[Automated-testing] Glossary words unfamiliar to enterprise testers

[Tim.Bird at sony.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cyril Hrubis 
> > You have to spawn the virtual machines.  I assume there's an API for
> starting
> > and stopping them, and maybe for taking snapshots?  Do you have a term
> > for this layer?  (libvirt?, VM manager? - I'm making this up, I have no idea).
> > Is there an API for configuring what appears on the buses inside the VM?
> > Is there an API for indicating how the networking is configured?  This
> > would correspond, roughly, to the DUT control layer I think.
> 
> Basically there is perl library that builds up qemu command line, runs
> the process and also kill it, can do a snapshot, etc.
> 
> https://github.com/os-autoinst/os-
> autoinst/blob/master/backend/qemu.pm
> 
> So I guess that you are right, that we do something along these lines.
> 
> We also have one for ipmi that can controll physical servers:
> 
> https://github.com/os-autoinst/os-autoinst/blob/master/backend/ipmi.pm

Hmmm.  IPMI.  I'm not familiar with it, but it looks like it has some
features that correspond to some of the DUT control concepts
(power control, sensor readings, firmware update, etc.)

This sounds like something we should look at before creating
our own APIs for DUT control.  It's an old spec, and may not apply
completely (and it may be intel-specific), but there are probably
ideas in there worth considering.

> 
> And looking at the paths we obviously call them backends.

So a "backend" controls a VM or a machine?

...

> > > # * Transport (noun) - the method of communicating and transferring
> data
> > > between the test system and the DUT
> > >
> > > Again we use virtual serial console but we do not call it transport.
> >
> > Is there any notion of transferring data to or from the VM during the
> > test?  How are logs retrieved?  (always through the serial console?)
> > How would a trace (like from ftrace) be retrieved?
> 
> I had to look this up and it looks like we do upload files from the VM
> with curl. So the VM relies on having network connection to the host on
> that.
> 
> > For that matter, how is the virtual machine image retrieved (if that
> > is saved as part of test assets)?  What is the name of the layer that
> > handles that, and what APIs are there for that?
> 
> What exactly means 'retrieved' here?
I'm not sure.  I suppose I had in mind some cloud service where
VMs were instantiated and executed, and a web API to download the VM image
from the server to the local machine.

Just to be clear, I'm talking about retrieving or saving the VM image
after a test is run.

I assume if the image is saved for inspection after a test, that it must be
transferred from one place to another (into persistent storage).  Or, if the
VM is running locally, it needs to be "captured" somehow.  Maybe it's
just a file transfer?

> 
> If I want to download it I can download via http:// protocol and it's
> shown in the list of assets in the web UI.

Is the "web UI" for a VM-providing service, or for the SUSE test system (openQA)?
I guess my question was "how does the image get into the openQA filesystem
and into the list of assets for a completed test run?"

Is the VM image preserved for every test that is run, or only for failing tests, or
only on user demand?

Thanks
 -- Tim