Getting started

How to install Testground, and run your first test plan

Installing Testground

Prerequisites

• Docker

• Go 1.16, or higher

Installation

Currently, we don't distribute binaries, so you will have to build from source.

$ git clone https://github.com/testground/testground.git

$ cd testground

# compile Testground and all related dependencies
$ make install

Running Testground

In order to use Testground, you need to have a running Testground daemon.

# start the Testground daemon, listening by default on localhost:8042
# it processes commands received from the Testground client
$ testground daemon

$TESTGROUND_HOME is an important directory. If not explicitly set, Testground uses $HOME/testground as a default. The layout of $TESTGROUND_HOME is as follows:

$TESTGROUND_HOME
 |
 |__ plans              >>> [c] contains test plans, can be git checkouts, symlinks to local dirs, or the source itself
 |    |__ suite-a       >>> test plans can be grouped in suites (which in turn can be nested); this enables you to host many test plans in a single repo / directory.
 |    |    |__ plan-1   >>> source of a test plan identified by suite-a/plan-1 (relative to $TESTGROUND_HOME/plans)
 |    |    |__ plan-2
 |    |__ plan-3        >>> source of a test plan identified by plan-3 (relative to $TESTGROUND_HOME/plans)
 |
 |__ sdks               >>> [c] hosts the test development SDKs that the client knows about, so they can be used with the --link-sdk option.
 |    |__ sdk-go
 |
 |__ data               >>> [d] data directory
      |__ outputs
      |__ work

[c] = used client-side // [d] = used mostly daemon-side.

Running an example test plan

The first test plan that we will run is the network test plan and the ping-pong test case.

The ping-pong test case starts 2 test plan instances: one that listens on a TCP socket and another that dials it. The test case exercises the sync service as well as the traffic shaping and IP allocation functionality.

Configure $TESTGROUND_HOME and copy the example network test plan into the $TESTGROUND_HOME/plans directory.

# assuming you already started your Testground daemon (as instructed above)
# there should be a `testground` directory in your home folder, i.e. `~/testground`
#
# from your testground/testground Git checkout, run:
$ testground plan import --from ./plans/network
...
created symlink /Users/raul/testground/plans/network -> ./plans/network
imported plans:
network ping-pong

Run the networktestplan and the ping-pong test case with the docker:go builder and the local:docker runner.

?> Make sure you have testground daemon running in another terminal window.

$ testground run single \
         --plan=network \
         --testcase=ping-pong \
         --builder=docker:go \
         --runner=local:docker \
         --instances=2

?> During the first run the Testground daemon sets up the builder and runner environments. Subsequent runs will be faster.

You should see a flurry of activity, including measurements, messages, and runtime events. When the execution concludes, you will see something like:

[...]
INFO run finished successfully {"req_id": "d570c53a", "plan": "network", "case": "ping-pong", "runner": "local:docker", "instances": 2}

>>> Result:

INFO finished run with ID: 5222e5df793b

In the local runners, all test plan run outputs and logs are stored at $TESTGROUND_HOME/data. Collect them into a bundle with the following command (replacing 5222e5df793b with the corresponding run ID):

$ testground collect --runner=local:docker 5222e5df793b
[...]

>>> Result:

INFO    created file: 5222e5df793b.tgz

Open the bundle and you will find the outputs from the test in there:

Configuration (.env.toml)

.env.tomlis a configuration file read by the Testground daemon and the Testground client on startup.

Testground tries to load this file from $TESTGROUND_HOME/.env.toml, where $TESTGROUND_HOME defaults to $HOME/testground by default.

Changing default daemon bind addresses

You can change the default bind addresses by configuring daemon.listen and client.endpoint

.env.toml

[daemon]
listen = ":8080"

[client]
endpoint = "http://localhost:8080"

The endpoint refers to the testground-daemon service, so depending on your setup, this could be, for example, a Load Balancer fronting the kubernetes cluster and forwarding proper requests to the tg-daemon service, or a simple port forward to your local workstation:

[client]
endpoint = "http://localhost:28015" # in case we use port forwarding, like this one here: kubectl port-forward service/testground-daemon 28015:8042

Customize asynchrony

You can customize the number of asynchronous workers, as well as the maximum queue capacity, i.e., the maximum number of pending tasks at a moment in time. In addition, you can adjust the workers' task time execution limit. This is a handy option, if you have long-running tests

.env.toml

[daemon.scheduler]
workers = 2
queue_size = 100
task_timeout_min = 40

AWS integration

When using a remote runner such as cluster:k8s, you should configure the default region:

.env.toml

["aws"]
region = "aws region, such as eu-central-1"

The AWS configuration is also used if you push Docker images to AWS ECR from the docker:go builder using the --build-cfg push_registry=true and --build-cfg registry_type=aws flags.

DockerHub integration

If you want to push Docker images from the docker:go builder to a DockerHub registry, you can configure it.

.env.toml

["dockerhub"]
repo = "repo to be used for testground"
username = "username"
access_token = "docker hub access token"