ServerQuickStart

Autotest Server Quick Start

You can use the autoserv program located in the server directory of the Autotest tree to run tests on one or more remote machines. The machines must be configured so that you can ssh to them without being prompted for a password.

A simple example is running the sleeptest on a remote machine. Say you have two machines: On one you have installed the Autotest code (which will be referred to as the server), and the other is a machine named mack (which will be referred to as the client).

Then you can run sleeptest on the client. Go to the top of the autotest tree:

server/autotest-remote -m mack -c client/tests/sleeptest/control

This will result in quite a bit of activity on the screen. Perhaps we log too much, but you will definitely know that something is happening. After some time the output should stop and if all went well you will see that the results directory is now full of files and directories. Before explaining that, first lets dissect the command above. The "-m" option is followed by a comma delimited list of machine names (clients) on which you wish to run your test. The "-c" option tells autoserv that this is a client side test you are running. And the last argument is the control file you wish to execute (in this case the sleeptest control file).

The results directory will generally contain a copy of the control file that is run (named control.srv). There will also be a keyval file and a status.log file. In addition there will be a debug/ directory, and a sysinfo/ directory along with a directory for each client machine (in this case a mack/ directory). The results of the test are located in the directories named for each client.

A server side control file allows the possibility of running a test that involves two or more machines interacting. An example of a server side multi-machine control file is server/tests/netperf2/control.srv. This control file requires 2 or more client machines to run. An example of how to use autoserv follows

server/autotest-remote -m mack,nack -s server/tests/netperf2/control.srv

In this example we are again running the command from the results/ directory. Here we see the "-s" option which specifies this as a server side control file. We have specified two machines using the "-m" option (mack and nack). The command should produce a flurry of activity. Afterwards you can explore the contents of the results directory to see the results. Of special note will be the contents of the mack/netperf2/results/keyval and nack/netperf2/results/keyval files. One of these files will list various performance metrics acquired by the netperf test.