher command lets you customize checkbox experience.

See Checkbox launchers tutorial for more details.

Note

launcher is implied when invoking checkbox-cli with a file as the only argument. e.g.:

$ checkbox-cli my-launcher

is equivalent to:

$ checkbox-cli launcher my-launcher

checkbox-cli run

run lets you run particular test plan or a set of jobs.

To just run one test plan, use the test plan’s id as an argument, e.g.:

$ checkbox-cli run com.canonical.certification::smoke

To run a hand-picked set of jobs, use regex pattern(s) as arguments. Jobs with id matching the expression will be run, e.g.:

$ checkbox-cli run com.acme:.*

Note

The command above runs all jobs which id begins with com.acme: will be run

You can use multiple patterns to match against, e.g.:

$ checkbox-cli run .*true .*false

Note

The command above runs all jobs which id ends with ‘true’ or ‘false’

Looking Deeper

Providers

First, we installed some “provider” packages. Providers were designed to encapsulate test descriptions and their related tools and data. Providers are shipped in Debian packages, which allows us to express dependencies to ensure required external packages are installed, and we can also separate those dependencies; for instance, the provider used for server testing doesn’t actually contain the server-specific test definitions (we try to keep all the test definitions in the Checkbox provider), but it does depend on all the packages needed for server testing. Most users will want the resource and Checkbox providers which contain many premade tests, but this organization allows shipping the tiny core and a fully customized provider without extraneous dependencies.

A provider is described in a configuration file (stored in /usr/share/plainbox-providers-1). This file describes where to find all the files from the provider. This file is usually managed automatically (more on this later). A provider can ship jobs, binaries, data and test plans.

A job or test is the smallest unit or description that Checkbox knows about. It describes a single test (historically they’re called jobs). The simplest possible job is:

id: a-job
plugin: manual
_description: Ensure your computer is turned on. Is the computer turned on?

Jobs are shipped in a provider’s jobs directory. This ultra-simple example has three fields: id, plugin, and description. (A real job should include a _summary field, too.) The id identifies the job (of course) and the _description provides a plain-text description of the job. In the case of this example, the description is shown to the user, who must respond because the plugin type is manual. plugin types include (but are not limited to):

• manual – A test that requires the user to perform some action and report the results.
• shell – An automated test that requires no user interaction; the test is passed or failed on the basis of the return value of the script or command.
• resource – Job that identifies the resources that the system has. (e.g. discrete GPU, Wi-Fi module). This information can later be used by other jobs to control other jobs’ execution. (E.g. skip Wi-Fi tests if there’s no Wi-Fi chip).
• user-interact – A test that asks the user to perform some action before the test is performed. The test then passes or fails automatically based on the output of the test. An example is keys/media-control, which runs a tool to detect keypresses, asks the user to press volume keys, and then exits automatically once the last key has been pressed or the user clicks the skip button in the tool.
• user-interact-verify – This type of test is similar to the user-interact test, except that the test’s output is displayed for the user, who must then decide whether it has passed or failed. An example of this would be the usb/disk_detect test, which asks the user to insert a USB key, click the test button, and then verify manually that the USB key was detected correctly.
• user-verify – A test that the user manually performs or runs automatically and requires the user to verify the result as passed or failed. An example of this is the graphics maximum resolution test which probes the system to determine the maximum supported resolution and then asks the user to confirm that the resolution is correct.

Understanding Checkbox

Contents

• Understanding Checkbox
  • Test Command
  • Job Unit
  • Test Plan
  • Provider
  • Launcher

Checkbox by itself doesn’t test anything. It uses unit definitions grouped in providers to actually run or do something.

To better understand how Checkbox works let’s concentrate on the relationship between the following entities:

• test command (program that is invoked as a test)
• job unit
• test plan
• provider
• launcher

Test Command

Automated and some interactive tests use external commands to help determine the outcome of the test. For instance the command:

ping 8.8.8.8 -c 1

Will check whether the device can ping a public DNS. The command returns 0 on success (ping came back), and 1 if the ping timed out.

Let’s turn this simple command into a Checkbox test.

Job Unit

The command from the above paragraph can now be used in a Job Unit:

id: ping-public-dns
_summary: Ping public DNS
plugin: shell
command: ping 8.8.8.8 -c 1

Notice how the command field is a straight copy-paste of the Test Command

RELATIONSHIP: Test Command is a part of a Job Unit

Note

Some test are fully manual and don’t run any commands.

See Checkbox Unit Types for more info on job units

Test Plan

When Checkbox is run from commandline without any parameters, i.e.:

$ checkbox-cli

It doesn’t present all the tests available in the system. Checkbox asks the user which Test Plan to use.

Note

For how to directly run hand-picked jobs see: checkbox-cli run.

Test Plans are units for grouping related jobs together. They also provide a mechanism for creating new jobs in runtime. The phase in which this is done is known as bootstrapping. Good example for when the bootstrapping is needed is testing multi-GPU system. No one knows upfront which GPU(s) will be present in the system so bootstrapping phase will instantiate appropriate job units from template units.

RELATIONSHIP: Test Plan includes a job that can be run.

RELATIONSHIP: Test Plan can “generate” a job (through bootstrapping) that can be run.

You can read more about templates here: Template Unit, and about test plans here: Test Plan Unit.

Provider

In order for Checkbox to see any jobs, test plans, and other units, those units need to be written to a .pxu file located in a unit subdirectory of a provider available in the system.

RELATIONSHIP: Units are placed in a Provider

See Checkbox tutorials for a tutorial on how to create a provider from scratch.

Launcher

Launchers can be used to make it easier to run Checkbox in a preset way.

Those can for instance preset:

• which test plan to use
• whether the session should be interactive or automated
• which tests to exclude
• how and where to submit the results

There is a full launcher tutorial here: Checkbox launchers tutorial.

Checkbox tutorials

Creating an empty provider

Plainbox Providers are bundles containing information how to run tests.

To create an empty provider run:

$ plainbox startprovider --empty com.example:myprovider

plainbox is the internal tool of checkbox. It’s used on rare occasions, like creating a new provider. --empty informs plainbox that you want to start from scratch. com.example:myprovider is the name of the provider. Providers use IQN naming, it helps in tracking down ownership of the provider.

Plainbox Jobs are the things that describe how tests are run. Those Jobs are defined in .pxu files, in ‘units’ directory of the provider.

The provider we’ve just created doesn’t have that directory, let’s create it:

$ cd com.example\:myprovider
$ mkdir units

Adding a simple job to a provider

Jobs loosely follow RFC822 syntax. I.e. most content follow key:value pattern.

Let’s add a simple job that runs a command.

Open any .pxu file in units directory of the provider (if there isn’t any, just create one, like units.pxu). And add following content:

id: my-first-job
flags: simple
command: mycommand

id is used for identification purposes flags enables extra features. In the case of simple, it lets us not specify all the typical fields - Checkbox will infer some values for us. command specifies which command to run. Here it’s mycommand

In order for jobs to be visible in Checkbox they have to be included in some test plan. Let’s add a test plan definition to the same .pxu file.:

unit: test plan
id: first-tp
name: My first test plan
include: my-first-job

Warning

Separated entities in the .pxu file has to be separated by at least one empty line.

Running jobs from a newly created provider

In order for Checkbox to see the provider we have to install it. To do so run:

$ sudo ./manage.py install

Now we’re ready to launch Checkbox! Start the command line version with:

$ checkbox-cli

Follow the instructions on the screen. The test will (probably) fail, because of mycommand missing in your system. Let’s change the job definition to do something meaningful instead. Open units.pxu, and change the line:

command: mycommand

to

command: [ `df -B 1G --output=avail $HOME |tail -n1` -gt 10 ]

Note

This command checks if there’s at least 10GB of free space in $HOME

This change won’t be available just yet, as we still have an old version of the provider installed in the system. Let’s remove the previous version, and install the new one.:

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/plainbox-providers-1/com.example\:myprovider/
$ sudo ./manage.py install

This sudo operations (hopefully) look dangerous to you. See next part to see how to avoid that.

Developing provider without constantly reinstalling it

Instead of reinstalling the provider every time you change anything in it, you can make Checkbox read it directly from the place you’re changing it in.:

$ ./manage.py develop

Because now Checkbox may see two instances of the same provider, make sure you remove the previous one.

Note

./manage.py develop doesn’t require sudo, as it makes all the references in user’s home.

Improving job definition

When you run Checkbox you see the job displayed as ‘my-first-job’ which is the id of the job, which is not very human-friendly. This is because of the simple flag. Let’s improve our Job definition. Open units.pxu and replace the job definition with:

id: my-first-job
_summary: 10GB available in $HOME
_description:
    this test checks if there's at least 10gb of free space in user's home
    directory
plugin: shell
estimated_duration: 0.01
command: [ `df -B 1G --output=avail $HOME |tail -n1` -gt 10 ]

New stuff:

_summary: 10GB available in $HOME

Summary is shown in Checkbox screens where jobs are selected. It’s a human-friendly identification of the job. It should should be short (50 - 70 chars), as it’s printed in one line. _ means at the beginning means the field is translatable.

_purpose:
    this test checks if there's at least 10gb of free space in user's home
    directory

Purpose as the name suggest should describe the purpose of the test.

plugin: shell

Plugin tells Checkbox what kind of job is it. shell means it’s a automated test that runs a command and uses it’s return code to determine jobs outcome.

estimated_duration: 0.01

Tells Checkbox how long the test is expected to run. This field is currently informative only.

Checkbox Remote

It is possible to run Checkbox tests on a device that you don’t or cannot have traditional control over (mouse/keyboard).

By using Checkbox Remote facilities you can use Checkbox on one device to control Checkbox running on a different device.

This is especially useful on headless devices.

Comparison with SSH

It’s easy to lose SSH connection with the SUT, and if the device doesn’t offer screen-like funcitonality then the Checkbox session has to be started over.

When a UI is drawn a lot of data is transmitted through the network. Checkbox Remote sends lean data only.

Nomenclature

Checkbox Slave - the Checkbox instance that runs on the System or Device under test and _executes_ the tests.

Checkbox Master - Checkbox instance that controls the execution of tests on the Slave, such as a laptop.

Invocation:

Slave:

checkbox-cli slave

Master:

checkbox-cli master HOST [/PATH/TO/LAUNCHER]

HOST can be an IP or a hostname that your device can resolve.

LAUNCHER (optional) a launcher file to use that exists somewhere on the machine you are using as the Master.

Example:

checkbox-cli master dut8.local /home/ubuntu/testplans/sutton-client

Session control

While Master is connected, sending SIGINT (hitting ctrl+c) to the application invokes the interrupt screen:

First action is “Cancel the interruption”, which returns to the session (Does nothing). You can also press ESC on the Interruption screen to select that action.

Second action is “Disconnect the master”. It leaves the session on the Slave running, but the Master exits. You can also hit ctrl+c again to select that action (terminate the master). You can reconnect to the Slave and resume testing like the interruption never happened.

Third action is “Stop the Checkbox slave”. It stops the session and terminates the Checkbox process on the Slave. It also stops the master.

Fourth action is “Abandon the session”. It stops and _removes_ the session on the Slave and immediately starts another one. After the new session is started Master is greeted with test plan selection screen. This is a good moment to disconnect the master if you wish to run testing at a later time.

Remote session characteristics

Differences between remote session and a local one are:

• Unless session is explicitly abandoned, Checkbox Slave always resumes the last session.
• After testing is done, Slave starts another session
• Submission is done from the Master by default (use: local_submission = No in launcher or config to change that)
• When Master reconnects mid interactive test, the test is restarted.
• Hitting ctrl+c in Master doesn’t interrupt the running test.

Checkbox Unit Types

Checkbox execution is governed by Units.

All units follow Plainbox RFC822 Specification.

Job Unit

A job unit is a smallest unit of testing that can be performed by Checkbox. All jobs have an unique name. There are many types of jobs, some are fully automated others are fully manual. Some jobs are only an implementation detail and a part of the internal architecture of Checkbox.

File format and location

Jobs are expressed as sections in text files that conform somewhat to the rfc822 specification format. Our variant of the format is described in rfc822. Each record defines a single job.

