Debugging LAVA test failures

There are many potential reasons why tests running in LAVA might fail, or produce unexpected behaviour. Some of them can be easy to track down, but others may be more difficult. The devices, software and test suites can vary massively from one test job to the next, but nonetheless a few common ideas may help you to work out what’s going wrong.

Read the logs

This may seem obvious, but it is all too easy to miss real problems in the test logs! For people not used to diagnosing failures, it is worth reading all the way from deployment through test device boot to the end of the logfile. If a test job fails to complete successfully, it can often be caused by a problem much earlier in the test - don’t assume that the final few lines of the logfile will tell the whole story:

  • A kernel message about failing to load a module or a device failing to initialise may be very easily missed in a long stream of kernel boot messages. Equally, check that the expected device and module messages are present.
  • A ‘syntax error’ from a shell script early in the test run could easily propagate errors to later test results.
  • A test shell may timeout due to an earlier ‘Command not found’ or ‘No such file or directory’.

When writing tests, make things verbose to give yourself more useful logs in case they fail.

Boot failure

If the test system does not (seem to) boot at all, there are a few things worth checking:

  • Did the LAVA dispatcher manage to download and deploy the correct files that were specified in the test job? Check that all the files downloaded OK, and that any additional work needed on them worked OK (e.g. deploying any overlays). You can also specify the expected checksum for each file your test job deploys, to guard against download corruption (see _deploy_action).
  • Did you specify the correct files in your test job? It’s quite easy to make a mistake and use the wrong kernel build, or cut and paste the wrong URL from a directory listing.
  • (Where needed) Did you use the correct DTB for the test device? Symptoms here could include apparent boot failure, as the kernel will either not boot or boot but not provide any useful boot messages.

Failure to find/mount the rootfs

Did the kernel boot OK but then fail to find the root filesystem? This is a common failure mode, and there are quite a few possible causes. Here are some of the more common failure cases.

  • Again, check that the LAVA dispatcher could download and deploy the correct rootfs as specified in the test job.
  • Make sure that your kernel has the right drivers available that it needs to support the rootfs. Depending on your particular setup, they may need to be built-in, or your kernel may need modules to be supplied by an initramfs. Typical modules that may be needed will be for disk devices (e.g. sd_mod), filesystems (e.g. ext4) or network interfaces (e.g. e1000e) if you’re using NFS for the rootfs. You should be able to see what devices are found by the kernel by reading the boot messages; check that the device you are expecting to use does show up there.
  • Make sure that you have specified the correct root device on the kernel command line, using the root= parameter.
  • Make sure that the rootfs includes a working init program, in the correct location. In an initramfs, the default location is /init; this can be over-ridden on the kernel command line using the init= parameter.

Start simple

This is a common theme throughout the suggested workflow for developing tests in LAVA. Start with simple test jobs and verify they work as expected. Add complexity one step at a time, ensuring that each new option or test suite added behaves as expected. It’s much easier to work out what has broken in a test job if you’ve made just one small change to a previous test job that worked fine.

Similarly, if you have a complex test job that’s not working correctly then often the easiest way to find the problem is to simplify the job - remove some of the complexity and re-test. By removing the complex setup in the test, it should be possible to identify the cause of the failure.

If there are standard test jobs available for the device type in question, it might be useful to compare your test job to one of those standard jobs, or even start with one and append your test definitions.

Change one thing at a time

When developing a test, resist the urge to make too many changes at once - test one element at a time. Avoid changing the deployed files and the test definition in the same job. When the deployed files change, use an older test definition and an inline definition to explicitly check for any new support your test will want to use from those new files. If you change too many variables at once, it may become impossible to work out what change caused things to break.

Make your tests and setup verbose

Especially when developing a new test, add plenty of output to explain what is going on. If you are starting with a new test device or new boot files, make it easy to diagnose problems later by adding diagnostics early in the process. In general, it is much easier to debug a failed test when it is clear about what it expects to be happening than one which just stops or says “error” in the middle of a test.

  • If your test configures a network interfaces, add the output of ifconfig or ip a show afterwards to show that it worked.
  • If your test uses a specific block device or filesystem, add the output of df or mount to show what devices and filesystems are available.

If you are writing shell scripts to wrap tests, try using set -x - this will tell the shell to log all lines of your script as it runs them. For example:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
set -x
echo "foo"
a=1
if [ $a -eq 1 ]; then
  echo "yes"
fi

will give the following output:

+ echo foo
foo
+ a=1
+ [ 1 -eq 1 ]
+ echo yes
yes

Common pitfalls

There are some common mistakes using LAVA which can cause issues. If you are experiencing weird problems with your test job, maybe considering these will help.

Avoid using shell operators in YAML lines

Pipes, redirects and nested sub shells will not work reliably when put directly into the YAML. Use a wrapper script (with set -x) instead for safety:

#!/bin/sh

set -e
set -x
ifconfig|grep "inet addr"|grep -v "127.0.0.1"|cut -d: -f2|cut -d' ' -f1

Un-nested sub-shells do work, though:

- lava-test-case multinode-send-network --shell lava-send network hostname=$(hostname) fqdn=$(hostname -f)

Test your result parsers

If you use a custom result parser, configure one of your YAML files to output the entire test result output to stdout so that you can reliably capture a representative block of output. Test your proposed result parser against the block using your favourite language.

Comment out the parser from the YAML if there are particular problems, just to see what the default LAVA parsers can provide.

Note

Parsers can be difficult to debug after being parsed from YAML into shell. LAVA developers used to recommend the use of custom parsers, but experience has shown this to be a mistake. Instead, it is suggested that new test definitions should use custom scripts. This allows the parsing to be debugged outside LAVA, as well as making the test itself more portable.

Be obsessive about paths and scripts

  • If you use cd in your YAML, always store where you were and where you end up using pwd.
  • Output your location prior to calling local wrapper scripts.
  • Ensure that all wrapper scripts are executable in your VCS
  • Ensure that the relevant interpreter is installed. e.g. python is not necessarily part of the test image.
  • Consider installing realpath and use that to debug your directory structure.
  • Avoid the temptation of using absolute paths - LAVA may need to change the absolute locations.

Debugging MultiNode tests

MultiNode tests are necessarily more complex than jobs running on single test devices, and so there are extra places where errors can creep in and cause unexpected failuures.

Simplify your MultiNode test

This may seem obvious, but one of the most common causes of MultiNode test failure is nothing to do with MultiNode. If your MultiNode tests are failing to boot correctly, check that the basics of each of the desired roles works independently. Remove the MultiNode pieces and just check that the specifiied deploy and boot actions work alone in a single-node test with the right device-type. Then add back the MultiNode configuration, changing one thing at a time and ensuring that things still work as you build up complexity.

Check that your message ID labels are consistent

A lava-wait must be preceded by a lava-send from at least one other device in the group, or the waiting device will timeout

This can be a particular problem if you remove test definitions or edit a YAML file without checking other uses of the same file. The simplest (and hence recommened) way to use the MultiNode synchronisation calls is using inline definitions.

A failed test is not necessarily a bug in the test

Always check whether the test result came back as a failure due to some cause other than the test definition itself. Particularly with MultiNode test jobs, a test can fail for other reasons like an unrelated failure on a different board within the group.