[Avocado-devel] Can we run QEMU Avocado tests without root access?

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé]

On 2/22/21 5:28 PM, Cleber Rosa wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 12:23:17AM +0100, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On a system I want to run the QEMU integration tests I got:
>>
> 
> Would you care to give more information about this system?  Is it
> possible that it's a Debian-like system with "python3-minimal"
> installed instead of "python3"?

Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid

$ dpkg -S $(which python3)
python3-minimal: /usr/bin/python3

>> $ make check-venv
>>   GIT     ui/keycodemapdb tests/fp/berkeley-testfloat-3
>> tests/fp/berkeley-softfloat-3 dtc capstone slirp
>>   VENV    build/tests/venv
>> The virtual environment was not created successfully because ensurepip
>> is not
>> available.  On Debian/Ubuntu systems, you need to install the python3-venv
>> package using the following command.
>>
>>     apt-get install python3-venv
>>
>> You may need to use sudo with that command.  After installing the
>> python3-venv
>> package, recreate your virtual environment.
>>
>> Failing command: ['build/tests/venv/bin/python3', '-Im', 'ensurepip',
>> '--upgrade', '--default-pip']
>>
> 
> make check-{venv,acceptance} won't attempt to install pip, so I'm
> guessing this message is coming from the Python distribution on
> your system.  And notice that the bare venv *has* been created.
> 
>> make: *** [/home/philmd/qemu/tests/Makefile.include:98:
>> build/tests/venv] Error 1
>>
>> However I could do:
>>
>> $ python3 -m pip install --user virtualenv
>> Collecting virtualenv
>>   Downloading virtualenv-20.4.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (7.2 MB)
>>      |████████████████████████████████| 7.2 MB 6.4 MB/s
>> Collecting distlib<1,>=0.3.1
>>   Downloading distlib-0.3.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (335 kB)
>>      |████████████████████████████████| 335 kB 6.4 MB/s
>> Collecting appdirs<2,>=1.4.3
>>   Downloading appdirs-1.4.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (9.6 kB)
>> Requirement already satisfied: six<2,>=1.9.0 in
>> /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from virtualenv) (1.15.0)
>> Collecting filelock<4,>=3.0.0
>>   Downloading filelock-3.0.12-py3-none-any.whl (7.6 kB)
>> Installing collected packages: distlib, appdirs, filelock, virtualenv
>> Successfully installed appdirs-1.4.4 distlib-0.3.1 filelock-3.0.12
>> virtualenv-20.4.2
>>
>> $ virtualenv --version
>> virtualenv 20.4.2 from
>> /home/philmd/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/virtualenv/__init__.py
>>
>> Note, there is still the old tests/venv/ dir created bug:
>>
> 
> OK, noted.  We not have a formal bug report to work on:
> 
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1916506

Thanks!

>> $ make check-venv
>>   GIT     ui/keycodemapdb tests/fp/berkeley-testfloat-3
>> tests/fp/berkeley-softfloat-3 dtc capstone slirp
>> make: Nothing to be done for 'check-venv'.
>>
>> Although it might be true... If I don't have root access, there is
>> nothing to be done ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>>
> 
> With regards to your question on the subject line, one could attempt
> to have a secondary Python installation with the *required packages*
> (as per the documentation) installed as a non-root user.  And then,
> you could give that Python path to configure.  The current
> documentation states:
> 
>    Note: the build environment must be using a Python 3 stack, and have
>    the ``venv`` and ``pip`` packages installed.  If necessary, make sure
>    ``configure`` is called with ``--python=`` and that those modules are
>    available.  On Debian and Ubuntu based systems, depending on the
>    specific version, they may be on packages named ``python3-venv`` and
>    ``python3-pip``.
> 
> IIUC, the improvement you suggest is to not require "python-venv" as a
> package, but install it via "python3 -m pip".  One possible way to
> rely *only* on Python 3 and setuptools (dropping venv and pip
> requirements) would be to do something like:
> 
>    $ python3 -m ensurepip

$ python3 -m ensurepip
/usr/bin/python3: No module named ensurepip

>    $ python3 -m pip install venv

$ python3 -m pip install venv
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement venv
(from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for venv

>    $ make check-venv
> 
> It's a valid approach, in theory.  In practice, depending on your
> distro, you may not have "ensurepip" at all, even if it is a *standard
> Python library*:
> 
>    https://docs.python.org/3/library/ensurepip.html
> 
> You can read about how those packaging decisions can become hell
> in bug reports such as:
> 
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.4/+bug/1290847
> 
> In my experience, venv and pip have caveats and using the distro's
> (complete) packages will give you an overall better experience.
> 
> While *one* could setup the dependencies as non-root, but I don't
> think it should be used in the current check-venv rule.

OK. Well if it isn't fixable, then we can simply add an error message
such: "Missing .... Ask the super administrator to install ...", right?

Thanks for looking at this,

Phil.