Job Fields

Following fields may be used by the job unit:

id:

(mandatory) - A name for the job. Should be unique, an error will be generated if there are duplicates. Should contain characters in [a-z0-9/-]. This field used to be called name. That name is now deprecated. For backwards compatibility it is still recognized and used if id is missing.

summary:

(mandatory) - A human readable name for the job. This value is available for translation into other languages. It is used when listing jobs. It must be one line long, ideally it should be short (50-70 characters max).

plugin:

(mandatory) - For historical reasons it’s called “plugin” but it’s better thought of as describing the “type” of job. The allowed types are:

manual:jobs that require the user to perform an action and then decide on the test’s outcome. shell:jobs that run without user intervention and automatically set the test’s outcome. user-interact:jobs that require the user to perform an interaction, after which the outcome is automatically set. user-interact-verify:  jobs that require the user to perform an interaction, run a command after which the user is asked to decide on the test’s outcome. This is essentially a manual job with a command. attachment:jobs whose command output will be attached to the test report or submission. resource:A job whose command output results in a set of rfc822 records, containing key/value pairs, and that can be used in other jobs’ requires expressions.

requires:

(optional). If specified, the job will only run if the conditions expressed in this field are met.

Conditions are of the form <resource>.<key> <comparison-operator> 'value' (and|or) ... . Comparison operators can be ==, != and in. Values to compare to can be scalars or (in the case of the in operator) arrays or tuples. The not in operator is explicitly unsupported.

Requirements can be logically chained with or and and operators. They can also be placed in multiple lines, respecting the rfc822 multi-line syntax, in which case all requirements must be met for the job to run ( and ed).

depends:

(optional). If specified, the job will only run if all the listed jobs have run and passed. Multiple job names, separated by spaces, can be specified.

after:

(optional). If specified, the job will only run if all the listed jobs have run (regardless of the outcome). Multiple job names, separated by spaces, can be specified.

This feature is available since plainbox 0.24.

command:

(optional). A command can be provided, to be executed under specific circumstances. For manual, user-interact and user-verify jobs, the command will be executed when the user presses a “test” button present in the user interface. For shell jobs, the command will be executed unconditionally as soon as the job is started. In both cases the exit code from the command (0 for success, !0 for failure) will be used to set the test’s outcome. For manual, user-interact and user-verify jobs, the user can override the command’s outcome. The command will be run using the default system shell. If a specific shell is needed it should be instantiated in the command. A multi-line command or shell script can be used with the usual multi-line syntax.

Note that a shell job without a command will do nothing.

purpose:

(optional). Purpose field is used in tests requiring human interaction as an information about what a given test is supposed to do. User interfaces should display content of this field prior to test execution. This field may be omitted if the summary field is supplied. Note that this field is applicable only for human interaction jobs.

steps:

(optional). Steps field depicts actions that user should perform as a part of job execution. User interfaces should display the content of this field upon starting the test. Note that this field is applicable only for jobs requiring the user to perform some actions.

verification:

(optional). Verification field is used to inform the user how they can resolve a given job outcome. Note that this field is applicable only for jobs the result of which is determined by the user.

user:

(optional). If specified, the job will be run as the user specified here. This is most commonly used to run jobs as the superuser (root).

environ:

(optional). If specified, the listed environment variables (separated by spaces) will be taken from the invoking environment (i.e. the one Checkbox is run under) and set to that value on the job execution environment (i.e. the one the job will run under). Note that only the variable names should be listed, not the values, which will be taken from the existing environment. This only makes sense for jobs that also have the user attribute. This key provides a mechanism to account for security policies in sudo and pkexec, which provide a sanitized execution environment, with the downside that useful configuration specified in environment variables may be lost in the process.

estimated_duration:

(optional) This field contains metadata about how long the job is expected to run for, as a positive float value indicating the estimated job duration in seconds.

Since plainbox version 0.24 this field can be expressed in two formats. The old format, a floating point number of seconds is somewhat difficult to read for larger values. To avoid mistakes test designers can use the second format with separate sections for number of hours, minutes and seconds. The format, as regular expression, is (\d+h)?[: ]*(\d+m?)[: ]*(\d+s)?. The regular expression expresses an optional number of hours, followed by the h character, followed by any number of spaces or : characters, followed by an optional number of minutes, followed by the m character, again followed by any number of spaces or : characters, followed by the number of seconds, ultimately followed by the s character.

The values can no longer be fractional (you cannot say 2.5m you need to say 2m 30s). We feel that sub-second granularity does is too unpredictable to be useful so that will not be supported in the future.

flags:

(optional) This fields contains list of flags separated by spaces or commas that might induce plainbox to run the job in particular way. Currently, following flags are inspected by plainbox:

reset-locale:

This flag makes Checkbox reset locale before running the job.

win32:

This flag makes plainbox run jobs’ commands in windows-specific manner. Attach this flag to jobs that are run on Windows OS.

noreturn:

This flag makes plainbox suspend execution after job’s command is run. This prevents scenario where plainbox continued to operate (writing session data to disk and so on), while other process kills it (leaving plainbox session in unwanted/undefined state). Attach this flag to jobs that cause killing of plainbox process during their operation. E.g. run shutdown, reboot, etc. This flag also makes Checkbox to leave a __checkbox_respawn file in the $PLAINBOX_SESSION_SHARE directory which can be used by the test to automatically resume session. (For instance after a reboot).

explicit-fail:

Use this flag to make entering comment mandatory, when the user manually fails the job.

has-leftovers:

This flag makes plainbox silently ignore (and not log) any files left over by the execution of the command associated with a job. This flag is useful for jobs that don’t bother with maintenance of temporary directories and just want to rely on the one already created by plainbox.

simple:

This flag makes plainbox disable certain validation advice and have some sensible defaults for automated test cases. This simplification is meant to cut the boiler plate on jobs that are closer to unit tests than elaborate manual interactions.

In practice the following changes are in effect when this flag is set:

• the plugin field defaults to shell
• the description field is entirely optional
• the estimated_duration field is entirely optional
• the preserve-locale flag is entirely optional

A minimal job using the simple flag looks as follows:

id: foo
command: echo "Jobs are simple!"
flags: simple

preserve-cwd:

This flag makes plainbox run the job command in the current working directory without creating a temp folder (and running the command from this temp folder). Sometimes needed on snappy (See http://pad.lv/1618197)

fail-on-resource:

This flag makes plainbox fail the job if one of the resource requirements evaluates to False.

also-after-suspend: See siblings below.

also-after-suspend-manual: See siblings below.

Additional flags may be present in job definition; they are ignored.

cachable:

Saves the output of a resource job in the system, so the next time the session is started recorded output is used making the session bootstrap faster.

This flag has no effect on jobs other than resource.

siblings:

(optional) This field creates copies of the current job definition but using a dictionary of overridden fields. The intend is to reduce the amount of job definitions when only a few changes are required to make a job. For example we often run the same test after suspend. In that case only a new id, a new job dependency (e.g suspend/advanced) and an updated summary are required. Other possible uses of this feature are tests creation for a fixed/limited list of external ports (USB port 1, USB port 2). Useful when such enumerations cannot be computed from a resource job. This field is interpreted as a JSON blob, an array of dictionaries.

A minimal job using the siblings field looks as follows:

id: foo
_summary: foo foo foo
command: echo "Hello world"
flags: simple
_siblings: [
    { "id": "foo-after-suspend",
      "_summary": "foo foo foo after suspend",
      "depends": suspend/advanced}
]

Another example creating two more jobs in order to cover a total of 3 external USB ports:

id: usb_test_port1
_summary: usb stress test_(port 1)
command: usb_stress.py
flags: simple
_siblings: [
    { "id": "usb_test_port2",
      "_summary": "usb stress test_(port 2)"},
    { "id": "usb_test_port3",
      "_summary": "usb stress test_(port 3)"},
]

For convenience two flags can be set (also-after-suspend and also-after-suspend-manual) to create siblings with predefined settings to add “after suspend” jobs.

Given the base job:

id:foo
_summary: bar
flags: also-after-suspend also-after-suspend-manual
[...]

The also-after-suspend flag is a shortcut to create the following job:

id: after-suspend-foo
_summary: bar after suspend (S3)
depends: com.canonical.certification::suspend/suspend_advanced_auto

also-after-suspend-manual is a shortcut to create the following job:

id: after-suspend-manual-foo
_summary: bar after suspend (S3)
depends: com.canonical.certification::suspend/suspend_advanced

Warning

The curly braces used in this field have to be escaped when used in a template job (python format, Jinja2 templates do not have this issue). The syntax for templates is:

_siblings: [
    {{ "id": "bar-after-suspend_{interface}",
      "_summary": "bar after suspend",
      "depends": suspend/advanced}}
]

imports:

(optional) This field lists all the resource jobs that will have to be imported from other namespaces. This enables jobs to use resources from other namespaces. You can use the “as …” syntax to import jobs that have dashes, slashes or other characters that would make them invalid as identifiers and give them a correct identifier name. E.g.:

imports: from com.canonical.certification import cpuinfo
requires: 'armhf' in cpuinfo.platform

imports: from com.canonical.certification import cpu-01-info as cpu01
requires: 'avx2' in cpu01.other

The syntax of each imports line is:

IMPORT_STMT :: "from" <NAMESPACE> "import" <PARTIAL_ID>
               | "from" <NAMESPACE> "import" <PARTIAL_ID> AS <IDENTIFIER>

Test Plan Unit

The test plan unit is a facility that describes a sequence of job definitions that should be executed together.

Jobs definitions are _selected_ by either listing their identifier or a regular expression that matches their identifier. Selected jobs are executed in the sequence they appear in the list, unless they need to be reordered to satisfy dependencies which always take priority.

Test plans can contain additional meta-data which can be used in a graphical user interface. You can assign a translatable name and description to each test plan.

Test plans are also typical units so they can be defined with the familiar RFC822-like syntax that is also used for job definitions. They can also be multiple test plan definitions per file, just like with all the other units, including job definitions.

Test Plan Fields

The following fields can be used in a test plan. Note that not all fields need to be used or even should be used. Please remember that Checkbox needs to maintain backwards compatibility so some of the test plans it defines may have non-typical constructs required to ensure proper behavior. You don’t have to copy such constructs when working on a new test plan from scratch

id:

Each test plan needs to have a unique identifier. This is exactly the same as with other units that have an identifier (like job definitions and categories).

This field is not used for display purposes but you may need to refer to it on command line so keeping it descriptive is useful

name:

A human-readable name of the test plan. The name should be relatively short as it may be used to display a list of test plans to the test operator.

Remember that the user or the test operator may not always be familiar with the scope of testing that you are focusing on. Also consider that multiple test providers may be always installed at the same time. The translated version of the name (and icon, see below) is the only thing that needs to allow the test operator to pick the right test plan.

Please use short and concrete names like:

• “Storage Device Certification Tests”
• “Ubuntu Core Application’s Clock Acceptance Tests”
• “Default Ubuntu Hardware Certification Tests”.

The field has a soft limit of eighty characters. It cannot have multiple lines. This field should be marked as translatable by prepending the underscore character (_) in front. This field is mandatory.

description:

A human-readable description of this test plan. Here you can include as many or few details as you’d like. Some applications may offer a way of viewing this data. In general it is recommended to include a description of what is being tested so that users can make an informed decision but please in mind that the name field alone must be sufficient to discriminate between distinct test plans so you don’t have to duplicate that information in the description.

If your tests will require any special set-up (procuring external hardware, setting some devices or software in special test mode) it is recommended to include this information here.

The field has no size limit. It can contain newline characters. This field should be marked as translatable by prepending the underscore character (_) in front. This field is optional.

include:

A multi-line list of job identifiers or patterns matching such identifiers that should be included for execution.

This is the most important field in any test plan. It basically decides on which job definitions are selected by (included by) the test plan. Separate entries need to be placed on separate lines. White space does not separate entries as the id field may (sic!) actually include spaces.

