456 lines
22 KiB
Text
456 lines
22 KiB
Text
<!--
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The FreeBSD Documentation Project
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<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD DocBook V4.1-Based Extension//EN" [
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<!ENTITY % articles.ent PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook FreeBSD Articles Entity Set//EN">
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%articles.ent;
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]>
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<article>
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<title>Creating a Software Testing Environment Using FreeBSD</title>
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<articleinfo>
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<authorgroup>
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<author>
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<firstname>Chris</firstname>
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<surname>McMahon</surname>
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<affiliation>
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<address><email>christopher.mcmahon@gmail.com</email></address>
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</affiliation>
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</author>
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</authorgroup>
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<pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
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<legalnotice id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
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&tm-attrib.freebsd;
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&tm-attrib.cvsup;
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&tm-attrib.intel;
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&tm-attrib.xfree86;
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&tm-attrib.general;
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</legalnotice>
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<abstract><para>A slightly altered version of this paper was first
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published in the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference
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Proceedings, 2005.</para></abstract>
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</articleinfo>
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<sect1 id="overview">
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<title>Overview</title>
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<para>From late 2003 until early 2005, I was a tester in an
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all-Windows environment. Although unlikely on the face of it,
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FreeBSD became a valuable test tool platform in that context.
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FreeBSD contains useful and powerful applications for any tester
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in any environment.</para>
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<para>Unlike Linux, FreeBSD is a single monolithic project rather
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than a collection of disparate parts assembled into a
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distribution. And the most attractive part of FreeBSD for a
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software tester is the FreeBSD ports collection—a very large,
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managed set of software applications with a single simple and
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uniform installation procedure.</para>
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<para>This paper describes several software test tools from the
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FreeBSD ports collection that I used to test software and
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systems in an all-Windows environment.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="challenge">
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<title>The Challenge</title>
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<para>Software testing environments are radically more complex
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than software development environments. Interconnected systems
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to test, network entities, databases, and filesystems present
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challenges to testers that developers can for the most part mock
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out and essentially ignore. Software testers need more tools,
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and more complex tools, than do software developers.</para>
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<para>On the other hand, software development tools are much more
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highly evolved than software testing tools. There is no Eclipse
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or IntelliJ or even Visual Studio aimed at testing. Testers
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struggle and scratch to find tools appropriate to their test
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environments and appropriate to their Systems Under Test (SUTs).</para>
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<para>Every test environment is different. Finding appropriate
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test tools is challenging. And when a tester has identified a
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set of useful tools, introducing them to the test environment
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and integrating them with the test environment is a challenge.</para>
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</sect1>
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<sect1>
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<title>The FreeBSD Solution</title>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-intro">
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<title>Introduction</title>
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<para>The set of tools available with the FreeBSD Operating
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System is amazing. The FreeBSD <ulink
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url="http://www.freebsd.org/ports">ports collection</ulink>
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contains more than thirteen thousand separate applications,
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all of which have a standard installation procedure and
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conform to a set of guidelines that make them reliable without
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the need to manage dependencies, appropriate versions, and all
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of the other problems that affect even the most well-managed
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Linux distribution or the various versions of Microsoft
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Windows. The monolithic nature of FreeBSD and the FreeBSD
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ports collection removes much of the trouble of integrating
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tools with the test environment, regardless of the OS under
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which the SUT runs. FreeBSD is a highly evolved server
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environment, and contains so many reliable applications, that
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every tester should consider adding a FreeBSD machine (or
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several) to their test environment.</para>
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<para>Of course, all of the applications available in the
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FreeBSD ports collection will not be appropriate for any single
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test environment. Some of the obvious choices for software and
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systems testing are the six hundred or so system utilities,
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the more than one thousand network tools, and the fifty-odd
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benchmarking tools. Whether your test environment is Windows,
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UNIX, Linux, Mac OS, FreeBSD itself, or some combination of
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any of them, FreeBSD and the FreeBSD ports collection is a
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great place to look first.</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-ports">
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<title>How To Use The Ports System</title>
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<para>Installing an application from the FreeBSD ports
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collection is a simple matter of: </para>
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<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cd /usr/ports/foo</userinput>
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&prompt.root; <userinput>make install</userinput></screen>
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<para>and the system does the rest. It reports build status and
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test status, and installs all the relevant documentation as
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well. This aspect of FreeBSD is very attractive to a tester,
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who typically is pressed for time!</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-testing">
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<title>FreeBSD For Testing</title>
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<para>The test environment should be more stable than the SUT.
