- Home
- Download
- Contribute
- Support
- Cyrus SASL

# Developer Test Environment

This assumes you have your basic server running and you’ve made some changes and you want to test them to work out what’s going right... or wrong.

## Installing Cassandane

Cassandane is a Perl-based integration test suite for Cyrus. Cassandane documentation includes information on setting up tests and writing new tests.

Why “Cassandane”? Wikipedia indicates that Cassandane was the name of the consort of King Cyrus the Great of Persia, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. So that’s kinda cool.

### Install and configure Cassandane

1. Clone the Cassandane repository

   > - `git clone https://github.com/cyrusimap/cassandane.git`

2. Install dependencies

       sudo apt-get install libtest-unit-perl libconfig-inifiles-perl \
           libdatetime-perl libbsd-resource-perl libxml-generator-perl \
           libencode-imaputf7-perl libio-stringy-perl libnews-nntpclient-perl \
           libfile-chdir-perl libnet-server-perl libunix-syslog-perl \
           libdata-uuid-perl libjson-xs-perl libdata-ical-perl libjson-perl \
           libdatetime-format-ical-perl libtext-levenshteinxs-perl \
           libmime-types-perl libdatetime-format-iso8601-perl libcal-dav-perl \
           libclone-perl

   The quickest option for the rest is installing via CPAN, but you could build packages using dh-make-perl if that is preferred.

       sudo cpan -i Tie::DataUUID
       sudo cpan -i XML::Spice
       sudo cpan -i XML::Fast
       sudo cpan -i Data::ICal::TimeZone
       sudo cpan -i Text::VCardFast
       sudo cpan -i Mail::IMAPTalk
       sudo cpan -i List::Pairwise
       sudo cpan -i Convert::Base64
       sudo cpan -i Net::DAVTalk
       sudo cpan -i Net::CardDAVTalk
       sudo cpan -i Net::CalDAVTalk
       sudo cpan -i Mail::JMAPTalk
       sudo cpan -i Math::Int64

3. Install Cassandane

       cd /path/to/cassandane
       make

4. Copy `cassandane.ini.example` to `cassandane.ini`

5. Edit `cassandane.ini` to set up your cassandane environment.

   > - Assuming you configure cyrus with `--prefix=/usr/cyrus` (as above), then the defaults are mostly fine

   > - Set `destdir` to `/var/tmp/cyrus`

   > - Add `[valgrind]` if you’re using it.

   > - Add an `[imaptest]` section. For the moment, it may be necessary to suppress the binary tests as they are buggy upstream still.

   >       [imaptest]
   >       basedir=/path/to/imaptest/imaptest
   >       suppress=append-binary urlauth-binary fetch-binary-mime fetch-binary-mime-qp

   > - Ensure that the following config items are off:

   >       altnamespace = no
   >       unixhierarchysep = no

6. Create a `cyrus` user and matching group and also add `cyrus` to group `mail`

       sudo adduser --system --group cyrus
       sudo adduser cyrus mail

7. Give your user account access to sudo as `cyrus`

   > - `sudo visudo`
   > - add a line like:`username ALL = (cyrus) NOPASSWD: ALL`, where “username” is your own username

8. Make the `destdir` directory, as the `cyrus` user

   > - `sudo -u cyrus mkdir /var/tmp/cass`

### Install IMAPTest

IMAPTest is a testing suite which uses libraries from the Dovecot installation.

1. Fetch and compile Dovecot.

   > - Get the latest nightly snapshot from http://dovecot.org/nightly/dovecot-latest.tar.gz
   > - `./configure && make` (No need for make install)

2. Fetch and compile IMAPTest

   > - Download http://dovecot.org/nightly/imaptest/imaptest-latest.tar.gz
   > - `./configure --with-dovecot=../dovecot-2.2 && make` (No need for make install)
   > - The `--with-dovecot=<path>` parameter is used to specify path to Dovecot v2.2 sources’ root directory.

## Rebuild Cyrus for Testing

Prepare to rebuild by making the source tree shiny and clean as if you’ve done a brand new checkout. Leave no old artifacts lying around!

    cd /path/to/cyrus-imapd
    make clean
    git clean -f -x -d
    autoreconf -v -i

Warning

Apply caution! The `git clean` removes anything that’s a build product, but also anything it doesn’t know about: which may include your new source files you haven’t added yet.

Set the compile flags for testing and debugging. It may be of use to also add `--std=gnu99` here. That does TONS of warnings, and `-g` enables debug mode.

    CFLAGS="-g -fPIC -W -Wall -Wextra -Werror"

Configure the environment.

    ./configure --prefix=/usr/cyrus --with-cyrus-prefix=/usr/cyrus \
    --enable-autocreate --enable-http --enable-unit-tests \
    --enable-replication --enable-nntp --enable-murder \
    --enable-idled --enable-xapian --enable-calalarmd \
    --enable-backup

    make lex-fix   # you need this if compile fails with errors from sieve/sieve.c

And finally, make it.

If you’re testing across versions, the binsymlinks is necessary as older Cyrus doesn’t have the binaries in the new locations. This uses the default install path of `/usr/cyrus/`. It can be useful to also have `/usr/cyrus25`, `/usr/cyrus24`, etc, if you’re testing with older versions as well.

    make -j16 && make -j16 check
    sudo make install
    sudo make install-binsymlinks
    sudo cp tools/mkimap /usr/cyrus/bin/mkimap

## Running the tests

As user `cyrus`, run the tests.

    cd /path/to/cassandane
    sudo -u cyrus ./testrunner.pl -f pretty -j 8

## Debugging and stacktraces

Check out the guide to running Cyrus components under gdb.

In the event of a crash, here’s how to generate a stacktrace.

## Tips and Tricks

Read the script to see other options. If you’re having problems, add more `-v` options to the testrunner to get more info out.

Looking for memory leaks? Run with –valgrind to use valgrind (if it’s installed). It is slower, which is why it doesn’t need to be always used.

Running with -v -v is very noisy, but gives a lot more data. For example: all IMAP telemetry.

Also helpful to run `sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog`, and examine /var/tmp/cass as root to examine log files and disk structures for failed tests.