You have two options for selecting tests:

• You can simply list the identifier (either partial or fully qualified) of the job you want to include in the test plan directly. This is very common and most test plans used by Checkbox actually look like that.
• You can use regular expressions to select many tests at the same time. This is the only way to select generated jobs (created by template units). Please remember that the dot character has a special meaning so unless you actually want to match any character escape the dot with the backslash character (\).

Regardless of if you use patterns or literal job identifiers you can use their fully qualified name (the one that includes the namespace they reside in) or an abbreviated form. The abbreviated form is applicable for job definitions that reside in the same namespace (but not necessarily the same provider) as the provider that is defining the test plan.

Plainbox will catch incorrect references to unknown jobs so you should be relatively safe. Have a look at the examples section below for examples on how you can refer to jobs from other providers (you simply use their fully qualified name for that)

mandatory_include:

A multi-line list of job identifiers or patterns matching such identifiers that should always be executed.

This optional field can be used to specify the jobs that should always run. This is particularly useful for specifying jobs that gather vital info about the tested system, as it renders impossible to generate a report with no information about system under test.

For example, session results meant to be sent to the Ubuntu certification website must include the special job: miscellanea/submission-resources

Example:

mandatory_include:

miscellanea/submission-resources

Note that mandatory jobs will always be run first (along with their dependent jobs)

bootstrap_include:

A multi-line list of job identifiers that should be run first, before the main body of testing begins. The job that should be included in the bootstrapping sections are the ones generating or helping to generate other jobs.

Example:

bootstrap_include:

graphics/generator_driver_version

Note that each entry in the bootstrap_include section must be a valid job identifier and cannot be a regular expression pattern. Also note that only resource jobs are allowed in this section.

exclude:

A multi-line list of job identifiers or patterns matching such identifiers that should be excluded from execution.

This optional field can be used to prevent some jobs from being selected for execution. It follows the similarly named -x command line option to the plainbox run command.

This field may be used when a general (broad) selection is somehow made by the include field and it must be trimmed down (for example, to prevent a specific dangerous job from running). It has the same syntax as the include.

When a job is both included and excluded, exclusion always takes priority.

category-overrides:

A multi-line list of category override statements.

This optional field can be used to alter the natural job definition category association. Currently Plainbox allows each job definition to associate itself with at most one category (see plainbox-category-units(7) and plainbox-job-units(7) for details). This is sub-optimal as some tests can be easily assigned equally well to two categories at the same time.

For that reason, it may be necessary, in a particular test plan, to override the natural category association with one that more correctly reflects the purpose of a specific job definition in the context of a specific test plan.

For example let’s consider a job definition that tests if a specific piece of hardware works correctly after a suspend-resume cycle. Let’s assume that the job definition has a natural association with the category describing such hardware devices. In one test plan, this test will be associated with the hardware-specific category (using the natural association). In a special suspend-resume test plan the same job definition can be associated with a special suspend-resume category.

The actual rules as to when to use category overrides and how to assign a natural category to a specific test is not documented here. We believe that each project should come up with a workflow and semantics that best match its users.

The syntax of this field is a list of statements defined on separate lines. Each override statement has the following form:

apply CATEGORY-IDENTIFIER to JOB-DEFINITION-PATTERN

Both ‘apply’ and ‘to’ are literal strings. CATEGORY-IDENTIFIER is the identifier of a category unit. The JOB-DEFINITION-PATTERN has the same syntax as the include field does. That is, it can be either a simple string or a regular expression that is being compared to identifiers of all the known job definitions. The pattern can be either partially or fully qualified. That is, it may or may not include the namespace component of the job definition identifier.

Overrides are applied in order and the last applied override is the effective override in a given test plan. For example, given the following two overrides:

apply cat-1 to .*
apply cat-2 to foo

The job definition with the partial identifier foo will be associated with the cat-2 category.

estimated_duration:

An approximate time to execute this test plan, in seconds.

Since plainbox version 0.24 this field can be expressed in two formats. The old format, a floating point number of seconds is somewhat difficult to read for larger values. To avoid mistakes test designers can use the second format with separate sections for number of hours, minutes and seconds. The format, as regular expression, is (\d+h)?[: ]*(\d+m?)[: ]*(\d+s)?. The regular expression expresses an optional number of hours, followed by the h character, followed by any number of spaces or : characters, followed by an optional number of minutes, followed by the m character, again followed by any number of spaces or : characters, followed by the number of seconds, ultimately followed by the s character.

The values can no longer be fractional (you cannot say 2.5m you need to say 2m 30s). We feel that sub-second granularity does is too unpredictable to be useful so that will not be supported in the future.

This field is optional. If it is missing it is automatically computed by the identical field that may be specified on particular job definitions.

Since sometimes it is easier to think in terms of test plans (they are typically executed more often than a specific job definition) this estimate may be more accurate as it doesn’t include the accumulated sum of mis-estimates from all of the job definitions selected by a particular test plan.

Examples

A simple test plan that selects several jobs:

id: foo-bar-and-froz
_name: Tests Foo, Bar and Froz
_description:
    This example test plan selects the following three jobs:
        - Foo
        - Bar
        - Froz
include:
    foo
    bar
    froz

A test plan that uses jobs from another provider’s namespace in addition to some of its own definitions:

id: extended-tests
_name: Extended Storage Tests (By Corp Inc.)
_description:
    This test plan runs an extended set of storage tests, customized
    by the Corp Inc. corporation. In addition to the standard Ubuntu
    set of storage tests, this test plan includes the following tests::

    - Multipath I/O Tests
    - Degraded Array Recovery Tests
include:
    com.canonical.certification:disk/.*
    multipath-io
    degrade-array-recovery

A test plan that generates jobs using bootstrap_include section:

unit: test plan
id: test-plan-with-bootstrapping
_name: Tests with a bootstrapping stage
_description:
    This test plan uses bootstrapping_include field to generate additional
    jobs depending on the output of the generator job.
include: .*
bootstrap_include:
    generator

unit: job
id: generator
plugin: resource
_description: Job that generates Foo and Bar resources
command:
 echo "my_resource: Foo"
 echo
 echo "my_resource: Bar"

unit: template
template-unit: job
template-resource: generator
plugin: shell
estimated_duration: 1
id: generated_job_{my_resource}
command: echo {my_resource}
_description: Job instantiated from template that echoes {my_resource}

A test plan that marks some jobs as mandatory:

unit: test plan
id: test-plan-with-mandatory-jobs
_name: Test plan with mandatory jobs
_description:
    This test plan runs some jobs regardless of user selection.
include:
    Foo
mandatory_include:
    Bar

unit: job
id: Foo
_name: Foo job
_description: Job that might be deselected by the user
plugin: shell
command: echo Foo job

unit: job
id: Bar
_name: Bar job (mandatory)
_description: Job that should *always* run
plugin: shell
command: echo Bar job

Category Unit

The category unit is a normalized implementation of a “test category” concept. Using category units one can define logical groups of tests that deal with some specific testing area (for example, suspend-resume or USB support).

Job definitions can be associated with at most one category. Categories can be used by particular applications to facilitate test selection.

Category Fields

There are two fields that are used by the category unit:

id:

This field defines the partial identifier of the category. It is similar to the id field on the job definition units.

This field is mandatory.

name:

This field defines a human readable name of the category. It may be used in application user interfaces for displaying a group of tests.

This field is translatable. This field is mandatory.

Rationale

The unit is a separate entity so that it can be shipped separately of job definitions and so that it can gain a localizable name that can still be referred to uniquely by any job definition.

In the future it is likely that the unit will be extended with additional fields, for example to define an icon.

Note

Association between job definitions and categories can be overridden by a particular test plan. Please refer to the test plan unit documentation for details.

Examples

Given the following definition of a category unit:

unit: category
id: audio
_name: Audio tests

And the following definition of a job unit:

id: audio/speaker-headphone-plug-detection
category_id: audio
plugin: manual
_description: Plug in your headphones and ensure the system detected them

The job definition will be a part of the audio category.

Resource Job Units

Resources

Resources are a mechanism that allows to constrain certain job to execute only on devices with appropriate hardware or software dependencies. This mechanism allows some types of jobs to publish resource objects to an abstract namespace and to a way to evaluate a resource program to determine if a job can be started.

Resources also serve as a ‘generator’ for template units. See Template Unit

Resource Jobs

Resource Jobs are jobs with a plugin set to resource:

plugin: resource

Command that they run should print resource information in a predefined manner. This command may be considered a Resource Program

Resource programs

Resource programs are multi-line statements that can be embedded in job definitions. By far, the most common use case is to check if a required package is installed, and thus, the job can use it as a part of a test. A check like this looks like this:

package.name == "fwts"

This resource program codifies that the job needs the fwts package to run. There is a companion job with the same name that interrogates the local package database and publishes a set of resource objects. Each such object is a collection of arbitrary key-value pairs. The package job simply publishes the name and version of each installed package but the mechanism is generic and applies to all resources.

As stated, resource programs can be multi-line, a real world example of that is presented below:

device.category == 'CDROM'
optical_drive.cd == 'writable'

This example is much like the one above, referring to some resources, here coming from jobs device and optical_drive. What is important to point out is that, as a rule of a thumb, multi line programs have an implicit and operator between each line. This program would only evaluate to True if there is a writable CD-ROM available.

Each resource program is composed of resource expressions. Each line maps directly onto one expression so the example program above uses two resource expressions.

Resource expressions

Resource expressions are evaluated like normal python programs. They use all of the same syntax, semantics and behavior. None of the operators are overridden to do anything unexpected. The evaluator tries to follow the principle of least surprise but this is not always possible.

Resource expressions cannot execute arbitrary python code. In general almost everything is disallowed, except as noted below:

• Expressions can use any literals (strings, numbers, True, False, lists and tuples)
• Expressions can use boolean operators (and, or, not)
• Expressions can use all comparison operators
• Expressions can use all binary and unary operators
• Expressions can use the set membership operator (in)
• Expressions can use read-only attribute access

Anything else is rejected as an invalid resource expression.

In addition to that, each resource expression must use at least one variable, which must be used like an object with attributes. The name of that variable must correspond to the name of the job that generates resources. You can use the imports field (at a job definition level) to rename a resource job to be compatible with the identifier syntax. It can also be used to refer to resources from another namespace.

In the examples elsewhere in this page the package resources are generated by the package job. Plainbox uses this to know which resources to try but also to implicitly to express dependencies so that the package job does not have to be explicitly selected and marked for execution prior to the job that in fact depends on it. This is all done automatically.

Example

The job definition below generates a RTC resource:

id: rtc
estimated_duration: 0.02
plugin: resource
command:
  if [ -e /sys/class/rtc ]
  then
      echo "state: supported"
  else
      echo "state: unsupported"
  fi
_description: Creates resource info for RTC

Next let’s define a Job that uses that resource.

plugin: shell
category_id: com.canonical.plainbox::power-management
id: power-management/rtc
requires:
  rtc.state == 'supported'
  package.name == 'util-linux'
  cpuinfo.other != 'emulated by qemu'
user: root
command: hwclock -r
estimated_duration: 0.02
_summary: Test that RTC functions properly (if present)
_description:
 Verify that the Real-time clock (RTC) device functions properly, if present.

Now the power-management/rtc job will only be run on systems where /sys/class/rtc directory exists (which is true for systems supporting RTC)

Evaluation

1. First Plainbox looks at the resource program and splits it into lines. Each non-empty line is parsed and converted to a resource expression.
2. unexpected Each resource expression is repeatedly evaluated, once for each resource from the group determined by the variable name. All exceptions are silently ignored and treated as if the iteration had evaluated to False. The whole resource expression evaluates to True if any of the iterations evaluated to True. In other words, there is an implicit any() around each resource expression, iterating over all resources.
3. unexpected The resource program evaluates to True only if all resource expressions evaluated to True. In other words, there is an implicit and between each line.

Limitations

The design of resource programs has the following shortcomings. The list is non-exhaustive, it only contains issues that we came across found not to work in practice.

Joins are not optimized

Starting with plainbox 0.24, a resource expression can use more than one resource object (resource job) at the same time. This allows the use of joins as the whole expression is evaluated over the cartesian product of all the resource records. This operation is not optimized, you can think of it as a JOIN that is performed on a database without any indices.

