KVM Unit Tests

Important

This feature might not be applicable to all Platforms. Please check individual Platform pages, section Supported Features to confirm if this feature is listed as supported.

Overview of kvm-unit-tests

KVM unit testing started off alongside of original project KVM. It’s purpose was to validate all the supported features of KVM. With evolving development of KVM, very quickly it became necessary to standardize the process of validation which motivated the kvm-unit-tests project. It’s basically a collection of small standalone programs which are used as tiny guest operating systems (OS) to test KVM. Since KVM is part of Linux kernel, any userspace virtual machine manager (VMM) such as, qemu or kvmtool can be used for launching these guest OSes which then validate specific feature as implemented by the Linux KVM. Running of these unit testcases will also help in validation of the userspace hypervisor tool. The kvm-unit-tests framework supports multiple architectures e.g. i386, x86_64, armv7 (arm), armv8 (arm64), ppc64, ppc64le, and s390x. To learn more about the framework and testdevs please follow the official page for kvm-unit-tests.

Build the platform software

Note

This section assumes the user has completed the chapter Getting Started and has a functional working environment.

This section describes the procedure to build the sofware stack required to perform KVM unit testing. Following software packages from the Neoverse reference platform software stack are needed to do the testing:

Software stack for buildroot boot as given in Buildroot guide,

kvm-unit-tests built for kvmtool target,

Kvmtool VMM.

Skip this section if a Buildroot build is already completed for the platform as the kvmtool and kvm-unit-tests are already built as part of the buildroot build of the platform software stack.

To build the software stack for buildroot boot, the command to be used is
```
./build-scripts/rdinfra/build-test-buildroot.sh -p <platform name> <command>
```
Supported command line options are listed below
- <platform name>
  - Lookup a platform name in Platform Names.
- <command>
  - Supported commands are
    - clean
    - build
    - package
    - all (all of the three above)
Examples of the build command are:
- Command to clean, build and package the software stack needed for the buildroot boot on RD-N2 platform:
```
./build-scripts/rdinfra/build-test-buildroot.sh -p rdn2 all
```

Booting the platform for validation

Boot the target platform FVP with Buildroot filesystem up to the buildroot prompt.
- Set MODEL path before launching the model:
```
cd model-scripts/rdinfra
export MODEL=<absolute path to the platform FVP binary>
```
- Launch buildroot boot:
```
./boot-buildroot.sh -p <platform name> -a <additional_params> -n [true|false]
```
- For example, to start the execution of the RD-N2 model to boot up to the buildroot prompt with network enabled:
```
./boot-buildroot.sh -p rdn2 -n true
```

Running Unit Testcases

The kvmtool (lkvm) and kvm-unit-tests binaries are available in the filesystem on the second partition of the virtio-disk. Mount the vda2 partition on /mnt

mount /dev/vda2 /mnt
ls
  Image                  lost+found             test_smmute.sh
  kvm-ut                 ramdisk-buildroot.img
  kvmtool                smmute

Navigate to the kvm-unit-tests directory and launch the tests script to start all kvm-unit-tests. The test script uses LKVM environment variable with the correct path to lkvm binary.
```
cd kvm-ut
LKVM=/mnt/kvmtool/lkvm ./run_tests_kvmtool_arm.sh
```

This launches all kvm-unit-tests on the platform. Output would look as below:

=== selftest-setup ===

PASS: selftest: setup: smp: number of CPUs matches expectation
INFO: selftest: setup: smp: found 2 CPUs
PASS: selftest: setup: mem: memory size matches expectation
INFO: selftest: setup: mem: found 256 MB
SUMMARY: 2 tests

EXIT: STATUS=1

   === selftest-vectors-kernel ===

PASS: selftest: vectors-kernel: und
PASS: selftest: vectors-kernel: svc
PASS: selftest: vectors-kernel: pabt
SUMMARY: 3 tests

EXIT: STATUS=1

   === selftest-vectors-user ===

PASS: selftest: vectors-user: und
PASS: selftest: vectors-user: svc
SUMMARY: 2 tests

EXIT: STATUS=1

   === selftest-smp ===

INFO: selftest: smp: PSCI version: 1.1
INFO: selftest: smp: PSCI method: hvc
INFO: selftest: smp: CPU  1: MPIDR=0080000001
INFO: selftest: smp: CPU  2: MPIDR=0080000002
INFO: selftest: smp: CPU  3: MPIDR=0080000003
INFO: selftest: smp: CPU  4: MPIDR=0080000004
INFO: selftest: smp: CPU  5: MPIDR=0080000005
....
....
....

This completes the procedure to run kvm-unit-tests for KVM based virtualization validation on the platform.