Re: Trimming a diskless distribution

[Brett Lymn <blymn%internode.on.net@localhost>]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2018 at 06:47:58PM -0700, Don NetBSD wrote:
> 
> I don't think so.  E.g., anything that relies on (or supports) remote
> clients/services would require some explicit action at a remote node to
> exercise those services.
> 

For your purposes surely either just testing on loopback or on the local
interface from the machine would be sufficient?  You just wanted to make
sure things start.

> E.g., Will ftpd(8) get "tested" if it is invoked via inetd.conf(5)?
> (Ditto everything else therein).
> 

ftp localhost

though you probably want something a bit more robust that fails within a
timeout so the tests move on.

If you want to really test externally then you could use qemu to build a
test virtual machine and use the host at the "external" machine.

> I've been "manually" invoking everything that I want/need to run and
> capturing any errors logged to sort out what might be missing.

Right - atf can automate this bit for you.  If you are doing a
customised build then you will want to do this agin if/when you update
to make sure things are not broken afterwards.  It means you can
validate things in a consistent and repeatable manner.

>  The
> errors alone don't tell you *what* you need to add -- they just tell you
> that something is apparently "missing" or "not working properly".  It
> then boils down to either having a familiarity with how each piece of
> code works *or* digging through the sources to see what MIGHT be the
> problem.

Right, this bit will still need to be done manually but at least you can
automate the running of the tests.

Anyway, up to you how you do this.  Just saying that this is the sort of
stuff that atf is meant for

-- 
Brett Lymn
Let go, or be dragged - Zen proverb.