Let’s look at a practical example:

package.name == desired_package.name

Here, two resource jobs would run. The classic package resource (that produces, typically, a great number of resource records, one for each package installed on the system) and a hypothetical desired_package resource (for this example let’s pretend that it is a simple constant resource that just contains one object). Here, this operation is not any worse than before because size(desired_package) * size(package) is not any larger. If, however, desired_package was on the same order as package (approximately a thousand resource objects). Then the computational cost of evaluating that expression would be quadratic.

In general, the cost, assuming all resources have the same order, is exponential with the number of distinct resource jobs referenced by the expression.

Exactly one resource bound to a variable at once

It’s not possible to refer to two different resources, from the same resource group, in one resource expression. In other terms, the variable always points to one object, it is not a collection of objects.

For example, let’s consider this program:

package.name == 'xorg' and package.name == 'procps'

Seemingly the intent was to ensure that both xorg and procps are installed. The reason why this does not work is that at each iteration of the the expression evaluator, the name package refers to exactly one resource object. In other words, that expression is equivalent to this one:

A == True and A == False

This type of error is not captured by our limited semantic analyzer. It will silently evaluate to False and inhibit the job from being stated.

To work around this, split the expression to two consecutive lines. As stated in rule 3 in the list above, there is an implicit and operator between all expressions. A working example that expresses the same intent looks like this:

package.name == 'xorg'
package.name == 'procps'

Operator != is useless

This is strange at first but quickly becomes obvious once you recall rule 2 from the list above. That rule states that the expression is evaluated repeatedly for each resource from a particular group and that any True iteration marks the whole expression as True).

Let’s look at a real-world example:

xinput.device_class == 'XITouchClass' and xinput.touch_mode != 'dependent'

So seemingly, the intent here was to have at least xinput resource with a device_class attribute equal to XITouchClass that has touch_mode attribute equal to anything but dependent.

Now let’s assume that we have exactly two resources in the xinput group:

device_class: XITouchClass
touch_mode: dependent

device_class: XITouchClass
touch_mode: something else

Now, this expression will evaluate to True, as the second resource fulfills the requirements. Is this what the test designer had expected? That’s hard to say. The problem here is that this expression can be understood as at least one resource isn’t something or all resources weren’t something. Both are equally valid desires and, depending on how the test is implemented, may or many not work correctly in practice.

Currently there is no workaround. We are considering adding a new syntax that would allow to specify this explicitly. The proposal is documented below as “implicit any(), explicit all()”

Everything is a string

Resource programs are regular python programs evaluated in unusual ways but all of the variables that are exposed through the resource object are strings.

This has considerable impact on comparison, unless you are comparing to a string the comparison will always silently fail as python has dynamic but strict, not loose types (there is no implicit type conversion). To alleviate this problem several type names / conversion functions are allowed in requirement programs. Those are:

• int, to convert to integer numbers
• float, to convert to floating point numbers
• bool, to convert to a boolean context

Template Unit

The template unit is a variant of Plainbox unit types. A template is a skeleton for defining additional units, typically job definitions. A template is defined as a typical RFC822-like Plainbox unit (like a typical job definition) with the exception that all the fields starting with the string template- are reserved for the template itself while all the other fields are a definition of all the eventual instances of the template.

Template-Specific Fields

There are four fields that are specific to the template unit:

template-unit:

Name of the unit type this template will generate. By default job definition units are generated (as if the field was specified with the value of job) eventually but other values may be used as well.

This field is optional.

template-resource:

Name of the resource job (if it is a compatible resource identifier) to use to parametrize the template. This must either be a name of a resource job available in the namespace the template unit belongs to or a valid resource identifier matching the definition in the template-imports field.

This field is mandatory.

template-imports:

A resource import statement. It can be used to refer to arbitrary resource job by its full identifier and (optionally) give it a short variable name.

The syntax of each imports line is:

IMPORT_STMT ::  "from" <NAMESPACE> "import" <PARTIAL_ID>
              | "from" <NAMESPACE> "import" <PARTIAL_ID>
                 AS <IDENTIFIER>

The short syntax exposes PARTIAL_ID as the variable name available within all the fields defined within the template unit. If it is not a valid variable name then the second form must be used.

This field is sometimes optional. It becomes mandatory when the resource job definition is from another provider namespace or when it is not a valid resource identifier and needs to be aliased.

template-filter:

A resource program that limits the set of records from which template instances will be made. The syntax of this field is the same as the syntax of typical job definition unit’s requires field, that is, it is a python expression.

When defined, the expression is evaluated once for each resource object and if it evaluates successfully to a True value then that particular resource object is used to instantiate a new unit.

This field is optional.

template-engine:

Name of the template engine to use, default is python string formatting (See PEP 3101). Currently the only other supported engine is jinja2.

This field is optional.

Instantiation

When a template is instantiated, a single record object is used to fill in the parametric values to all the applicable fields. Each field is formatted using the template-engine (default is python formatting language. Within each field the record is exposed as the variable named by the template_resource field. Record data is exposed as attributes of that object.

The special parameter __index__ can be used to iterate over the devices matching the template-filter field.

Examples

Basic example

The following example contains a simplified template that instantiates to a simple storage test. The test is only instantiated for devices that are considered physical. In this example we don’t want to spam the user with a long list of loopback devices. This is implemented by exposing that data in the resource job itself:

id: device
plugin: resource
command:
    echo 'path: /dev/sda'
    echo 'has_media: yes'
    echo 'physical: yes'
    echo
    echo 'path: /dev/cdrom'
    echo 'has_media: no'
    echo 'physical: yes'
    echo
    echo 'path: /dev/loop0'
    echo 'has_media: yes'
    echo 'physical: no'

The template defines a test-storage-XXX test where XXX is replaced by the path of the device. Only devices which are physical according to some definition are considered for testing. This means that the record related to /dev/loop0 will be ignored and will not instantiate a test job for that device. This feature can be coupled with the existing resource requirement to let the user know that we did see their CD-ROM device but it was not tested as there was no inserted media at the time:

unit: template
template-resource: device
template-filter: device.physical == 'yes'
requires: device.has_media == 'yes'
id: test-storage-{path}
plugin: shell
command: perform-testing-on --device {path}

Real life example

Here is a real life example of a template unit that generates a job for each hard drive available on the system:

unit: template
template-resource: device
template-filter: device.category == 'DISK'
plugin: shell
category_id: com.canonical.plainbox::disk
id: disk/stats_{name}
requires:
 device.path == "{path}"
 block_device.{name}_state != 'removable'
user: root
command: disk_stats_test {name}
_description: This test checks {name} disk stats, generates some activity and rechecks stats to verify they've changed. It also verifies that disks appear in the various files they're supposed to.

The template-resource used here (device) refers to a resource job using the udev_resource script to get information about the system. The udev_resource script returns a list of items with attributes such as path and name, so we can use these directly in our template.

Simple Jinja templates example

Jinja2 can be used as the templating engine instead of python string formatting. This allows the author to access some powerful templating features including expressions.

First here is the previous disk stats example converted to jinja2:

unit: template
template-resource: device
template-filter: device.category == 'DISK'
template-engine: jinja2
plugin: shell
category_id: com.canonical.plainbox::disk
id: disk/stats_{{ name }}
requires:
device.path == "{{ path }}"
block_device.{{ name }}_state != 'removable'
user: root
command: disk_stats_test {{ name }}
_description: This test checks {{ name }} disk stats, generates some activity and rechecks stats to verify they've changed. It also verifies that disks appear in the various files they're supposed to.

Template engine additional features

Plainbox populates the template parameter dictionary with some extra keys to aid the author.

__index__:

If a template unit can result in N content jobs then this variable is equal to how many jobs have been created so far.

Following parameters are only available for template-engine: jinja2:

__system_env__:

When checkbox encounters a template to render it will populate this variable with the executing shell’s enviroment variables as os.environ

__on_ubuntucore__:

Helper function (boolean) checking if checkbox runs from on ubuntu core

__checkbox_env__:

Dictionary containing the checkbox config environment section

Exporter Unit

The purpose of exporter units is to provide an easy way to customize the plainbox reports by delegating the customization bits to providers.

Each exporter unit expresses a binding between code (the entry point) and data. Data can be new options, different Jinja2 templates and/or new paths to load them.

File format and location

Exporter entry units are regular plainbox units and are contained and shipped with plainbox providers. In other words, they are just the same as job and test plan units, for example.

Fields

Following fields may be used by an exporter unit.

id:

(mandatory) - Unique identifier of the exporter. This field is used to look up and store data so please keep it stable across the lifetime of your provider.

summary:

(optional) - A human readable name for the exporter. This value is available for translation into other languages. It is used when listing exporters. It must be one line long, ideally it should be short (50-70 characters max).

entry_point:

(mandatory) - This is a key for a pkg_resources entry point from the plainbox.exporters namespace. Allowed values are: jinja2, text, xlsx, json and rfc822.

file_extension:

(mandatory) - Filename extension to use when the exporter stream is saved to a file.

options:

(optional) - comma/space/semicolon separated list of options for this exporter entry point. Only the following options are currently supported.

text and rfc822:

• 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
• with-category-map
• with-certification-status

json:

Same as for text and additionally:

• machine-json

xlsx:

• with-sys-info
• with-summary
• with-job-description
• with-text-attachments
• with-unit-categories

jinja2:

No options available

data:

(optional) - Extra data sent to the exporter code, to allow all kind of data types, the data field only accept valid JSON. For exporters using the jinja2 entry point, the template name and any additional paths to load files from must be defined in this field. See examples below.

Example

This is an example exporter definition:

unit: exporter
id: my_html
_summary: Generate my own version of the HTML report
entry_point: jinja2
file_extension: html
options:
 with-foo
 with-bar
data: {
 "template": "my_template.html",
 "extra_paths": [
     "/usr/share/javascript/lib1/",
     "/usr/share/javascript/lib2/",
     "/usr/share/javascript/lib3/"]
 }

The provider shipping such unit can be as follow:

├── data
│   ├── my_template.css
│   └── my_template.html
├── units
    ├── my_test_plans.pxu
    └── exporters.pxu

Note that exporters.pxu is not strictly needed to store the exporter units, but keeping them in a dedicated file is a good practice.

How to use exporter units?

In order to call an exporter unit from provider foo, you just need to use in in the launcher.

Example of a launcher using custom exporter unit:

#!/usr/bin/env checkbox-cli

[launcher]
launcher_version = 1

[transport:local_file]
type = file
path = /tmp/submission.html

[exporter:my_html]
unit = com.foo.bar::my_html

[report:local_html]
transport = local_file
exporter = my_html

For more information about generating reports see Daemon-specific configuration

Manifest Entry Unit

A manifest entry unit describes a single entry in a manifest that describes the machine or device under test. The purpose of each entry is to define one specific fact. Plainbox uses such units to create a manifest that associates each entry with a value.

The values themselves can come from multiple sources, the simplest one is the test operator who can provide an answer. In more complex cases a specialized application might look up the type of the device using some identification method (such as DMI data) from a server, thus removing the extra interaction steps.

File format and location

Manifest entry units are regular plainbox units and are contained and shipped with plainbox providers. In other words, they are just the same as job and test plan units, for example.

Fields

Following fields may be used by a manifest entry unit.

id:

(mandatory) - Unique identifier of the entry. This field is used to look up and store data so please keep it stable across the lifetime of your provider.

name:

(mandatory) - A human readable name of the entry. This should read as in a feature matrix of a device in a store (e.g., “802.11ac wireless capability”, or “Thunderbolt support”, “Number of hard drive bays”). This is not a sentence, don’t end it with a dot. Please capitalize the first letter. The name is used in various listings so it should be kept reasonably short.

The name is a translatable field so please prefix it with _ as in _name: Example.

value-type:

(mandatory) - Type of value for this entry. Currently two values are allowed: bool for a yes/no value and natural for any natural number (negative numbers are rejected).

value-units:

(optional) - Units in which value is measured in. This is only used when value-type is equal to natural. For example a “Screen size” manifest entry could be measured in “inch” units.

resource-key:

(optional) - Name of the resource key used to store the manifest value when representing the manifest as a resource record. This field defaults to the so-called partial id which is just the id: field as spelled in the unit definition file (so without the name space of the provider)

prompt:

(optional) - Allows the manifest unit to customise the prompt presented when collecting values from a user. When the value-type is bool the default prompt is “Does this machine have this piece of hardware?”, when the value-type is natural the default prompt is “Please enter the requested data”.

