Attn: CI/Jenkins people; Run bhyve instance for testing pf

[Panagiotes Mousikides]

Den 2017-07-16 kl. 21:11, skrev Alan Somers:
> On Sun, Jul 16, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Panagiotes Mousikides
> <paggas1 at yandex.com> wrote:
>> Hello everybody!
>>
>> I am working on adding tests to the FreeBSD test suite for testing pf, the
>> network packet filter.
>>
>> These tests need at least two machines running and connected to each other,
>> with one machine generating network traffic and the other running pf and
>> filtering the traffic.  I am looking for a way to fire off a bhyve instance
>> to serve as the second machine, the first being the actual machine I am
>> running the tests on. This should be done completely automatically, with
>> scripts to configure all network interfaces and to preferably also set up an
>> SSH server on the bhyve instance.
>>
>> This bhyve instance could start off as running the latest stable version of
>> FreeBSD, or it could be configured to run a snapshot of the development
>> tree.  The aim is to have the desired version of FreeBSD that we want to
>> test running on it.  Ideally this would be done in such a way that we can
>> reuse the machine for further tests, instead of rebuilding everything from
>> scratch for each test.
>>
>> What I am looking for is the best way to do this, preferably so that it can
>> be easily integrated into the CI work being done at Jenkins.  What do you
>> think?  Any input is welcome!
>>
>> All the best,
>> Panagiotes
> It's possible to setup CI systems that involve multiple machines
> networked together.  I've done it.  But it's complicated, fragile, and
> slow.  I advise you to consider very carefully whether you truly need
> multiple VMs.  What about creating an epair(4)?  You could run pf on
> epair0b and generate traffic from epair0a.  That would be faster than
> spinning up VMs, and would be very easy to integrate into any other CI
> system.  Would that work?
>
> -Alan
>
Hi Alan!

Thank you for the tip about epair(4), it sounds really like an 
interesting approach to my problem.  I will look into it!

Best regards,
Panagiotes