As of version 1.1.5, Slony-I has a common test bed framework intended to better support running a comprehensive set of tests at least somewhat automatically. Older tests used pgbench (not a bad thing) but were troublesome to automate because they were set up to spawn each slon(1) in an xterm for the user to watch.
The new test framework is mostly written in Bourne shell, and is intended to be portable to both Bash (widely used on Linux) and Korn shell (widely found on commercial UNIX systems). The code lives in the source tree under the tests directory.
At present, nearly all of the tests make use of only two databases that, by default, are on a single PostgreSQL postmaster on one host. This is perfectly fine for those tests that involve verifying that Slony-I functions properly on various sorts of data. Those tests do things like varying date styles, and creating tables and sequences that involve unusual names to verify that quoting is being handled properly.
It is also possible to configure environment variables so that the replicated nodes will be placed on different database backends, optionally on remote hosts, running varying versions of PostgreSQL.
Here are some of the vital files...
run_test.sh
This is the central script for running tests. Typical usage is thus:
./run_test.sh
usage ./run_test.sh testname |
You need to specify the subdirectory name of the test set to be run; each such set is stored in a subdirectory of tests.
You may need to set one or more of the following environment variables to reflect your local configuration. For instance, the writer runs "test1" against PostgreSQL 8.0.x using the following command line:
PGBINDIR=/opt/OXRS/dbs/pgsql8/bin PGPORT=5532 PGUSER=cbbrowne ./run_test.sh test1 |
PGBINDIR This determines where the test scripts look for PostgreSQL and Slony-I binaries. The default is /usr/local/pgsql/bin.
There are also variables PGBINDIR1 thru
PGBINDIR13 which allows you to specify a separate path
for each database instance. That will be particularly useful when
testing interoperability of Slony-I across different versions of
PostgreSQL on different platforms. In order to create a database of
each respective version, you need to point to
an initdb of the appropriate
version.
PGPORT This indicates what port the backend is on. By default, 5432 is used.
There are also variables PORT1 thru
PORT13 which allow you to specify a separate port
number for each database instance. That will be particularly useful
when testing interoperability of Slony-I across different versions of
PostgreSQL.
PGUSER By default, the user postgres is used; this is taken as the default user ID to use for all of the databases.
There are also variables USER1 thru
USER13 which allow specifying a separate user name for
each database instance. The tests assume this to be a PostgreSQL
"superuser."
WEAKUSER By default, the user postgres is used; this is taken as the default user ID to use for the SLONIK STORE PATH(7) connections to all of the databases.
There are also variables WEAKUSER1 thru
WEAKUSER13 which allow specifying a separate user name
for each database instance. This user does not
need to be a PostgreSQL "superuser." This user can start
out with no permissions; it winds up granted read permissions on the
tables that the test uses, plus read access throughout the Slony-I
schema, plus write access to one table and sequence used to manage
node locks.
HOST By default, localhost is used.
There are also variables HOST1 thru
HOST13 which allow specifying a separate host for
each database instance.
DB1 thru DB13 By default, slonyregress1 thru slonyregress13 are used.
You may override these from the environment if you have some reason to use different names.
ENCODINGBy default, UNICODE is used, so that tests can create UTF8 tables and test the multibyte capabilities.
MY_MKTEMP_IS_DECREPITIf your version of Linux uses a variation of mktemp that does not generate a full path to the location of the desired temporary file/directory, then set this value.
TMPDIRBy default, the tests will generate their output in /tmp, /usr/tmp, or /var/tmp, unless you set your own value for this environment variable.
SLTOOLDIRWhere to look for Slony-I tools such as slony1_dump.sh.
ARCHIVE[n]If set to "true", for a particular node, which will normally get configured out of human sight in the generic-to-a-particular-test file settings.ik, then this node will be used as a data source for Section 4.4, and this causes the test tools to set up a directory for the archive_dir option.
LOGSHIP[n]If set to "true", for a particular node, which will normally get configured out of human sight in settings.ik for a particular test, then this indicates that this node is being created via Section 4.4, and a slon(1) is not required for this node.
SLONCONF[n]If set to "true", for a particular node, typically handled in settings.ik for a given test, then configuration will be set up in a per-node slon.conf runtime config file.
SLONYTESTER Email address of the person who might be
contacted about the test results. This is stored in the
SLONYTESTFILE, and may eventually be aggregated in some
sort of buildfarm-like registry.
SLONYTESTFILEFile in which to store summary results from tests. Eventually, this may be used to construct a buildfarm-like repository of aggregated test results.
If you run make in the test directory, C programs random_number and random_string will be built which will then be used when generating random data in lieu of using shell/SQL capabilities that are much slower than the C programs.
Within each test, you will find the following files:
README
This file contains a description of the test, and is displayed to the reader when the test is invoked.
generate_dml.sh
This contains script code that generates SQL to perform updates.
init_add_tables.ik
This is a slonik(1) script for adding the tables for the test to repliation.
init_cluster.ik
slonik(1) to initialize the cluster for the test.
init_create_set.ik
slonik(1) to initialize additional nodes to be used in the test.
init_schema.sql
An SQL script to create the tables and sequences required at the start of the test.
init_data.sql
An SQL script to initialize the schema with whatever state is required for the "master" node.
init_subscribe_set.ik
A slonik(1) script to set up subscriptions.
settings.ik
A shell script that is used to control the size of the cluster, how many nodes are to be created, and where the origin is.
schema.diff
A series of SQL queries, one per line, that are to be used to validate that the data matches across all the nodes. Note that in order to avoid spurious failures, the queries must use unambiguous ORDER BY clauses.
If there are additional test steps, such as running SLONIK EXECUTE SCRIPT(7), additional slonik(1) and SQL scripts may be necessary.