Example

This is an example manifest entry definition:

unit: manifest entry
id: has_thunderbolt
_name: Thunderbolt Support
value-type: bool

Naming Manifest Entries

To keep the code consistent there’s one naming scheme that should be followed. Entries for boolean values must use the has_XXX naming scheme. This will allow us to avoid issues later on where multiple people develop manifest entries and it’s all a bit weird what them mean has_thunderbolt or thunderbolt_supported or tb or whatever we come up with. It’s a convention, please stick to it.

Using Manifest Entries in Jobs

Manifest data can be used to decide if a given test is applicable for a given device under test or not. When used as a resource they behave in a standard way, like all other resources. The only special thing is the unique name-space of the resource job as it is provided by plainbox itself. The name of the resource job is: com.canonical.plainbox. In practice a simple job that depends on data from the manifest can look like this:

unit: job
id: ...
plugin: ...
requires:
 manifest.has_thunderbolt == 'True' and manifest.ns == 'com.canonical.checkbox'
imports: from com.canonical.plainbox import manifest

Note that the job uses the manifest job from the com.canonical.plainbox name-space. It has to be imported using the imports: field as it is in a different name-space than the one the example unit is defined in (which is arbitrary). Having that resource it can then check for the has_thunderbolt field manifest entry in the com.canonical.checkbox name-space. Note that the name-space of the manifest job is not related to the manifest.ns value. Since any provider can ship additional manifest entries and then all share the flat name-space of resource attributes looking at the .ns attribute is a way to uniquely identify a given manifest entry.

Collecting Manifest Data

To interactively collect manifest data from a user please include this job somewhere early in your test plan: com.canonical.plainbox::collect-manifest.

Supplying External Manifest

The manifest file is stored in $HOME/.local/share/plainbox/machine-manifest.json. If the provisioning method ships a valid manifest file there it can be used for fully automatic but manifest-based deployments.

Packaging Meta Data Unit

The packaging meta-data unit describes system-level dependencies of a provider in a machine readable way. Dependencies can be specified separately for different distributions. Dependencies can also be specified for a common base distribution (e.g. for Debian rather than Ubuntu). The use of packaging meta-data units can greatly simplify management of dependencies of binary packages as it brings those decisions closer to the changes to the actual provider and makes package management largely automatic.

File format and location

Packaging meta-data units are regular plainbox units and are contained and shipped with plainbox providers. In other words, they are just the same as job and test plan units, for example.

Fields

Following fields may be used by a manifest entry unit.

os-id:

(mandatory) - the identifier of the operating system this rule applies to. This is the same value as the ID field in the file /etc/os-release. Typical values include debian, ubuntu or fedora.

os-version-id:

(optional) - the identifier of the specific version of the operating system this rule applies to. This is the same as the VERSION_ID field in the file /etc/os-release. If this field is not present then the rule applies to all versions of a given operating system.

The remaining fields are custom and depend on the packaging driver. The values for Debian are:

Depends:

(optional) - a comma separated list of dependencies for the binary package. The syntax is the same as in normal Debian control files (including package version dependencies). This field can be split into multiple lines, for readability, as newlines are discarded.

Suggests:

(optional) - same as Depends.

Recommends:

(optional) - same as Depends.

Matching Packaging Meta-Data Units

The base Linux distribution driver parses the /etc/os-release file, looks at the ID, ID_VERSION and optionally the ID_LIKE fields. They are used as a standard way to determine the distribution for which packaging meta-data is being collected for.

The id and version match strategy requires that both the os-id and os-dependencies fields are present and that they match the ID and ID_VERSION values. This strategy allows the test maintainer to express each dependency accurately for each operating system they wish to support.

The id match strategy is only used when the os-version is not defined. It is useful when a single definition is applicable to many subsequent releases. This is especially useful when job works well with sufficiently old version of a third party dependency and there is no need to repeatedly re-state the same dependency for each later release of the operating system.

The id_like match strategy is only used as a last resort and can be seen as a weaker id match strategy. This time the os-id field is compared to the ID_LIKE field (if present). It is useful for working with Debian derivatives, like Ubuntu.

Each matching packaging meta-data unit is then passed to the driver to generate packaging meta-data.

Example

This is an example packaging meta-data unit, as taken from the resource provider:

unit: packaging meta-data
os-id: debian
Depends:
 python3-checkbox-support (>= 0.2),
 python3 (>= 3.2),
Recommends:
 dmidecode,
 dpkg (>= 1.13),
 lsb-release,
 wodim

This will cause the binary provider package to depend on the appropriate version of python3-checkbox-support and python3 in both Debian, Ubuntu and, for example, Elementary OS. In addition the package will recommend some utilities that are used by some of the jobs contained in this provider.

Using Packaging Meta-Data in Debian

To make use of the packaging meta-data, follow those steps:

• Ensure that /etc/os-release exists in your build chroot. On Debian it is a part of the base-files package which is not something you have to worry about but other distributions may use different strategies.

• Mark the binary package that contains the provider with the X-Plainbox-Provider: yes header.

• Add the ${plainbox:Depends}, ${plainbox:Recommends} and ${plainbox:Suggests} variables to the binary package that contains the provider.

• Override the gen_control debhelper rule and run the python3 manage.py packaging command in addition to running dh_gencontrol:

  override_dh_gencontrol:
      python3 manage.py packaging
      dh_gencontrol
  

Plainbox RFC822 Specification

The syntax is only loosely inspired by the actual RFC 822 syntax. Since Plainbox is not processing email, the original specification is used only as an inspiration. One of the most important aspect of the syntax we’re using is relative familiarity for other users of the system and ease-of-use when using general, off-the-shelf text editors.

Backus–Naur Form

An approximated syntax can be summarized as the following BNF:

record-list: record-list '\n' record
             | record
record: entry-list '\n\n' entry
        | entry
entry: KEY ':' VALUE
KEY: ^[^:]+
VALUE: .+\n([ ].+)*

There are two quirks which not handled by this syntax (see below). Otherwise the syntax is very simple. It defines a list of records. Each record is a list of entries. Each entry is a key-value pair. Values can be multi-line, which allows for convenient expression of longer text fragments.

Quirk 1 – the magic dot

Due to the way the multi-line VALUE syntax is defined, it would be impossible (or possible but dependent only on whitespace, which is not friendly) to include two consecutive newlines. For that reason a line consisting of a single space, followed by a single dot is translated to an empty line.

The example below:

key:
 .
 more value

Is parsed as an ENTRY (in python syntax):

("key", "\nvalue")

Quirk 2 – the # comments

Since it’s a line-oriented format and people are used to being able to insert comments anywhere with the # comment notation, any line that _starts_ with a hash or pound character is discarded. This happens earlier than other parts of parsing so comments are invisible to the rest of the parser. They can be included anywhere, including in the middle of a multi-line value.

Example:

# this is a comment
key: value
 multi-line
# comment!
 and more

Reporting Bugs

To report bugs on the Checkbox project you will need a launchpad account. You may find instructions on how to create one useful. Once you have an account you can report bugs.

The “Checkbox Stack”

The Checkbox Stack is a collection of projects that together constitute a complete testing and certification solution. It is composed of the following parts (see table below for extra details). All of the projects are linked to from the Launchpad project group.

Component Descriptions

Project	Responsible for	Type
Checkbox (CLI)	The python command-line interface the text user interface Additional certification APIs sending data to Certification website (C3)	Application
Client Certification Provider	canonical-certification-client executable client certification test plans	Provider
Server Certification Provider	server certification test plans additional server test plans	Provider
Checkbox Provider	Generic (all platform) job definitions Most of custom “scripts” Default and SRU test plans	Provider
Resource Provider	Generic resource jobs Generic binaries for those jobs	Provider
Snappy Provider	Job definitions aimed mostly at Ubuntu Core systems “Snap aware” jobs
Checkbox Support	Support code for various providers Parsers for many text formats	Library
PlainBox (part of Checkbox)	Almost all core logic RFC822 (job definition) parser Configuration handling Testing session (suspend/resume) Job runner Trusted launcher Dependency resolver Command line handling The HTML and XSLX exporters and more…	Library and Development Toolkit

Checkbox launchers tutorial

Checkbox launchers are INI files that customize checkbox experience. The customization includes:

• choosing what jobs will be run
• how to handle machine restart
• what type of UI to use
• how to handle the results

Each section in the launcher is optional, when not supplied, the default values will be used.

This tutorial describes Launchers version 1.

External configuration files

Launcher can specify external file(s) to load values from.

[config]

Beginning of the configuration section.

config_filename

Name of the configuration file to look for. Default value: checkbox.conf

The directories that will be searched for the file are /etc/xdg/ and ~/.config/.

Example:

[config]
config_filename = testing.conf

This will make checkbox look for /etc/xdg/testing.conf and ~/config/testing.conf files.

The config_filename may be an absolute path, and may use environment variables

Example:

[config]
config_filename = $MYCONFIGS/testing.conf

[config]
config_filename = /home/ubuntu/next-testing.conf

For more details about value resolution order see configs

Launcher meta-information

Launcher meta-information helps to provide consistent checkbox behaviour in the future.

[launcher]

Beginning of the launcher meta-information section.

app_id

This fields helps to differentiate between checkbox front-ends. This way sessions started with launcher with one app_id won’t interfere with sessions started with a different launcher (provided it has app_id set to other value). The app_id should be in a IQN form. Default value: com.canonical:checkbox-cli

app_version

This field is purely informational.

launcher_version

Version of the launcher language syntax and semantics to use.

api_flags

API flags variable determines optional feature set. List of API flags that this launcher requires. Items should be separated by spaces or commas. The default value is an empty list.

api_version

API version determines the behaviour of the launcher. Each checkbox feature is added at a specific API version. Default behaviours don’t change silently; explicit launcher change is required. Default value: 0.99

stock_reports

Stock reports are shortcuts in creating common reports. Instead of having to specify exporter, transport and a report section in a launcher, you can use any number of the stock ones. In launchers version 1 there are 4 stock reports you may use:

• text - print results as text on standard output
• submission_files - write html, xlsx, json and tar.xz files to $XDG_DATA_HOME directory (or to ~/.local/share/ if $XDG_DATA_HOME is not defined.
• certification - send results to certification site
• certification-staging - send results to staging version of certification site

If you don’t want to have any stock report automatically generated use none as the value.

This field is a list; use commas or spaces to separate stock reports. The default value: text, certification, submission_files.

When using certification stock report, two submission variables may be overriden by the launcher: secure_id and description. To do this define secure_id or description in a transport:c3 section (this is the transport that’s used by the certification stock reports).

Launcher section example:

[launcher]
app_id = com.foobar:system-testing
launcher_version = 1
stock_reports = text

Launcher using all defaults with overridden secure_id:

[transport:c3]
secure_id = 001122334455667788

Launcher that defines submission description:

[transport:c3]
description = my testing session

Launcher that disables all stock reports:

[launcher]
app_id = com.foobar:system-testing
launcher_version = 1
stock_reports = none

Providers section

This section provides control over which providers are used by the launcher.

[providers]

Beginning of the providers section.

use

A list of globs, from which a provider id must match at least one in order to be used. By default all providers are used.

Providers section example:

[providers]
use = provider1, provider2, provider-*

Test plan section

This section provides control over which test plans are visible in the menus and optionally forces the app to use particular one.

[test plan]

Beginning of the test plan section.

unit

An ID of a test plan that should be selected by default. By default nothing is selected.

filter

Glob that test plan IDs have to match in order to be visible. Default value: *

forced

If set to yes, test plan selection screen will be skipped. Requires unit field to be set. Default value: no.

Test selection section

This section provides lets forcing of test selection.

