Server-side Testsuite Logging

[rachmato]

Dear All

We have run into problems again with OOMEs appearing in the AS server logs during the running of the testsuite. One problem with debuggging such problems is that the only correspondence between the client side test log and the server side log is the time at which debug statements were written, making it possible but difficult to use the server side logs for debugging.

I would like to propose adding steps to the constructor (resp. destructor) of JBossTestCase to write information concerning the current test suite/test case to the server log:
- an easily identifiable banner line containing the package-qualified name of the test case
- the amount of available heap space before the test (resp after the test)

This would make the server side logs easier to read for people trying to debug client side failures and errors.

This could be achieved by modifying the constructor and destructor of JBossTestCase to make calls to appropriate MBeans (MemoryMXMBean, Log4J MBean) to get the available memory, as well as write to the server log itself.

Any comments as to whether this is adviseable or not?

The feature could be set up as a debugging feature, so that it was not active by default,
but given that it would only be used with the testsuite, this may not lead to a great saving.

[clebert.suconic]

On JBossMessaging we have a super class where we use setUp and tearDown to synchronize server and client logs.

http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/messaging/trunk/tests/src/org/jboss/test/messaging/MessagingTestCase.java

It is true though we aways call super.tearDown and super.setUp in all sub classes. Maybe it's possible to do the same thing with some double check on sub-classes.


Example:

http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/messaging/trunk/tests/src/org/jboss/test/messaging/jms/BrowserTest.java

I don't know how this would behave with deployment setups from JBossTestCase, but it is a good idea to at least have the className on server side logs.

[clebert.suconic]

but given that it would only be used with the testsuite, this may not lead to a great saving

In my personal opinion this would be a nice thing to have, if this can be done without breaking other stuff.

[ryan.campbell]

This sounds like a nice solution. Understanding testsuite server logs has always been difficult b ecause there was no correlation.

This should definitely be on by default for every test suite run. I see no reason why you wouldn't want this information.

[clebert.suconic]

I guess this is the kind of thing that when we think about it we wonder why nobody has done it before :-)

[ryan.campbell]

Ok enough hugs & kisses. Let's see some code!

[adrian.brock]

A long time ago, I wrote an aspect that lets you pull down the logging
done on your server side thread and dump it in the client log:

http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossas/trunk/aspects/src/main/org/jboss/aspects/logging

Its basically just a log4j plugin. ThreadLocalAppender

Of course this assumes you are using AOP Remoting to make the request
so it piggy back the log records in the InvocationResponse.

[ryan.campbell]

Richard, this should probably be implemented using setUp() and tearDown() which, as per the contract, will be called for each test* method.

[dimitris]

FYI, for reading the free memory on the server there is the jboss.system:type=ServerInfo mbean.

For the total heap space, it has the following attributes:

FreeMemory (total - used)
TotalMemory (i.e. currently committed memory)
MaxMemory (maximum)

But there is also the listMemoryPools(true/false) operation to give you the same information displayed by JConsole.

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=HowCanIDisplayTheMemoryPoolUsage