Linux Test Project

Linux Test Project is a joint project started by SGI, OSDL and Bull developed and maintained by IBM, Cisco, Fujitsu, SUSE, Red Hat, Oracle and others. The project goal is to deliver tests to the open source community that validate the reliability, robustness, and stability of Linux.

The LTP testsuite contains a collection of tools for testing the Linux kernel and related features. Our goal is to improve the Linux kernel and system libraries by bringing test automation to the testing effort. Interested open source contributors are encouraged to join.

Project pages are located at: http://linux-test-project.github.io/

The latest image is always available at: https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/releases

The discussion about the project happens at LTP mailing list: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/ltp

LTP mailing list is archived at: https://lore.kernel.org/ltp/

IRC #ltp at: irc.libera.chat

The git repository is located at GitHub at: https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp

The patchwork instance is at: https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/ltp/list/

Warning!

Be careful with these tests!

Don't run them on production systems. Growfiles, doio, and iogen in particular stress the I/O capabilities of systems and while they should not cause problems on properly functioning systems, they are intended to find (or cause) problems.

Quick guide to running the tests

If you have git, autoconf, automake, m4, pkgconf / pkg-config, libc headers, linux kernel headers and other common development packages installed (see INSTALL and ci/*.sh), the chances are the following will work:

$ git clone https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp.git
$ cd ltp
$ make autotools
$ ./configure

Now you can continue either with compiling and running a single test or with compiling and installing the whole testsuite.

For optional library dependencies look into scripts for major distros in ci/ directory. You can also build whole LTP with ./build.sh script.

Shortcut to running a single test

If you need to execute a single test you actually do not need to compile the whole LTP, if you want to run a syscall testcase following should work.

$ cd testcases/kernel/syscalls/foo
$ make
$ PATH=$PATH:$PWD ./foo01

Shell testcases are a bit more complicated since these need a path to a shell library as well as to compiled binary helpers, but generally following should work.

$ cd testcases/lib
$ make
$ cd ../commands/foo
$ PATH=$PATH:$PWD:$PWD/../../lib/ ./foo01.sh

Open Posix Testsuite has it's own build system which needs Makefiles to be generated first, then compilation should work in subdirectories as well.

$ cd testcases/open_posix_testsuite/
$ make generate-makefiles
$ cd conformance/interfaces/foo
$ make
$ ./foo_1-1.run-test

Compiling and installing all testcases

$ make
$ make install

This will install LTP to /opt/ltp.

• If you have a problem see INSTALL and ./configure --help.
• Failing that, ask for help on the mailing list or Github.

Some tests will be disabled if the configure script can not find their build dependencies.

• If a test returns TCONF due to a missing component, check the ./configure output.
• If a tests fails due to a missing user or group, see the Quick Start section of INSTALL.

Running tests

To run all the test suites

$ cd /opt/ltp
$ ./runltp

Note that many test cases have to be executed as root.

To run a particular test suite

$ ./runltp -f syscalls

To run all tests with madvise in the name

$ ./runltp -f syscalls -s madvise

Also see

$ ./runltp --help

Test suites (e.g. syscalls) are defined in the runtest directory. Each file contains a list of test cases in a simple format, see doc/ltp-run-files.txt.

Each test case has its own executable or script, these can be executed directly

$ testcases/bin/abort01

Some have arguments

$ testcases/bin/mesgq_nstest -m none

The vast majority of test cases accept the -h (help) switch

$ testcases/bin/ioctl01 -h

Many require certain environment variables to be set

$ LTPROOT=/opt/ltp PATH="$PATH:$LTPROOT/testcases/bin" testcases/bin/wc01.sh

Most commonly, the path variable needs to be set and also LTPROOT, but there are a number of other variables, runltp usually sets these for you.

Note that all shell scripts need the PATH to be set. However this is not limited to shell scripts, many C based tests need environment variables as well.

For more info see doc/User-Guidelines.asciidoc or online at https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/User-Guidelines.

Network tests

Network tests require certain setup, described in testcases/network/README.md (online at https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/tree/master/testcases/network).

Containers

Presently running the LTP inside a container is not a shortcut. It will make things much harder for you.

There is a Containerfile which can be used with Docker or Podman. Currently it can build Alpine and OpenSUSE images.

The container can be built with a command like:

$ podman build -t tumbleweed/ltp \
       --build-arg PREFIX=registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/ \
       --build-arg DISTRO_NAME=tumbleweed \
       --build-arg DISTRO_RELEASE=20230925 .

Or just podman build . which will create an Alpine container.

It contains Kirk in /opt/kirk. So the following will run some tests.

$ podman run -it --rm tumbleweed/ltp:latest
$ cd /opt/kirk && ./kirk -f ltp -r syscalls

SUSE also publishes a smaller LTP container that is not based on the Containerfile.

Developers corner

Before you start you should read following documents:

• doc/Test-Writing-Guidelines.asciidoc
• doc/Build-System.asciidoc
• doc/LTP-Library-API-Writing-Guidelines.asciidoc

There is also a step-by-step tutorial:

• doc/C-Test-Case-Tutorial.asciidoc

If something is not covered there don't hesitate to ask on the LTP mailing list. Also note that these documents are available online at:

• https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/Test-Writing-Guidelines
• https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/LTP-Library-API-Writing-Guidelines
• https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/Build-System
• https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/C-Test-Case-Tutorial

Although we accept GitHub pull requests, the preferred way is sending patches to our mailing list.

It's a good idea to test patches on GitHub Actions before posting to mailing list. Our GitHub Actions setup covers various architectures and distributions in order to make sure LTP compiles cleanly on most common configurations. For testing you need to just push your changes to your own LTP fork on GitHub.