[test selection]

Beginning of the test selection section

forced

If set to yes, test selection screen will be skipped and all test specified in the test plan will be selected. Default value: no

exclude

List of regex patterns that job ids will be matched against. The matched jobs will be excluded from running in both stages of the session: bootstrapping and normal stage. Note that if you specify a pattern that matches a resource job that is used to instantiate template units those units won’t get generated. The patterns should be separated with whitespace. Examples:

Exclude all jobs containing ‘bluetooth’ in their id:

[test selection]
exclude = .*bluetooth.*

Exclude all jobs containing bluetooth in their id, or having ids starting with com.canonical.certification::dock/wireless:

[test selection]
exclude = .*bluetooth.* com.canonical.certification::dock/wireless.*

Note: Exclude field set in launcher can be overriden in a config, following Checkbox values resolution order. see configs for more info.

Note: To clear the exclude list use…

exclude =

…in your ‘last’ config.

User Interface section

This section controls which type of UI to use.

[ui]

Beginning of the user interface section

type

Type of UI to use. This has to be set to interactive, silent, converged, or converged-silent.

interactive runs the standard Checkbox command line version that prompts user in non-automated tests.

silent skips the tests that would require human interaction. It’s not ‘silent’ in the traditional command-line tool sense.

Default value: interactive.

Note: the converged and converged-silent UI types will launch the QML interface and requires checkbox-converged to be installed on your system. Note: using silent or converged-silent UI types requires forcing test selection and test plan selection.

dont_suppress_output

Note

This field is deprecated, use ‘output’ to specify which jobs should have their output printed to the screen.

Setting this field to yes disables hiding of command output for jobs of type resource and attachment. Default value: no.

output

This setting lets you hide output of commands run by checkbox. It can be set to one of the following values:

• show - output of all jobs will be printed
• hide-resource-and-attachment - output of resource and attachment jobs will be hidden, output of other job types will be printed
• hide-automated - output of shell jobs as well as attachment and resource jobs will be hidden. Only interactive job command’s output will be shown
• hide - same as hide-automated. This value is deprecated, use hide-automated

Default value: show

Note

Individual jobs can have their output hidden by specifying ‘suppress-output’ in their definition.

verbosity

This setting makes checkbox report more information from checkbox internals. Possible values are:

• normal - report only warnings and errors.
• verbose - report important events that take place during execution (E.g. adding units, starting jobs, changing the state of the session)
• debug - print out everything

Default value: normal

Note

You can also change this behavior when invoking Checkbox by using --verbose and --debug options respectively.

auto_retry

If set to yes, failed jobs will automatically be retried at the end of the testing session. In addition, the re-run screen (where user can select failed and skipped jobs to re-run) will not be shown. Default value: no.

max_attempts Defines the maximum number of times a job should be run in auto-retry mode. If the job passes, it won’t be retried even if the maximum number of attempts have not been reached. Default value: 3.

delay_before_retry The number of seconds to wait before retrying the failed jobs at the end of the testing session. This can be useful when the jobs relying on external factors (e.g. a WiFi access point) and you want to wait before retrying the same job. Default value: 1.

Warning

When auto_retry is set to yes, every failing jobs will be retried. This can be a problem, for instance, for jobs that take a really long time to run. To avoid this, you can use the auto-retry=no inline override in the test plan to explicitly mark each job you do not wish to see retried.

For example:

id: foo-bar-and-froz
_name: Tests Foo, Bar and Froz
include:
    foo
    bar     auto-retry=no
    froz

In that case, even if job bar fails and auto-retry is activated, it will not be retried.

Restart section

This section enables fine control over how checkbox is restarted.

[restart]

Beginning of the restart section

strategy

Override the restart strategy that should be used. Currently supported strategies are XDG and Snappy. By default the best strategy is determined in runtime.

Environment section

[environment]

Beginning of the environment section

Each variable present in the environment section will be present as environment variable for all jobs run.

Example:

[environment]
TESTING_HOST = 192.168.0.100

Daemon-specific configuration

[daemon]

Beginning of the daemon-specific section. Setting in this section only apply to sessions that are run by checkbox-slave spawned as a daemon.

normal-user

Username to use when job doesn’t specify which user to run as.

Checkbox-slave daemon is run by root so in order to run some jobs as an unpriviledged user this variable can be used.

Generating reports

Creation of reports is govern by three sections: report, exporter, and transport. Each of those sections might be specified multiple times to provide more than one report.

Exporter

[exporter:exporter_name]

Beginning of an exporter declaration. Note that exporter_name should be replaced with something meaningful, like html.

unit

ID of an exporter to use. To get the list of available exporter in your system run $ plainbox dev list exporter.

options

A list of options that will be supplied to the exporter. Items should be separated by spaces or commas.

Example:

[exporter:html]
unit = com.canonical.plainbox::html

Transport

[transport:transport_name] Beginning of a transport declaration. Note that transport_name should be replaced with something meaningful, like standard_out.

type

Type of a transport to use. Allowed values are: stream, file, and certification.

Depending on the type of transport there might be additional fields.

transport type	variables	meaning	example
stream	stream	which stream to use stdout or stderr	[transport:out] type = stream stream = stdout
file	path	where to save the file	[transport:f1] type = file path = ~/report
submission-service	secure-id	secure-id to use when uploading to certification sites	[transport:c3] secure_id = 0123456789ABCD staging = yes
	staging	determines if staging site should be used Default: no

Report

[report:report_name]

Beginning of a report declaration. Note that report_name should be replaced with something meaningful, like to_screen.

exporter

Name of the exporter to use

transport

Name of the transport to use

forced

If set to yes will make checkbox always produce the report (skipping the prompt). Default value: no.

Example of all three sections working to produce a report:

[exporter:text]
unit = com.canonical.plainbox::text

[transport:out]
type = stream
stream = stdout

[report:screen]
exporter = text
transport = out
forced = yes

Launcher examples

1) Fully automatic run of all tests from ‘com.canonical.certification::smoke’ test plan concluded by producing text report to standard output.

#!/usr/bin/env checkbox-cli

[launcher]
launcher_version = 1
app_id = com.canonical.certification:smoke-test
stock_reports = text

[test plan]
unit = com.canonical.certification::smoke
forced = yes

[test selection]
forced = yes

[ui]
type = silent

[transport:outfile]
type = stream
stream = stdout

[exporter:text]
unit = com.canonical.plainbox::text

[report:screen]
transport = outfile
exporter = text

2) Interactive testing of FooBar project. Report should be uploaded to the staging version of certification site and saved to /tmp/submission.tar.xz

#!/usr/bin/env checkbox-cli

[launcher]
launcher_version = 1
app_id = com.foobar:system-testing

[providers]
use = com.megacorp.foo::bar*

[test plan]
unit = com.megacorp.foo::bar-generic

[ui]
type = silent
output = hide

[transport:certification]
type = certification
secure-id = 00112233445566
staging = yes
description = System Testing of the MegaCorp

[transport:local_file]
type = file
path = /tmp/submission.tar.xz

[report:c3-staging]
transport = certification
exporter = tar

[report:file]
transport = local_file
exporter = tar

3) A typical launcher to run a desktop SRU test plan automatically. The launcher will automatically retry the failed test jobs. Besides, this launcher include another launcher launcher.conf as its customized environment configuration.

The launcher

#!/usr/bin/env checkbox-cli
[launcher]
launcher_version = 1

[config]
config_filename = $HOME/launcher.conf

[test plan]
unit = com.canonical.certification::sru
forced = yes

[test selection]
forced = yes

[ui]
type = silent
auto_retry = yes
max_attempts = 3
delay_before_retry = 15

The launcher configuration laucher.conf

#!/usr/bin/env checkbox-cli
[launcher]
launcher_version = 1
stock_reports = text, submission_files, certification

[transport:c3]
secure_id = <your secure ID>

[transport:local_file]
type = file
path = /home/ubuntu/c3-local-submission.tar.xz

[exporter:example_tar]
unit = com.canonical.plainbox::tar

[report:file]
transport = local_file
exporter = tar
forced = yes

[environment]
ROUTERS = multiple
WPA_BG_SSID = foo-bar-bg-wpa
WPA_BG_PSK = foo-bar
WPA_N_SSID = foo-bar-n-wpa
WPA_N_PSK = foobar
WPA_AC_SSID = foo-bar-ac-wpa
WPA_AC_PSK = foobar
OPEN_BG_SSID = foo-bar-bg-open
OPEN_N_SSID = foo-bar-n-open
OPEN_AC_SSID = foo-bar-ac-open
BTDEVADDR = ff:oo:oo:bb:aa:rr
TRANSFER_SERVER = cdimage.ubuntu.com

Side-loading Providers

If you want to create a new job, or tweak an existing one without a need to repackage the provider or the snap, you can use side-loaded providers.

If the path /var/tmp/checkbox-proviers exists, Checkbox will load providers from that path. If any given provider has the same namespace and the same name as an existing (installed or supplied with the same snap) provider, only the side-loaded one will be used.

You may override as many providers as you find necessary. There’s also no limit on the number of new providers supplied with side-loading.

Note

side-loading is a means to quickly iterate when developing new jobs. Don’t use it in production. Also remember to empty (or delete) the ~/provider directory once you’re done developing, so you don’t get nasty surprises down the line. Checkbox will not submit any reports to Certificaiton website if side-loaded providers have been used.

Example scenario

Goal: change the runtime of the stress/cpu_stress_ng_test job without rebuilding snap.

Make sure that checkbox-snappy snap is installed. It comes with following providers available:

plainbox-provider-checkbox
plainbox-provider-docker
2017.com.canonical.se:engineering-tests
plainbox-provider-ipdt
plainbox-provider-resource-generic
plainbox-provider-snappy
plainbox-provider-sru
plainbox-provider-tpm2

Create checkbox-providers directory in /var/tmp/:

mkdir /var/tmp/checkbox-providers

Note

You may not have write permissions for /var/tmp/. You may want to run mkdir with sudo and later chown that directory

Clone plainbox-provider-checkbox to the side-loaded directory:

cd /var/tmp/checkbox-providers
git clone --depth=1 http://git.launchpad.net/plainbox-provider-checkbox

Tip

–depth=1 tells git not to download all the history of the repo

When started, Checkbox should display following warning:

$ checkbox-snappy.checkbox-cli
WARNING:plainbox.session.assistant:Using side-loaded provider:
com.canonical.certification:plainbox-provider-checkbox

Let’s edit the job definition:

$ vim /var/tmp/checkbox-providers/plainbox-provider-checkbox/units/stress/jobs.pxu

Now let’s run Checkbox:

$ checkbox-snappy.checkbox-cli

The recently edited definition should be used.

Configuration values resolution order

The directories that are searched for config files are: /etc/xdg/ ~/.config/

The filename that’s looked up depends on how checkbox is run.

Invoking checkbox-cli (without launcher)

Assumed config file name is checkbox.conf

Invoking plainbox

Assumed config file name is plainbox.conf

Invoking launcher

The file name to look for is specified using config_filename variable from launcher, from the [config] section. If it’s not present, checkbox.conf ‘ is used.

Apps using SessionAssistant or the plainbox internals directly

plainbox.conf is used, unless SessionAsistant.use_alternate_configuration() is called.

Note that if same configuration variable is defined in more then one place, the value resolution is as follows: 1. config file from ~/.config 2. launcher being invoked (only the new syntax launchers) 3. config file from /etc/xdg

Checkbox nested test plans tutorial

We designed checkbox to consume test providers. Hence the test harness and the tests are completely separated. Checkbox can load tests from multiple providers. They can be installed as Debian packages or loaded from source to build a snap.

To load the tests and run them we need a test plan. Test plans for checkbox are a collection of job (test) ids meant to be run one by one.

Most of the time when we create a new test plan, there’s a need to include a generic section, common to several other test plans. But the test plan unit was not allowing such feature and we ended up having a lot of duplication across our projects. And duplication means duplicated efforts to maintain all those test plan sections in sync and up-to-date.

What if it could be possible now to have nested test plans. One being built by aggregating sections from one or more “base test plans”?

Let’s review in detail this new feature available in checkbox since plainbox 0.29

Quick start

The only thing to add to your test plan is the identifier of the test plan you want to include, as follow:

nested_part:
    com.canonical.certification::my_base_test_plan

The test plan order will then be test plan include + all nested test plan include, in that order.

