Nightly Testing#

Important

These instructions are intended for Met Office reviewers with access to the nightly testing user only.

Modifying and Installing Testing#

Nightly testing is controlled by 2 cronfiles, auto-gen_testing.cron and manual.cron both located in ~/Crontabs/. The first is automatically generated the script generate_test_suite_cron.py which is stored in the SimSys_Scripts github repo and controls the launching and clean up of the nightly rose-stem suites. The second is intended for manually adding tasks which don’t fit the pattern of the regular rose-stem suites.

Rose-stem testing is controlled by a config file located at ~/testing_configs.yaml. This contains entries for each of the suites that will be regularly launched. The following options are available when defining a suite:

  • repo: Required, The fcm repo being run. This string should be match the fcm repo name such that fcm:REPO.xm_tr is a valid url.

  • period: Required, The period with which the job repeats. Options are:

    • weekly: Runs on Mondays, cleans on Sundays.

    • nightly: Runs Tue-Fri, cleans Wed-Sat.

    • nightly_all: Runs Mon-Fri, cleans Tue-Sat.

  • time_launch: Required, 24 hour time format for the time to launch the suite.

  • time_clean: Required, 24 hour time format for the time to clean the previous iteration of this suite. If the period is weekly, the cleanup occurs on a Sunday, otherwise it occurs 1 day later than the suite was run.

  • groups: Required, the rose-stem groups to run.

  • revisions: Optional, Defines what revisions of dependency repos to use. Either set to use the revisions defined in the repo or heads to do HoT testing. Defaults to use Set Revisions.

  • vars: Optional, This is a list format of strings to be added to the rose-stem command with the -S prefix.

  • monitoring: Controls whether to launch the monitoring script on this suite. If true, the monitoring script will be launched at 06:00.

  • cylc_version: Controls which cylc_version to use. The suite is now set up to use primarily cylc8 with some suites being launched at Cylc7 for the UM and Jules. Can be any string beginning “7” or “8” that is a valid cylc install at the site, such that export CYLC_VERSION=<cylc_version> works.

The cronjobs are installed by running the generate_test_suite_cron.py script with the --install command line option. This script is stored in the SimSys_Scripts github repo. It will read a config file, generate a cron file and then install the cronjobs from all files with extension .cron in a specified location. The script has the following command line arguments:

  • -c --config: Required, the path to a yaml file with the testing configurations. For the meto testing user this file is located at ~/ccc.yaml.

  • -f --cron_file: The file the cronjobs will be written to. Defaults to ~/Crontabs/auto-gen_testing.cron.

  • -l --cron_log: The file cron task output will be piped to. Defaults to ~/cron.log.

  • --install: If included will install the cronjobs from files with extension .cron in the location defined by the cron_file argument.

To update and install at meto:

python3 generate_test_suite_cron.py -c ~/Crontabs/nightly_testing_configs.yaml --install

Retriggering Nightlies#

TLDR Instructions#

#  As the testing user
rs8
# Wait for retrigger script to run - answer questions as required
cylc_url
# Select the 2nd url that appears

Full Explanation#

To retrigger the nightlies a script is available at ~frum/SimSys_Scripts/nightly_testing/retrigger_nightlies.py. To run this use the alias rs8 which will load the required modules and set the cylc version to 8. The script will detect any suites from the previous night with failed tasks and ask whether to retrigger them. It will restart requested suites, sleep, and then individually retrigger any failed tasks. Running rs8 PATTERN will only launch suites which match that pattern (no wildcard matching is currently setup), eg. rs8 lfric_apps will restart suites with “lfric_apps” in their name.

To interact with the nightlies open a cylc8 gui by:

export CYLC_VERSION=8
cylc gui --ip=0.0.0.0 --no-browser --debug --Application.log_level=WARN

or the meto user has an alias defined as cylc_url. Copy the 2nd url that appears into your browser.

Suites can also be triggered without using the script. In the gui, select the suite on the left and then click the play triangle at the top. This can also be done on the command line by:

cylc play <NAME-OF-SUITE>

Tasks can be retriggered individually or in groups. Eg, to retrigger all failed tasks, click the menu icon at the top of the page, and then select “Trigger”. In the resulting dialogue box, append the “Tasks” section with :failed then click submit. To retrigger individually is similar but click the menu icon next to the task.

To alter a tasks runtime settings, eg. bump the wallclock, select the jobs menu and then choose Edit Runtime. This will open a dialog box where runtime items can be added/edited. When done click submit and then Trigger (unlike cylc7 it won’t ask you to do this).

Important

When finished Keyboard terminate the cylc url command and choose y when prompted. This shutsdown the cylc server and prevents multiple connections opening.

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