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Once the tester decides to use the tools available on FreeBSD,
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FreeBSD's long record of reliability makes it an easy choice
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for a test tools platform.</para>
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<para>My own introduction to FreeBSD occurred when I was hired
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by a major vendor of large-scale network security video
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services to be their network-testing person in an all-Windows
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environment. My first assignment was to replace the obsolete,
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buggy, disk imaging system. I chose to do that with an Open
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Source disk imaging system called <ulink
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url="http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/papers/frisbee-usenix03-base.html">Frisbee</ulink>
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which was implemented originally on FreeBSD. I built the
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system—a feature-for-feature replacement for an expensive
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proprietary system—but we never actually used it in our
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production system.</para>
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<para>In the meantime, I had discovered the FreeBSD ports
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collection and started to use some of those tools for testing;
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and I had discovered the power of disk imaging with Frisbee,
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especially for smoke testing and installation testing; and
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FreeBSD became a permanent part of my test lab. The test lab
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I built, and the FreeBSD systems I created still exist, and
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still provide value to the testers there.</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-collab">
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<title>FreeBSD For Collaboration: Twiki</title>
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<para>A wiki is a simple set of web pages to allow many users to
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share information and collaborate on any sort of documents.
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<ulink url="http://twiki.org">Twiki</ulink> is a wiki fine-tuned for
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document management. It has built-in version control and
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security implemented at the user/password level. I used it
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for requirements management and traceability.</para>
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<para>The company I worked for managed their requirements in a
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proprietary tool with a truly byzantine hierarchical
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structure. Although the tool was fine for generating
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requirements, it was horrible for testing. Also
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unfortunately, the tool supported very few export mechanisms.
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From the proprietary tool, I had to:</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem><simpara>Export to Access</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Export from Access to Excel</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Export from Excel to a delimited file</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Import the delimited file to the wiki by means of a Perl script</simpara></listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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<para>And in Twiki I was able to implement version control,
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traceability, and test coverage, all features missing from the
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proprietary tool. This gave me a remarkable ability to trace
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requirements coverage with my tests. Having imported a
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complex hierarchy of sets of requirements, I could use Twiki's
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simple markup features to show each requirement as tested,
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passed, or failed. I could attach test documentation to wiki
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pages, and since I had already scripted the process, it was
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easy to update the requirements as they changed. And Twiki
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itself handled version control for such updates.</para>
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<para>As with all of the examples in this paper, installing
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Twiki on FreeBSD is fairly simple. It takes just a few
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minutes on a FreeBSD system. However, if you want to use Twiki
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on a Microsoft Windows platform, I strongly suggest you read
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the Twiki documentation extremely carefully. I know someone
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who installed Twiki on Windows, and it took him several days.
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Twiki on Windows requires not only knowledge of Windows, but
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also deep knowledge of Cygwin and Perl.</para>
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<para>Furthermore, at one point in the project I had to migrate
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my wiki from a machine running FreeBSD 4.8 to one running
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FreeBSD 5.3. The migration consisted merely of installing
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Twiki on FreeBSD 5.3; using <command>tar</command> on the FreeBSD 4.8
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machine to gather all of the Twiki data files specific to my
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testing; FTPing the gathered files to the new FreeBSD 5.3
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machine; and untarring the file. The complete set of Twiki
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documents migrated with no issues or problems at all. That is
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the power of a unified system like FreeBSD.</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-frisbee">
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<title>FreeBSD For Disk Imaging: Frisbee</title>
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<para>A disk imaging system is a mechanism for saving and
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restoring all of the data on a physical disk. The most
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popular commercial system for doing this is probably the
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product Ghost from Symantec.</para>
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<para>The Frisbee enterprise disk imaging system mentioned above
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had a lot of features I never implemented in the test lab.
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Using Frisbee and an Open Source tool called PXELINUX, I was
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able to:</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem><simpara>Boot the Windows client machines from the network</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Make an image of the client</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Update the BIOS on the client</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Lay down an existing image on the client machine</simpara></listitem>
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<listitem><simpara>Make a set of restore CDs for the client</simpara></listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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<para>In the test lab, I only needed to boot from the Frisbee
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CD, make an image, or lay down an image on the client machine.