Loading nested parts will load the include, mandatory_include and bootstrap_include sections and all the overrides (category, certification status).

Note: All mandatory includes will always be run first.

Note: Job and test plan ids can be listed in their abbreviated form (without the namespace prefix) if the job definitions reside in the same namespace as the provider that is defining the test plan.

Use cases

All the following examples are available here: https://github.com/yphus/nested_testplan_demo To test them locally you just need to develop the 3 providers and run one of the demo launchers:

git clone https://github.com/yphus/nested_testplan_demo.git
cd nested_testplan_demo/
find . -name manage.py -exec {} develop \;
./demo1 # or demo2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

How to use a base test plan?

Let’s use two providers, both belonging to the same namespace, com.ubuntu:

com.ubuntu:foo and com.ubuntu:baz

Baz provider contains the following units, 4 jobs and a test plan (our base test plan):

id: hello
command: echo hello
flags: simple

id: bye
command: echo bye
flags: simple

id: mandatory
command: true
flags: simple

id: bootstrap
command: echo os: ubuntu
plugin: resource
flags: simple

unit: test plan
id: baz_tp
_name: Generic baz test plan
_description: This test plan contains generic test cases
estimated_duration: 1m
include:
    hello       certification-status=blocker
    bye         certification-status=non-blocker
mandatory_include:
    mandatory   certification-status=blocker
bootstrap_include:
    bootstrap

Foo provider contains two new tests:

id: always-pass
command: true
flags: simple

id: always-fail
command: true
flags: simple

We want to reuse the baz_tp in a new test plan (in the Foo provider) with the two new tests. Such test plan will look like this:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_1
_name: Foo test plan 1
_description: This test plan contains generic tests + 2 new tests
include:
    always-pass       certification-status=blocker
    always-fail
nested_part:
    baz_tp

The jobs execution order is:

• bootstrap
• mandatory
• always-pass
• always-fail
• hello
• bye

How to use a base test plan, but without running them last?

Let’s keep the previous providers, Foo and Baz. This time we want to run the base test plan between always-pass and always-fail. In order to change the job execution order, the new test plan will be made of several nested parts, since they will follow the list order. Let’s create in the Foo provider 2 new test plans that we’ll use as nested parts to fine tune the job ordering:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_part1
_name: Foo test plan part 1
_description: This test plan contains part 1
estimated_duration: 1m
include:
    always-pass       certification-status=blocker

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_part2
_name: Foo test plan part 2
_description: This test plan contains part 2
estimated_duration: 1m
include:
    always-fail

The final test plan will only contain nested parts:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_2
_name: Foo test plan 2
_description:
 This test plan contains generic tests + 2 new tests (but ordered differently)
include:
nested_part:
    foo_tp_part1
    baz_tp
    foo_tp_part2

Note: Always keep the include section (even empty) as this field is mandatory and validation would failed otherwise (and the test plan never loaded by checkbox)

The jobs execution order is:

• bootstrap
• mandatory
• always-pass
• hello
• bye
• always-fail

How to change category or certification status of jobs coming from nested parts?

The test plan override mechanism still works with nested parts. For example the hello job from the Baz provider was defined as a blocker and did not have a category.

Let’s update the previous use case:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_3
_name: Foo test plan 3
_description: This test plan contains generic tests + 2 new tests + overrides
include:
    always-pass       certification-status=blocker
    always-fail
nested_part:
    baz_tp
certification_status_overrides:
    apply non-blocker to hello
category_overrides:
    apply com.canonical.plainbox::audio to hello

To check that overrides worked as expected, you can open the json exporter report:

"result_map": {
    "com.ubuntu::hello": {
        "summary": "hello",
        "category_id": "com.canonical.plainbox::audio",
        "certification_status": "non-blocker"
[...]

How to include a nested part from another namespace?

You can include a nested part from another namespace, just prefix the test plan identifier with the provider namespace.

Let’s use a third provider (Bar, under the com.ubuntu namespace) as an example:

id: sleep
command: sleep 1
flags: simple

id: uname
command: uname -a
flags: simple

unit: test plan
id: bar_tp
_name: bar test plan
_description: This test plan contains bar test cases
estimated_duration: 1m
include:
    sleep
    uname

Now in provider Foo, a test plan including a part from provider Bar will look like this:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_4
_name: Foo test plan 4
_description:
 This test plan contains generic tests + 2 new tests + 2 tests from a
 different namespace provider
include:
    always-pass       certification-status=blocker
    always-fail
nested_part:
    baz_tp
    com.ubuntu::bar_tp

The jobs execution order is:

• bootstrap
• mandatory
• always-pass
• always-fail
• hello
• bye
• sleep
• uname

Is it possible to have multiple levels of nesting?

Yes, it’s possible to have multiple levels of nesting, a nested part being built from another nested parts, each level bringing its own set of new tests.

Let’s add a new test plan to provider Baz:

unit: test plan
id: baz_tp_2
_name: Generic baz test plan 2
_description: This test plan contains generic test cases + a nested part
include:
    hello       certification-status=blocker
    bye         certification-status=non-blocker
mandatory_include:
    mandatory   certification-status=blocker
bootstrap_include:
    bootstrap
nested_part:
    com.ubuntu::bar_tp

As you can see this test plan includes a part from provider Bar (the same used in the previous example). In provider Foo, we can create a new test plan including baz_tp_2:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_5
_name: Foo test plan 5
_description: This test plan is built from multiple level of nested test plans
include:
    always-pass       certification-status=blocker
    always-fail
nested_part:
    baz_tp_2

The jobs execution order is still:

• bootstrap
• mandatory
• always-pass
• always-fail
• hello
• bye
• sleep
• uname

How to use a base test plan except a few jobs?

The test plan units support an optional field - exclude - that we can use to remove jobs from a nested part include section.

Note: The exclude ids cannot remove jobs that are parts of the mandatory_include sections (nested or not).

The test plan below (from provider Foo) won’t run the hello job of provider Baz:

unit: test plan
id: foo_tp_6
_name: Foo test plan 6
_description: This test plan contains generic tests + 2 new tests - hello job
include:
    always-pass       certification-status=blocker
    always-fail
exclude:
    hello
nested_part:
    baz_tp

The jobs execution order is:

• bootstrap
• mandatory
• always-pass
• always-fail
• bye

Known limitations

You can create infinite loops if a nested part is calling itself or if somewhere in the nested chain such a loop exists. Checkbox won’t like that and so far there’s no validation to prevent it, be warned!

Contributing to Snappy Testing with Checkbox

Introduction

To support the release of devices running snappy Ubuntu Core, Canonical has produced versions of Checkbox tailored specifically for these systems.

This document aims to provide the reader with enough information to contribute new tests, or modify existing tests, with the goal of increasing coverage wherever possible.

Brief anatomy of a Checkbox test tool

Checkbox test tools consist of a number components falling into three categories:

• Core testing framework (known as Plainbox)
• UI and launchers
• Test definitions and associated data contained in a “Provider”

To add tests one need only know the specifics of the Provider(s) that form their test tool. The rest of this document will focus on Checkbox Providers and how to work on them.

Snappy Provider

The Provider housing the majority of tests for snappy Ubuntu Core systems is known as plainbox-provider-snappy and can be found in this launchpad project: https://launchpad.net/plainbox-provider-snappy

All the code both for the core of Checkbox itself and for the tests is also hosted on Launchpad. Refer to the instructions on the Code subpage to retrieve the source files for the provider: https://code.launchpad.net/plainbox-provider-snappy

Directory structure of the Provider

Using git to clone the provider, described above, will result in a directory that looks like this (at time of writing):

checkbox@xenial:~$ ls -1 plainbox-provider-snappy/
plainbox-provider-snappy
plainbox-provider-snappy-resource

The first directory listed is the provider holding the tests, the second is a supporting provider which gathers information about the system at the start of a test run. Lets look in more detail at the test provider:

checkbox@xenial:~$ ls -1 plainbox-provider-snappy/plainbox-provider-snappy
bin
data
manage.py
po
src
units

bin	Executable scripts that can be called as part of the test (refer to command field below)
data	Data to support the running of tests e.g. configuration files
manage.py	Provider management script. Must be present in each provider to specify unique identifiers.
po	Translation support, files here are used to provide translations for tests fields in to other languages.
src	Source files and accompanying build scripts e.g. C source code and a Makefile, that are compiled in to binaries and packaged with the provider for use as part of the test (refer to command field below)
units	“Job” definition files

Jobs

A Job is Checkbox parlance for an individual test. They are defined in text files whose syntax is loosely based on RFC 822. Here is an example from plainbox-provider-snappy:

id: cpu/offlining_test
_summary:
 Test offlining of each CPU core
_description:
 Attempts to offline each core in a multicore system.
plugin: shell
command: cpu_offlining
category_id: cpu
estimated_duration: 1s
user: root

An overview of the fields in this example test:

id	A unique identifier for the job
summary	A human readable name for the job. It must be one line long, ideally it should be short (50-70 characters max)
plugin	Best thought of as describing the “type” of job. Note that it is preferred for jobs to automated wherever possible so as to minimize both time to complete and possibility for operator error. The key job types starting with the most automated are: shell - Run the command field and use the return value to determine the test result user-interact - Ask the user to perform an action and then run the command field and use the return value to determine the test result user-interact-verify - Ask the user to perform an action, then run the command field, and then ask the user to determine the test result .g. by examining the command output or observing some physical behaviour manual - The last resort, just asks the user to both carry out some action(s) and then determine the test result
command	A command or script to run as part of the test. A multi-line command or shell script can be used. Refer to the plugin field above for significance to the test outcome.
category_id	Groups tests together for convenience in UIs etc.
estimated_duration	An estimate of the time taken to execute the job. Uses hours(h), minutes(m) and seconds(s) format e.g. 1h 23m 4s

Further reading: http://checkbox.readthedocs.io/en/latest/units/job.html

Test plans

Test Plans are a facility for describing a sequence of Job definitions that should be executed together. Jobs definitions are selected for inclusion in a Test Plan by either listing their identifier (see id: field above) or by inclusion of a regular expression that matches their identifier.

Here is an example of a Test Plan from plainbox-provider-snappy, it has been abbreviated:

id: snappy-generic
unit: test plan
_name: QA tests for Snappy Ubuntu Core devices
estimated_duration: 1h
include:
 wifi/.*
 audio/.*

id	A unique identifier for the test plan
unit	Distinguishes this definition from that of e.g. a test
_name	A human readable name for the test plan
estimated_duration	A estimate of the time taken to execute the test plan. Uses hours(h), minutes(m) and seconds(s) format e.g. 1h 23m 4s
include _id	The list of tests that make up the test plan. It can be multi-line and include individual job identifiers or patterns matching multiple identifiers

Further reading: http://checkbox.readthedocs.io/en/latest/units/test-plan.html

Creating a test in five easy steps

1. Configure your development environment

Development of Checkbox tests is best carried out on an Ubuntu Desktop system. You will need either a dedicated PC or Virtual Machine running Ubuntu Desktop 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) to gain access to the tools supporting the building of packages for snappy Ubuntu Core.

When your system is up and running make sure the following packages are installed:

$ sudo apt install snapcraft git:

And to ease development, remove these pre-installed providers:

$ sudo apt remove plainbox-provider-checkbox plainbox-provider-resource-generic

    You should now have all the tools required to modify and build a provider.

2. Get the source

Clone the providers:

$ git clone https://git.launchpad.net/plainbox-provider-snappy

Clone the snapcraft packaging branch:

$ git clone https://git.launchpad.net/~checkbox-dev/plainbox-provider-snappy/+git/packaging

Further instructions will assume these were cloned in to your user’s home directory.

3. Make your changes

The units folder contains a number of files named after categories. This is not a requirement, but has been used here too make finding tests a bit easier. Either create a new file or edit an existing category.:

$ git checkout -b <NEW-BRANCH>
$ touch ~/plainbox-provider-snappy/plainbox-provider-snappy/units/<category>.pxu
$ editor ~/plainbox-provider-snappy/plainbox-provider-snappy/units/<category>.pxu

If adding a new test, make sure to add the test id to the “includes” section of any test plans you’d like this test to be part of.

