kamailio-tests, a testing framework for Kamailio developers

Kamailio is an open source VoIP server, widely used in the VoIP industry for its performance and feature set.

kamailio-tests is a project that aims to provide a level of automated testing for developers.

The main idea is that simple things like loading a module or calling a core or module function can be tested without building an entire infrastructure around Kamailio.

Also, we want to be able to perform the tests against various versions of Kamailio, and on various OS distributions. In this way a backward incompatible function or a regression can be discovered by a developer even though their system uses one single version and OS combination.

This includes also third party libraries, e.g. you may think of testing the HTTP clients with different curl libraries, while Kamailio and OS stay at the same version.

kamailio-test doesn't perform tests at function level (but it requires the application to run) or "integration testing" (because in order to remain generic and compact it doesn't cover complex architectures), but aims to test Kamailio as an isolated application.

In order to achieve this, kamailio-tests relies on Docker to allow developers to experiment and perform their tests in perfect isolation. For example, once you've built the base Docker images you can add and modify tests while travelling on a plane.

Most VoIP platforms have extensive and complex test scenarios that involve setting up accounts, other components, specific logging systems, etc. We can't provide a compact, generic solution that would replace that, but instead we can focus on self-contained (pun intended), simple tests that give us key feedback on issues (and also the opportunity to debug them in that same infrastructure).

The internal structure of the project and how to use it is described in its README, but here I'd like to reiterate how tests are run and how new tests can be added.

Of course you'll need Docker, and it can be a Desktop or server version.

Currently CentOS 7, Debian 9 and Debian 10 are supported via dedicated Dockerfiles.

What version of Kamailio to test can be chosen by simply checking out the desired git branch or tag from Kamailio github repo.

The installation process is described in the README, but let's see comment it here too:

First create a directory where to store the resources and go to it, e.g.:

mkdir kamailio-testing
cd kamailio-testing

Clone the kamailio-tests git repository inside that work directory:

git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio-tests

Clone the kamailio git repository inside that work directory:

git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio

Here you can git checkout the branch or tag you want to test, e.g.

cd kamailio
git checkout 5.3.1
cd ../

Copy the desired Dockerfile from kamailio-tests in the current folder, based on the OS distribution you want, e.g. for Debian Stretch:

cp kamailio-tests/docker/Dockerfile.debian9 Dockerfile

Build the Docker image. Give it the name you want: you'll just have to refer to it when launching the tests. e.g.:

docker build -t kamailio-tests-deb9x .

Run the tests. If you're happy with the default behaviour you can just:

docker run kamailio-tests-deb9x

and all not explicitly excluded tests will be executed.

Some tests may be excluded from execution by listing them in the etc/excludeunits.txt.DISTRIBUTION file, e.g. etc/excludeunits.txt.centos7.

How to add a test?

Create a new folder in units/, with a name starting with 't', followed by a string indicating the module, like 'geoip', and four digits, e.g. 'tgeoip0001'.

Inside this folder the minimum amount of data is a shell script that the test framework will execute and a kamailio.cfg file. See for example this test for geoip module.

The script must start with:

#!/bin/bash
. ../../etc/config
. ../../libs/utils

to prepare configuration and utility commands.

Then you can launch Kamailio with the configuration required, e.g.:

${KAMBIN} -P ${KAMPID} -w ${KAMRUN} -Y ${KAMRUN} -f ./kamailio-tgeoip0001.cfg -a no -ddd -E 2>&1 | tee /tmp/kamailio-tgeoip0001.log &

You can see that logs are being sent to a local file; this is typically how the test result can be verified. Of course you can use a different approach.

Inside the container you have sipsak available, so you can launch a test call to trigger call processing in Kamailio with something like:

sipsak -s sip:alice@127.0.0.1

To help triggering the tests also tools like sipp and pjsua can be considered, but are not currently installed in the docker images.

After waiting for the necessary time, you can just kill Kamailio with

kill_pidfile ${KAMPID}

and check the test result by parsing the log file, e.g.:

grep "ip address is registered in US" /tmp/kamailio-tgeoip0001.log
ret=$?
if [ ! "$ret" -eq 0 ] ; then
    exit 1
fi

'exit 1' will make the test fail.

End the test script with

exit 0

to make it pass.

Adding a README.md inside that same folder is highly recommended.

You can add one or more tests and run them before committing the changes.

Once happy please fork the kamailio-tests repo with your changes and raise a pull request.

Thanks for reading; feedback is welcome.