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Both Frisbee and proprietary imaging systems allow the user to
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image individual drives on the client, but I never had a need
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to do this.</para>
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<para>Installation testing was a large part of my duties at the
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company where I used FreeBSD. To do this testing, I would
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typically use Frisbee to make an image of a machine containing
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only a Windows OS, install the SUT, and run a smoke test. The
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smoke test typically left the test machine in a very bad
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state. But instead of having to painstakingly clean up the
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mess left by the failed installation, I simply re-imaged the
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machine in question with the bare OS image and started over.
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A typical re-image containing only the Windows OS and a few
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test tools took less than three minutes. Using Frisbee, we
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could run smoke tests on about six builds per day; before
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Frisbee, we could run smoke tests on about three builds per
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week.</para>
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<para>Of course, Ghost or other proprietary tools also image
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machines quickly under these circumstances: once you buy the
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tool, license the software, install it on an appropriate
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server, and configure it properly. I prefer Frisbee to Ghost
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because: Frisbee is marginally faster; Frisbee is very easy to
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install on FreeBSD; and Frisbee is very efficient. Adding a
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couple of small Perl scripts to the normal Frisbee
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distribution gave me an imaging environment tailored for the
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test lab.</para>
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<para>I also used Frisbee to preserve the state of a machine
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after I had uncovered particularly complex defects. That is,
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if it took a large effort (many steps and/or a long duration
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of time) to demonstrate a defect, I could make an image of the
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machine at the point at which the defect was visible, and
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restore the image at will to demonstrate the defect to
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developers or managers.</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-nessus">
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<title>FreeBSD Security Testing: Nessus</title>
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<para>Whenever you have more than one entity on a network, and
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whenever you expose a server to the wider Internet, security
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of the machine itself is always a concern. <ulink
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url="http://www.nessus.org">Nessus</ulink> is an Open Source
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remote vulnerability scanner for security and penetration
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testing that consistently is rated among the top products of
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its type throughout the security industry.</para>
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<para>Nessus probes a remote machine over the network for
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security vulnerabilities. It does a port scan, finds which
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ports are open, and investigates the software that has those
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ports open for a huge number of security risks, for all major
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OSs. It generates detailed reports in a number of formats
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that anyone can understand. The number of security probes
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available in the default installation of Nessus is very large,
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but sophisticated security and penetration testers take
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advantage of NASL, the Nessus Attack Scripting Language, to
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craft their own attacks using Nessus' available features.</para>
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<para>Of interest is that, while Nessus is a free download for
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UNIX-like systems (and is available in the ports collection of
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FreeBSD), it is available on Windows only as a commercial
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product from a company called Tenable. The Tenable product is
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NeWT, Nessus on Windows Technology.</para>
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</sect2>
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<sect2 id="freebsd-network">
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<title>FreeBSD Network Tools</title>
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<para>FreeBSD is most widely used as a robust server platform.
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It follows, then, that tools related to network analysis and
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performance will be highly evolved on FreeBSD. Here is a
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brief description of network diagnostic tools that I found
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invaluable in testing in a networked environment.</para>
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<para>From the name, one would assume that <ulink
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url="http://www.ntop.org">ntop</ulink> emulates the functions of
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the UNIX <command>top</command> command, but for the network
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rather than for the local machine. Perhaps the first version
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did; currently, ntop is capable of providing detailed
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information about a huge number of hosts and their status and
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activities on the network.</para>
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<para>For testing, two features I found very powerful: at a high
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level, <command>ntop</command> shows the amount of network
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traffic on the entire network segment minute-by-minute,
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hour-by-hour, and day-by-day in a graphical format. Also,
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ntop shows information about recent connections between
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individual hosts on the network.</para>
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<para>It is easy to see traffic trends on the network as they
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are occurring; also, if something anomalous appears, ntop
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records detailed information about network connections between
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hosts, including the ports over which the connection happened.
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This was critically important when analyzing software
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issues. If ntop showed a period of time for which traffic was
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particularly high, I would find out which host was generating
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the traffic. I would examine the software running on that
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host, over that port. Often it was a new build with a
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bug.</para>
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<para><ulink url="http://ettercap.sourceforge.net">Ettercap</ulink> is
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a tool for ARP poisoning which can also decipher passwords on
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the fly and corrupt IP traffic by means of a Man In The Middle
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(MITM) attack. However, I used ettercap as a performance tool.
