[HECnet] Re: DECnet Regression Tests?

And that suggests an interesting notion. Many of those tests are of the form: 1. Construct a test packet 2. Submit that test packet to the system being tested (PyDECnet) 3. If a response is expected, check that it arrives and contains what we expect 4. Check the resulting sytem state Those could, in many cases, be adapted to do "black box" testing of other DECnet implementations. The key difference is that as written the tests typically poke at a single protocol layer, and check state by looking into the internals of the layer. A black box test would have to wrap the test packets in the necessary lower layer envelopes to get them to the destination, and the state checks would be limited to what is visible via the management interface (counters and state) or other application APIs. Those would not be terribly difficult things to do. For example, PyDECnet already contains lower layer envelope descriptions, so to take, say, an NSP test packet and wrap it in routing and datalink layer envelopes is not hard to do, nor is unwrapping the reply. One part of my PyDECnet tests is random packet tests, where I construct random crud to send to a layer to verify that it doesn't die. Obviously random packets don't do anything useful, and typically would just get discarded, but it's well known that such abuse tests often break code that isn't sufficiently paranoid. It would be entertaining to subject other DECnets to such abuse. paul