tbot Documentation¶

Welcome to tbot! tbot automates the development workflow for embedded systems software. This automation can then also be used for running tests against real hardware, even in CI.

At its core, tbot is a library for interacting with remote hosts over various connections. For example, a target board can be accessed via serial console. Or a TFTP-server via SSH. tbot allows managing all these connections in “parallel”. This means, you can orchestrate complex sequences of interaction between them.

At the moment, the main focus of tbot lies in embedded Linux systems. Support for other systems is definitely intended to be added, too.

To show what tbot can help you with, here are a few simple example usecases:

Boot into Linux and run a few commands over serial console:

@tbot.testcase
def test_linux_simple():
    # request serial connection to Linux on the board
    with tbot.ctx.request(tbot.role.BoardLinux) as lnx:
        # now we can run commands
        lnx.exec0("uname", "-a")

        # or, for example, read a file from the target
        cmdline = (lnx.fsroot / "proc" / "cmdline").read_text()

Define custom commands to boot Linux:

class CustomBoardLinux(board.LinuxUbootConnector, board.LinuxBootLogin, linux.Bash):
    username = "root"
    password = None

    def do_boot(self, uboot):
        # set `autoload` env-var to false to prevent automatic DHCP-boot
        uboot.env("autoload", "false")

        # get an IP-address
        uboot.exec0("dhcp")

        # download kernel + initramfs from TFTP server
        loadaddr = 0x82000000
        uboot.exec0("tftp", hex(loadaddr), f"{tftp_ip}:{kernel_image_path}")

        # and boot it!
        return uboot.boot("bootm", hex(loadaddr))

Network speed test between a board and server:

@tbot.testcase
def test_ethernet_speed():
    with tbot.ctx() as cx:
        # boot into Linux on the board and acquire a shell-session
        lnx = cx.request(tbot.role.BoardLinux)

        # use ssh to connect to a network server to test against
        lh = cx.request(tbot.role.LabHost)

        # start iperf server
        with lh.run("iperf", "-s") as iperf_server:
            # and display its output while waiting for startup
            iperf_server.read_until_timeout(2)

            # now run iperf client on DUT
            tx_report = lnx.exec0("iperf", "-c", server_ip)

            # exit the server with CTRL-C
            tbot.log.message("Server Output:")
            iperf_server.sendcontrol("C")
            iperf_server.terminate0()

Guides

Core Modules

Testcase Modules

Info

tbot Documentation¶

Indices and tables¶