network/contributing.md

Contributing to the network Linux System Role

Where to start

The first place to go is Contribute. This has all of the common information that all role developers need:

• Role structure and layout
• Development tools - How to run tests and checks
• Ansible recommended practices
• Basic git and github information
• How to create git commits and submit pull requests

Bugs and needed implementations are listed on Github Issues. Issues labeled with help wanted are likely to be suitable for new contributors!

Code is managed on Github, using Pull Requests.

Python Code

The Python code needs to be compatible with the Python versions supported by the role platform.

For example, see meta for the platforms supported by the role.

If the role provides Ansible modules (code in library/ or module_utils/) - these run on the managed node, and typically[1] use the default system python:

• EL6 - python 2.6
• EL7 - python 2.7 or python 3.6 in some cases
• EL8 - python 3.6
• EL9 - python 3.9

If the role provides some other sort of Ansible plugin such as a filter, test, etc. - these run on the control node and typically use whatever version of python that Ansible uses, which in many cases is not the system python, and may be a modularity release such as python311.

In general, it is a good idea to ensure the role python code works on all versions of python supported by tox-lsr from py36 on, and on py27 if the role supports EL7, and on py26 if the role supports EL6.[1]

[1] Advanced users may set ansible_python_interpreter to use a non-system python on the managed node, so it is a good idea to ensure your code has broad python version compatibility, and do not assume your code will only ever be run with the default system python.

Debugging network system role

When using the nm provider, NetworkManager create a checkpoint and reverts the changes on failures. This makes it hard to debug the error. To disable this, set the Ansible variable __network_debug_flags to include the value disable-checkpoints. Also tests clean up by default in case there are failures. They should be tagged as tests::cleanup and can be skipped. To use both, run the test playbooks like this:

ansible-playbook --skip-tags tests::cleanup \
    -e "__network_debug_flags=disable-checkpoints" \
    -i testhost, tests/playbooks/tests_802_1x.yml

NetworkManager Documentation

NM 1.0, it contains a full explanation about the NetworkManager API.

Integration tests with podman

1. Create ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/containers/podman/ if this directory does not exist and cd into this directory.

   mkdir -p ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/containers/podman/
   cd ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/containers/podman/
   

2. Clone the collection plugins for Ansible-Podman into the current directory.

   git clone https://github.com/containers/ansible-podman-collections.git .
   

3. Change directory into the tests subdirectory.

   cd ~/network/tests
   

4. Use podman with -d to run in the background (daemon). Use c7 because centos/systemd is centos7.

   podman run --name lsr-ci-c7 --rm --privileged \
   -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
   -d registry.centos.org/centos/systemd
   

5. Use podman unshare first to run "podman mount" in root mode, use -vi to run ansible as inventory in verbose mode, use -c podman to use the podman connection plugin. NOTE: Some of the tests do not work with podman - see .github/run_test.sh for the list of tests that do not work.

   podman unshare
   ansible-playbook -vi lsr-ci-c7, -c podman tests_provider_nm.yml
   

6. NOTE that this leaves the container running in the background, to kill it:

   podman stop lsr-ci-c7
   podman rm lsr-ci-c7
   

Running CI Tests Locally

Use tox-lsr with qemu

The latest version of tox-lsr supports qemu testing. https://github.com/linux-system-roles/tox-lsr#qemu-testing

Steps:

1. If you are using RHEL or CentOS, enable the EPEL repository for your platform - https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/

2. Use yum or dnf to install standard-test-roles-inventory-qemu

   • If for some reason dnf/yum do not work, just download the script from https://pagure.io/standard-test-roles/raw/master/f/inventory/standard-inventory-qcow2
     • copy to your $PATH, and make sure it is executable

3. Install tox

   • Use yum/dnf to install python3-tox - if that does not work, then use pip install --user tox, then make sure ~/.local/bin is in your $PATH

4. Install tox-lsr https://github.com/linux-system-roles/tox-lsr#how-to-get-it

   pip install --user git+https://github.com/linux-system-roles/tox-lsr@main
   

5. Download the config file to ~/.config/linux-system-roles.json from https://github.com/linux-system-roles/linux-system-roles.github.io/blob/main/download/linux-system-roles.json

6. Assuming you are in a git clone of a role repo which has a tox.ini file - you can use e.g.

   tox -e qemu-ansible-core-2.14 -- --image-name centos-9 tests/tests_default.yml
   

There are many command line options and environment variables which can be used to control the behavior, and you can customize the testenv in tox.ini. See https://github.com/linux-system-roles/tox-lsr#qemu-testing

This method supports RHEL also - will download the latest image for a compose, and will set up the yum repos to point to internal composes.

See https://linux-system-roles.github.io/contribute.html for general development guidelines.