Labgrid provides access to a hardware lab in an automated way. It is
possible to boot U-Boot on boards in the lab without physically touching
them. It relies on relays, USB UARTs and SD muxes, among other things.
By way of background, about 4 years ago I wrong a thing called Labman[1]
which allowed my lab of about 30 devices to be operated remotely, using
tbot for the console and build integration. While it worked OK and I
used it for many bisects, I didn't take it any further.
It turns out that there was already an existing program, called Labgrid,
which I did not know about at time (thank you Tom for telling me). It is
more rounded than Labman and has a number of advantages:
- does not need udev rules, mostly
- has several existing users who rely on it
- supports multiple machines exporting their devices
It lacks a 'lab check' feature and a few other things, but these can be
remedied.
On and off over the past several weeks I have been experimenting with
Labgrid. I have managed to create an initial U-Boot integration (this
series) by adding various features to Labgrid[2] and the U-Boot test
hooks.
I hope that this might inspire others to set up boards and run tests
automatically, rather than relying on infrequent, manual test. Perhaps
it may even be possible to have a number of labs available.
Included in the integration are a number of simple scripts which make it
easy to connect to boards and run tests:
ub-int <target>
Build and boot on a target, starting an interactive session
ub-cli <target>
Build and boot on a target, ensure U-Boot starts and provide an interactive
session from there
ub-smoke <target>
Smoke test U-Boot to check that it boots to a prompt on a target
ub-bisect
Bisect a git tree to locate a failure on a particular target
ub-pyt <target> <testspec>
Run U-Boot pytests on a target
Some of these help to provide the same tbot[4] workflow which I have
relied on for several years, albeit much simpler versions.
The goal here is to create some sort of script which can collect
patches from the mailing list, apply them and test them on a selection
of boards. I suspect that script already exists, so please let me know
what you suggest.
I hope you find this interesting and take a look!
[1] https://github.com/sjg20/u-boot/tree/lab6a
[2] https://github.com/labgrid-project/labgrid/pull/1411
[3] https://github.com/sjg20/uboot-test-hooks/tree/labgrid
[4] https://tbot.tools/index.html
Changes in v3:
- Split out most patches into two new series and update cover letter
Changes in v2:
- Only disable echo if a terminal is detected
- Avoid running a docker image for skipped lab tests
Simon Glass (19):
test: Allow signaling that U-Boot is ready
test: Use a constant for the test timeout
test: Pass stderr to stdout
test: Release board after tests complete
test: Allow connecting to a running board
test: Avoid failing skipped tests
test: Create a common function to get the config
test: Introduce the concept of a role
test: Move the receive code into a function
test: Separate out the exception handling
test: Detect dead connections
test: Tidy up remaining exceptions
test: Introduce lab mode
test: Improve handling of sending commands
test: Fix mulptiplex_log typo
test: Avoid double echo when starting up
test: Try to shut down the lab console gracefully
test: Add a section for closing the connection
CI: Allow running tests on sjg lab
.gitlab-ci.yml | 153 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
test/py/conftest.py | 86 +++++++++++---
test/py/u_boot_console_base.py | 154 ++++++++++++++++++--------
test/py/u_boot_console_exec_attach.py | 31 ++++--
test/py/u_boot_spawn.py | 120 +++++++++++++++++---
test/test-main.c | 16 ++-
6 files changed, 470 insertions(+), 90 deletions(-)
--
2.34.1
