Smokey loop tests
Smokey runs in a continuous loop in each environment.
and dumps the output of each run into a tmp/smokey.json file.
We have Icinga checks for most Smokey features, so that
we are alerted when some aspect of GOV.UK may be in trouble.
When a test fails, you should see a “Smokey loop for <feature>” alert. The alert description should contain the reason for the failure, so you can diagnose the problem.
NOTE: we have a separate “Smokey” alert for manual runs of the Smokey job in Jenkins. This alert covers all Smokey features, while “Smokey loop” alerts are more granular.
Try kicking the Nginx machines
If many of the tests are failing in an AWS environment, it may be because the Nginx services haven’t registered new boxes coming online or old ones going offline. You can try to fix this by:
SSHing into each cache, draft_cache and monitoring box and restarting nginx:
$ sudo service nginx reload
Once that is complete you can restart the smokey loop on the monitoring box:
$ sudo service smokey-loop restart
Try removing stuck processes
Sometimes the processes can get stuck e.g. waiting on a network connection, but this should be rare.
sudo service smokey-loop stop
sudo pkill -f -9 smoke
sudo pkill -f -9 chrome
sudo service smokey-loop start
After running the above commands, you should soon see the /tmp/smokey.json file has been modified.
Try a manual run of the loop
The Smokey Loop is just a repeat run of Cucumber, which you can do yourself.
sudo su - smokey
cd /opt/smokey
govuk_setenv smokey bundle exec cucumber ENVIRONMENT=integration --profile integration
You should then see the Cucumber output, with all the tests passing.
Beware the proxy. If you quit the process before it completes, then it won’t clean up properly. You’ll need to manually find it (
ps -ef | grep browserup) and kill it.
Check the Smokey credentials
These tests rely on a user in GOV.UK Signon. All Signon users have their passphrase expire periodically. This will cause the tests to fail.
You should change the passphrase of the account and rotate it in encrypted hieradata. Here’s an example PR in govuk-secrets.