How do the NPTest parameters work?
NPTest.pm is a perl module, originally written by Peter Bray, and provides
some basic functions for testing the plugins. It has two main helpers:
getTestParameter and testCmd.
getTestParameter
Used to get parameters given in previous test runs. Use the 3 parameter version (the 4 parameter version is deprecated).
Saved parameters are put in /var/tmp/NPTest.cache. Unfortunately, there is
no easy way of altering this - you will have to manually change this file to
edit existing parameters.
If you are adding new parameters, there are three values for the parameters that you need to be aware of:
- default value
- the value that you check against in the test script
- an empty string, which is returned by getTestParameter when the test is run via automated testing (technically, when no terminal is associated to the test run)
You should try and ensure current tests are not affected when a new parameter
is added. So it may be better to say NP_INTERNET_ACCESS, with information
like default "yes", disable with "no" and check for
NP_INTERNET_ACCESS == "no" to skip the tests.
testCmd
This runs a command and returns an NPTest object back. You can combine Test::More routines with the object to get the return code, output or perf data to test against expected values.
See plugins/t/check_disk.t as an example test script.