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In my test labs, all of my FreeBSD machines ran on discarded
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hardware, Pentium II processors. I found that when I used
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ettercap to sniff traffic between two hosts, the lack of
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processing power caused ettercap on the slow MITM machine to
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start dropping packets, making it look to the client machine
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in the SUT as if there was interference or other trouble on
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the network. And by varying the load on the FreeBSD machine,
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I could in fact control the number of packets being dropped:
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running ettercap and the UNIX <command>yes</command> utility
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caused 100% packet loss.</para>
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<para>This was my most creative use of a FreeBSD tool for
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testing. In a more straightforward application, any time a
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tester needs to eavesdrop on traffic between two hosts on a
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network, ettercap is an excellent choice because of its power
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and ease of use.</para>
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<para>Perl gets a special mention here because Perl's network
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utilities are outstandingly good compared to other
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languages. Perl <literal>Net::*</literal> modules and
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<literal>IO::Socket::*</literal> modules are robust and
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powerful—but they often fail to compile on Windows. It is
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the ease of use of Perl's network utilities on FreeBSD that
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gets Perl the mention in this section.</para>
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<para>I use Perl's network utilities to impersonate network
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clients and servers for test purposes. On one occasion, I was
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required to test software that was a client to an interface on
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the New York Stock Exchange. Unfortunately, the NYSE test
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server was down about nine days out of ten. I wrote a little
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network server in Perl to emulate simple functions of the NYSE
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server in order to test the client software.</para>
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<para>On another occasion, I had to test some functions on a web
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server. It was not difficult to write a simple Perl HTTP
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client to validate that the server was functioning properly.</para>
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<para>I have also used Perl to validate the output from a server
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sending to a multicast address. I wrote a simple Perl
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multicast client on FreeBSD to monitor the traffic on a
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multicast address. Lincoln Stein's excellent
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<literal>IO::Socket::Multicast</literal> module made it easy.
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(Note: I never got <literal>IO::Socket::Multicast</literal> to
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compile on Windows. I tried it on Windows 2000 and on Windows
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XP.)</para>
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</sect2>
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</sect1>
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<sect1 id="conclusion">
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<title>Conclusion</title>
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<para>I used tools from the FreeBSD ports collection in four
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areas: in the network, where the operating system has very
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little impact on how software behaves; for remote security
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testing and performance testing in order to manipulate remote
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machines over the network regardless of the operating system;
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for disk imaging of Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD machines; and on
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the webserver, where Twiki was my collaboration tool of choice.</para>
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<para>Because the installation procedure for all of these tools is
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standard, I spent relatively little time installing and
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configuring my tools. Because all the tools were hosted on a
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single platform, I had all of my configuration and diagnostic
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information located in just a few places. I kept all of my
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potentially dangerous security tools on a single machine, which
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made my presence on the network tolerable to the company's
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network management staff. And the compatibility between FreeBSD
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versions made it fairly simple to upgrade and to manage multiple
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FreeBSD machines. And of course, I could rely on the
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correctness of my test results, because the system itself is so
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reliable.</para>
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<para>I have tried using Linux in a similar way, but my experience
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is that package management quickly becomes tedious if not
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overwhelming. The FreeBSD ports collection handled that for me.
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And many of these tools are simply not available on Microsoft
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Windows. And when they (or their equivalents) are available,
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their cost, both financial and in terms of overhead, was simply
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too high.</para>
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<para>FreeBSD's simple installation procedures and robust ports
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collection makes it easy to experiment with the huge number of
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tools available. I often find myself browsing the ports
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collection looking for interesting applications to install, just
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to see how they work. (I found ettercap by browsing the ports
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collection, a tool that became very useful very quickly.) It
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became clear that the more tools I used on FreeBSD, the more
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economical became the management of those tools.</para>
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<para>The next time you need to reach into your toolbox for some
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sophisticated, reliable, and powerful testing tools, I hope you
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find them in FreeBSD.</para>
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</sect1>
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<!--
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<sect1>
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<title>Biography</title>
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<para>Chris McMahon has been for nearly a decade a tester of library
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software, telecom, stock trading, and networked video systems. He
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has published a number of articles aimed at technical testers, but
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his true career is at being an enthusiastic beginner. Chris works
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for ThoughtWorks, Inc. as a tester, and can be reached at
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christopher.mcmahon@gmail.com.</para>
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</sect1>
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-->
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</article>
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