In this article I will show you how to set up NetworkManager CI tests on Fedora Linux virtual machine.

What is NMCI

NMCI stands for NetworkManager countinuous integration. It is project on gitlab that provides tests for NetworkManager. The test are written in python behave enviroment. Every test is written in a way acceptance criteria would be written. You can find out more on the NMCI project gitlab page.

Why VM?

Sometimes it can be useful to have quick access to NetworkManager’s CI tests. Maybe when you want to edit a test or run a smaller scale test multiple times. It is not recommended to run NMCI on your own system because it does system-wise changes (adds users, install packages, enable services, etc. ).

Set up Fedora Linux VM

You can use any VM software. Make sure that your VM will be able to connect to the internet. You can check that by typing nmcli in the terminal. You should see atleast one device with active connection. If there is none you will need to create one. After that clone NMCI gitlab repository.

Set up NetworkManager CI

From the root folder of the NMCI project run test_run.sh script. This script needs to be run with a test name from mapper.yaml as a argument to pass. When run, for example like this

test_run.sh bond_config_file

for the first time after clonning the repo it will install any missing dependecies NMCI needs.

Running the tests

Every test belongs to one of the features (bond, bridge, ipv6, etc.). To see all tests of a feature go to features/scenarios/*.feature. To run all tests a feature has can be one by running

runfeature.sh <feature-name>

script in run/ directory. There is also an option to run only part of these tests. That can be done by running

runtest.sh <test-name>

in run/ directory. Name of different test can be either found directly in /feature/scenario/*.feature file or in mapper.yaml file.

Things to look out for

Sometimes a device will not automatically connect when restarting VM or when running test_run.sh for first time. If that happens you will need to manually connect it by using

nmcli device connect <name-of-device>