Running PTP Tests on OpenShift with ansible-collection-redhatci-ocp

Pierre Blanc

5 minutes read

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Introduction

The redhatci.ocp Ansible collection provides a comprehensive set of roles and modules for automating OpenShift Platform interactions, deployment, testing, and continuous integration. While the collection is often used with DCI (Distributed CI), it can also be used independently in standalone Ansible playbooks.

This blog post is part of a series exploring the ansible-collection-redhatci-ocp collection. In this installment, we'll focus on running PTP (Precision Time Protocol) tests on an already deployed OpenShift cluster. PTP is critical for Cloud Native Functions (CNF) workloads that require precise time synchronization, such as 5G RAN applications.

We'll demonstrate how to use the redhatci.ocp.eco_gotests role to execute PTP test suites without requiring DCI infrastructure, making it accessible for teams who want to validate PTP functionality on their existing clusters.

Installing the Collection

Before we can use the collection, you can install it as an RPM package:

dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
dnf -y install https://packages.distributed-ci.io/dci-release.el8.noarch.rpm
dnf -y install ansible-collection-redhatci-ocp

Prerequisites

Before running PTP tests, ensure you have the following prerequisites in place:

Cluster Access

System Requirements

PTP Operator Requirements

The PTP operator must be installed and properly configured on your cluster:

Here's an example of the required configuration:

apiVersion: ptp.openshift.io/v1
kind: PtpOperatorConfig
metadata:
  name: default
  namespace: openshift-ptp
spec:
  ptpEventConfig:
    enableEventPublisher: true
    apiVersion: "2.0"

You can verify the PTP operator installation and configuration:

oc get namespace openshift-ptp
oc get ptpoperatorconfig -n openshift-ptp
oc get ptpoperatorconfig default -n openshift-ptp -o yaml

Registry Authentication

Understanding the eco_gotests Role

The redhatci.ocp.eco_gotests role is designed to run eco-gotests for OpenShift CNF testing. It supports two main test suites:

The role uses Podman to run a containerized test suite that connects to your OpenShift cluster and executes the specified tests. Test results are saved as JUnit XML files in a directory you specify.

Required Variables

The role requires the following variables:

Optional Variables

Running PTP Tests

Now let's create a complete playbook that uses the eco_gotests role:

---
- name: Run PTP tests on OpenShift cluster
  hosts: localhost
  vars:
    eco_gotests_test_suites: ['ptp']
    eco_gotests_log_dir: /tmp/ptp-test-results 
    eco_gotests_kubconfig_dir: /home/user/cluster-configs # must be updated with your kubeconfig directory
  tasks:

    - name: Create log directory
      ansible.builtin.file:
        path: "{{ eco_gotests_log_dir }}"
        state: directory
        mode: '0755'

    - name: Run PTP tests using eco_gotests role
      ansible.builtin.include_role:
        name: redhatci.ocp.eco_gotests

    - name: Display test results location
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "PTP test results are available in {{ eco_gotests_log_dir }}"

After running the playbook, the test results will be available in the log directory you specified (e.g., /tmp/ptp-test-results). You will find JUnit XML result files for each test suite that was executed. These files can be used for further analysis or integration with CI/CD pipelines.

$ cat /tmp/ptp-test-results/ptp_ptp_suite_test_junit.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <testsuites tests="26" disabled="15" errors="0" failures="0" time="1024.203761896">
      <testsuite name="RAN PTP Suite" package="/home/testuser/tests/cnf/ran/ptp" tests="26" disabled="0" skipped="15" errors="0" failures="0" time="1024.203761896" timestamp="2026-01-27T10:57:45">                
          <properties>
              <property name="SuiteSucceeded" value="true"></property>
              <property name="SuiteHasProgrammaticFocus" value="false"></property>
[...]

Conclusion

The ansible-collection-redhatci-ocp collection provides powerful automation capabilities that can be used independently of DCI infrastructure. In this blog post, we demonstrated how to use the eco_gotests role to run PTP tests on an already deployed OpenShift cluster.

This is part of a blog post series exploring the collection's capabilities. Stay tuned for more posts covering other roles and use cases.

For more information:

Pierre Blanc