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author | Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> | 2003-09-30 03:34:00 +0000 |
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committer | Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> | 2003-09-30 03:34:00 +0000 |
commit | 78b69c683ea27514c0787b2d1e2244d7182bc72d (patch) | |
tree | de33636f51b016788b75390f87026fcf4d802338 /doc/dbus-test-plan.xml | |
parent | 9a4bd6bf72a8c06227eaf94a59ebf1645faa1e6d (diff) | |
download | dbus-78b69c683ea27514c0787b2d1e2244d7182bc72d.tar.gz |
2003-09-29 Havoc Pennington <hp@pobox.com>
* configure.in: split checks for Doxygen from XML docs, check for
xmlto
* doc/Makefile.am: XML-ify all the docs, and add a blank
dbus-tutorial.xml
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/dbus-test-plan.xml')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/dbus-test-plan.xml | 232 |
1 files changed, 232 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/dbus-test-plan.xml b/doc/dbus-test-plan.xml new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bcb9b3e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/dbus-test-plan.xml @@ -0,0 +1,232 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?> +<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" +"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd" +[ +]> + +<article id="index"> + <articleinfo> + <title>D-BUS Test Plan</title> + <date>14 February 2003</date> + <authorgroup> + <author> + <firstname>Anders</firstname> + <surname>Carlsson</surname> + <affiliation> + <orgname>CodeFactory AB</orgname> + <address><email>andersca@codefactory.se</email></address> + </affiliation> + </author> + </authorgroup> + </articleinfo> + <sect1 id="introduction"> + <title>Introduction</title> + <para> + This document tries to explain the details of the test plan for D-BUS + </para> + <sect2 id="importance-of-testing"> + <title>The importance of testing</title> + <para> + As with any big library or program, testing is important. It + can help find bugs and regressions and make the code better + overall. + </para> + <para> + D-BUS is a large and complex piece of software (about 25,000 + lines of code for the client library, and 2,500 lines of code + for the bus daemon) and it's therefore important to try to make sure + that all parts of the software is functioning correctly. + </para> + <para> + D-BUS can be built with support for testing by passing + <literal>--enable-tests</literal>. to the configure script. It + is recommended that production systems build without testing + since that reduces the D-BUS client library size. + </para> + </sect2> + </sect1> + <sect1 id="client-library"> + <title>Testing the D-BUS client library</title> + <para> + The tests for the client library consist of the dbus-test + program which is a unit test for all aspects of the client + library. Whenever a bug in the client library is found and + fixed, a test is added to make sure that the bug won't occur again. + </para> + <sect2 id="data-structures"> + <title>Data Structures</title> + <para> + The D-BUS client library consists of some data structures that + are used internally; a linked list class, a hashtable class and + a string class. All aspects of those are tested by dbus-test. + </para> + </sect2> + <sect2 id="message-loader"> + <title>Message loader</title> + <para> + The message loader is the part of D-BUS that takes messages in + raw character form and parses them, turning them into DBusMessages. + </para> + <para> + This is one of the parts of D-BUS that + <emphasis>must</emphasis> be absolutely bug-free and + robust. The message loader should be able to handle invalid + and incomplete messages without crashing. Not doing so is a + serious issue and can easily result in D-BUS being exploitable + to DoS attacks. + </para> + <para> + To solve these problems, there is a testing feature called the + Message Builder. The message builder can take a serialized + message in string-form and convert it into a raw character + string which can then be loaded by the message loader. + </para> + <figure> + <title>Example of a message in string form</title> + <programlisting> + # Standard org.freedesktop.DBus.Hello message + + VALID_HEADER + FIELD_NAME name + TYPE STRING + STRING 'org.freedesktop.DBus.Hello' + FIELD_NAME srvc + TYPE STRING + STRING 'org.freedesktop.DBus' + ALIGN 8 + END_LENGTH Header + START_LENGTH Body + END_LENGTH Body + </programlisting> + </figure> + <para> + The file format of messages in string form is documented in + the D-BUS Reference Manual. + </para> + <para> + The message test part of dbus-test is using the message + builder to build different kinds of messages, both valid, + invalid, and invalid ones, to make sure that the loader won't + crash or leak memory of any of those, and that the loader + knows if a message is valid or not. + </para> + <para> + There is also a test program called + <literal>break-loader</literal> that loads a message in + string-form into raw character form using the message + builder. It then randomly changes the message, it can for + example replace single bytes of data or modify the length of + the message. This is to simulate network errors. The + break-loader program saves all the messages leading to errors + so it can easily be run for a long period of time. + </para> + </sect2> + <sect2 id="authentication"> + <title>Authentication</title> + <para> + For testing authentication, there is a testing feature that + can read authentication sequences from a file and play them + back to a dummy server and client to make sure that + authentication is working according to the specification. + </para> + <figure> + <title>Example of an authentication script</title> + <programlisting> + ## this tests a successful auth of type EXTERNAL + + SERVER + SEND 'AUTH EXTERNAL USERNAME_BASE64' + EXPECT_COMMAND OK + EXPECT_STATE WAITING_FOR_INPUT + SEND 'BEGIN' + EXPECT_STATE AUTHENTICATED + </programlisting> + </figure> + </sect2> + </sect1> + <sect1 id="daemon"> + <title>Testing the D-BUS bus daemon</title> + <para> + Since the D-BUS bus daemon is using the D-BUS client library it + will benefit from all tests done on the client library, but + there is still the issue of testing client-server communication. + This is more complicated since it it may require another process + running. + </para> + <sect2 id="debug-transport"> + <title>The debug transport</title> + <para> + In D-BUS, a <emphasis>transport</emphasis> is a class that + handles sending and receiving raw data over a certain + medium. The transport that is used most in D-BUS is the UNIX + transport with sends and recevies data over a UNIX socket. A + transport that tunnels data through X11 client messages is + also under development. + </para> + <para> + The D-BUS debug transport is a specialized transport that + works in-process. This means that a client and server that + exists in the same process can talk to eachother without using + a socket. + </para> + </sect2> + <sect2 id="bus-test"> + <title>The bus-test program</title> + <para> + The bus-test program is a program that is used to test various + parts of the D-BUS bus daemon; robustness and that it conforms + to the specifications. + </para> + <para> + The test program has the necessary code from the bus daemon + linked in, and it uses the debug transport for + communication. This means that the bus daemon code can be + tested without the real bus actually running, which makes + testing easier. + </para> + <para> + The bus-test program should test all major features of the + bus, such as service registration, notification when things + occurs and message matching. + </para> + </sect2> + </sect1> + <sect1 id="other-tests"> + <title>Other tests</title> + + <sect2 id="oom-robustness"> + <title>Out-Of-Memory robustness</title> + <para> + Since D-BUS should be able to be used in embedded devices, and + also as a system service, it should be able to cope with + low-memory situations without exiting or crashing. + </para> + <para> + In practice, this means that both the client and server code + must be able to handle dbus_malloc returning NULL. + </para> + <para> + To test this, two environment variables + exist. <literal>DBUS_MALLOC_FAIL_NTH</literal> will make every + nth call to dbus_malloc return NULL, and + <literal>DBUS_MALLOC_FAIL_GREATER_THAN</literal> will make any + dbus_malloc call with a request for more than the specified + number of bytes fail. + </para> + </sect2> + + <sect2 id="leaks-and-other-stuff"> + <title>Memory leaks and code robustness</title> + <para> + Naturally there are some things that tests can't be written + for, for example things like memory leaks and out-of-bounds + memory reading or writing. + </para> + <para> + Luckily there exists good tools for catching such errors. One + free good tool is <ulink url="http://devel-home.kde.org/~sewardj/">Valgrind</ulink>, which runs the program in a + virtual CPU which makes catching errors easy. All test programs can be run under Valgrind, + </para> + </sect2> + </sect1> +</article> |