4. Check your test is valid

Use the provider management script to check the provider is still valid after your modifications:

$ cd ~/plainbox-provider-snappy/plainbox-provider-snappy-resource
$ ./manage.py develop
$ cd ~/plainbox-provider-snappy/plainbox-provider-snappy
$ ./manage.py validate

The validate tool will provide advisories to indicate places where you provider does not follow best practices, warnings to indicate places where runtime issues could arise, and errors to indicate things which must be fixed for the provider to be parsed and run correctly by Checkbox. This validation result is given in the last line:

The provider seems to be valid

5. Build the Checkbox snap package

The tools to build a new version of the Checkbox tool snap package are found in your clone of the packaging branch. This uses the snapcraft tool which is controlled by the snapcraft.yaml file. To build a snap with your local changes examine this file for the source sections of the provider parts:

$ editor ~/packaging/snapcraft.yaml

...
    plainbox-provider-snappy:
        after: [checkbox]
...

Modify these so the point to your local providers:[a][b]:

...
    plainbox-provider-snappy:
        source: <path-to-local-provider>
        source-type: local
        after: [checkbox]
...

Then you can build the snap package:

$ snapcraft clean
...
$ snapcraft
...
Snapped checkbox-snappy_0.10~s16_amd64.snap

6. Run the tests

See Running Checkbox on Ubuntu Core which describes the process of installing and running the snap.

7. Submit your modifications to the project

To push code, report bugs etc. you will require a launchpad account: https://login.launchpad.net/

Once you have an account you will be able to push code up to Launchpad. You can they request a merge in to the master repository. To get the code to Launchpad follow these steps:

$ git add <file>
$ git commit -m “Adds a test for...”
$ git remote add my-repo git+ssh://git.launchpad.net/~<USERNAME>/plainbox-provider-snappy
$ git push my-repo <NEW-BRANCH>

If you navigate to the plainbox-provider-snappy project on launchpad you should now see your repository listed under the “Other repositories” section. Here you can see my (jocave) personal repository listed at the top:

Clicking on your repository will take you to an overview page listing all your branches:

Click on the branch you have uploaded and there will be an option to “Propose for merging”.

Select this and fill out the form as follows:

Members of the team that maintain the project will be alerted to the Merge Request and will review it for landing.

Running Checkbox on Ubuntu Core

Introduction

Checkbox is a hardware testing tool developed by Canonical for certifying hardware with Ubuntu. Checkbox is free software and is available at https://launchpad.net/checkbox-project.

To support the release of devices running snappy Ubuntu Core, Canonical has produced versions of Checkbox tailored specifically for these systems.

This document aims to provide the reader with enough information to install and run Checkbox on an Ubuntu Core system, and how to view/interpret/submit test results.

Installation

Installing Ubuntu Core on KVM

Follow the Ubuntu tutorial to install Ubuntu Core on KVM.

Installing Checkbox Snap

Now you are ready to install the Checkbox snap, install it straight from the store:

$ snap install checkbox-snappy --devmode

Running Checkbox

Launch Checkbox using:

$ checkbox-snappy.test-runner

Checkbox keeps track of previous test runs, so if a session is not completed, you’ll be asked to resume your previous run or create a new session:

The first selection screen will ask you to select a test plan to run:

Move the selection with the arrow keys, select with Space and confirm your choice by pressing Enter. The next screen will allow you to fine tune the tests you want to run:

Tests are grouped by categories. Expand/collapse with Enter, select/unselect with Space (also works on categories). Press S to select all and D to deselect all the tests. Press H to display a help screen with more keyboard shortcuts.

Start the tests by pressing T.

Checkbox is a test runner able to process fully automated tests/commands and tests requiring user interaction (whether to setup or plug something to the device, e.g. USB insertion or to confirm that the device acts as expected, e.g. a led blinks).

Please refer to the Checkbox documentation to learn more about the supported types of tests.

A fully automated test will stream stdout/stderr to your terminal allowing you to immediately look at the I/O logs (if the session is run interactively). Attachments jobs are treated differently as they could generate lots of I/O. Therefore their outputs are hidden by default.

Interactive jobs will pause the test runner and detail the steps to complete the test:

Getting Results

When the test selection has been run, the first displayed screen will allow you to re-run failed jobs:

Commands to select the tests to rerun are the same used to select tests in the first selection screen. Here you can re-run your selection with R or finish the session by pressing F.

Checkbox will then print the the test results in the terminal and save them in different formats locally on the device (and print their respective filenames):

The resulting reports can be pulled from the system via scp for instance.

Creating a custom Checkbox application for Ubuntu Core testing

This guide describes how to create a custom Checkbox application for testing a new project (project meaning a new system that we want to test with Checkbox).

Initialize the project

Creating your working directory and initializing the projects. Make sure you have at least snapcraft version 2.13 (available in Ubuntu 16.04 or newer).:

mkdir checkbox-myproject
cd checkbox-myproject
snapcraft init
git init

You will now have a snapcraft.yaml file in the snap directory. Modify it and insert your title, description, version.

snap/snapcraft.yaml

name: checkbox-myproject
version: 1
summary: Checkbox tool for MyProject
description: Checkbox tool for MyProject
grade: devel
confinement: strict

Adding parts

Add the basic reusable snappy provider parts.

snap/snapcraft.yaml

(...)
parts:
    plainbox-provider-snappy:
        after: [plainbox-provider-snappy-resource]
    plainbox-provider-snappy-resource:
        after: [plainbox-dev, checkbox-support-dev, checkbox-ng-dev]

    network-tools:
        plugin: nil
        stage-packages:
            - network-manager
            - modemmanager
            - hostapd
            - iw
        snap:
            - usr/bin/mmcli
            - usr/lib/*/libmm-glib.so*
            - usr/bin/nmcli
            - usr/lib/*/libnm*
            - usr/sbin/hostapd
            - sbin/iw

Create a device/project specific provider

$ plainbox startprovider --empty com.canonical.qa.myproject:
plainbox-provider-myproject

The directory name for the provider is quite a mouthful, let’s change it to something more manageable.

$ mv com.canonical.qa.myproject:plainbox-provider-myproject
plainbox-provider-myproject

This new provider has to also be included as a part of the snap

:caption: snap/snapcraft.yaml
:name: snapcraft.yaml-with-custom-provider

(...)
parts:
    plainbox-provider-myproject:
        plugin: plainbox-provider
        source: ./plainbox-provider-myproject
        after: [plainbox-provider-snappy]

Create your new test plans (and jobs to go in them)

Edit the plainbox-provider-myproject provider by adding jobs and particularly test plans that list all the jobs that you want to run.

By convention units reside in .pxu files in the units directory of the provider. Let’s create one

$ cd plainbox-provider-myproject
$ mkdir units

Let’s add a job from Checkbox tutorials

units/jobs.pxu

id: my-first-job
_summary: 10GB available in $HOME
_description:
    this test checks if there's at least 10gb of free space in user's home
        directory
plugin: shell
estimated_duration: 0.01
command: [ `df -B 1G --output=avail $HOME |tail -n1` -gt 10 ]

You may read more on how to write jobs here: Job Unit

It is a good practice to group jobs in test plans, here’s one that will include the my-first-job

unit/test-plan.pxu

unit: test plan
id: my-project-custom
_name: MyProject tests
_description:
    This test plan includes all test related to MyProject
include:
    my-first-job

You may read more on test plans here: Test Plan Unit

Reusing existing provider(s)

It’s best not to duplicate stuff, so if the test you want to run already exists in another provider it is best to include that provider in the snap, and include the test, or whole test plans from that provider in your new testing project.

Let’s reuse disk tests from the “plainbox-provider-snappy” provider that we already have as a part of the snap. All we need is a test plan that will include both reused disk tests and the new custom ones.

unit/test-plan.pxu

id: my-project-all-tests
_name: All MyProject tests
_description:
    This test plan includes some disk tests from plainbox-provider-snappy
    and the my-first-job test.
include:
    com.canonical.certification::disk/detect
    com.canonical.certification::disk/stats_.*
    my-first-job

You can also include the whole external test plan. Let’s reuse the CPU testing suite from plainbox-provider-snappy.

unit/test-plan.pxu

unit: test plan
id: my-project-all-tests
_name: All MyProject tests
_description:
    This test plan includes some disk tests from plainbox-provider-snappy
    and the my-first-job test.
include:
    com.canonical.certification::disk/detect
    com.canonical.certification::disk/stats_.*
    my-first-job
nested_part:
    com.canonical.certification::cpu-full

Create Checkbox Launchers configurations

Launchers help to predefine how Checkbox should run. Read more here: Checkbox launchers tutorial

First, let’s leave the provider directory and go back to the checkbox-myproject.

$ cd ..

and write the first launcher

launchers/myproject-test-runner

#!/usr/bin/env checkbox-cli-wrapper
[launcher]
app_id = com.canonical.qa.myproject:checkbox
launcher_version = 1
stock_reports = text, submission_files

[test plan]
filter = *myproject*, *tpm-smoke-tests

Create wrapper scripts

We currently need wrapper scripts to discover providers, set up the execution environment and work around a few other snappy issues. Add one like this:

launchers/checkbox-cli-wrapper:

#!/bin/bash

export PATH="$PATH:$SNAP/usr/sbin"
exec python3 $(which checkbox-cli) "$@"

Now we need to make the launchers executable

chmod +x launchers/*

snap/snapcraft.yaml

(...)
launchers:
    plugin: dump
    source: launchers/
    organize:
        '*': bin/

Declare the launchers to be Apps that exist in your Snap

snap/snapcraft.yaml

(...)
apps:
    myproject-test-runner:
        command: bin/myproject-test-runner

What’s left is to snap it all together!

$ snapcraft

Glossary

Hardware certification

A process of ensuring that a specific device works well with Ubuntu. For more details see our certification program:

https://certification.ubuntu.com/certification/

Hardware certification team

A team inside Canonical working on Hardware Certification.

Checkbox

Checkbox is a hardware testing tool developed by Canonical for certifying hardware with Ubuntu. Checkbox is free software and is available at http://launchpad.net/checkbox.

Checkbox-ng

Name of the package in Ubuntu Archive that contains Checkbox.

Plainbox

Plainbox is a functional core of the Checkbox. These days it’s almost synonymous with Checkbox.

Test plan

Test plans are text files used by Checkbox to select jobs for execution. They can include simple regular expressions to match and pick many similar jobs at once.

Job

Jobs are smallest units of testing that can be performed by Checkbox. All jobs have an unique name. There are many types of jobs, some are fully automated others are fully manual. Some jobs are only an implementation detail and a part of the internal architecture of Checkbox.

Provider

A container for jobs, test plans, private executables and data. Providers are the foundation of Checkbox as they provide all of the content. Providers can be created and managed by any entity, separately from the Checkbox project.

Namespace

A private space for naming job definitions. Each job definition has a partial identifier and a full identifier (typically just called job id). The partial identifier is encoded in job definition file. The full identifier is composed of the namespace of a job provider and the partial identifier, joined with the double-colon string ::.

Resources

Resources are collections of key-value data sets that are generated by special resource jobs. They are extensively used to indicate hardware or software dependencies. For example a bluetooth test may indicate it requires bluetooth hardware and appropriate software packages installed.

Bootstrapping

Phase of a Checkbox session where resource jobs are executed to gather information about the hardware.

Requirement program

Requirement programs are small (one to few lines) programs that use a subset of python to execute some code against resources. They are what actually describes the relationship of a Job to some Resources. For example a resource program package.name == "bluez" indicates that at least one resource generated by the package job has a key name equal to the string bluez.

Attachment

Attachments are a special type of a Job that can create an attachment record in the submission reports. They are commonly used to include basic system information files and output of certain commands which can aid in system certification.

Certification Website

The website https://certification.canonical.com/

Secure ID

An identifier, similar to Canonical ID, used for hardware certification. This identifier is used when interacting with the Certification Website, it does not reveal anything about the actual hardware (like the manufacturer name or device name).

PyPI

The Python Package Index where any developer can share their python programs and libraries. Pypi is available at: https://pypi.org/.

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