In openQA we support various backends which are able to 'host' tests. 'svirt' - one of those backends - is so generic that it allows to conned to a virtualization host via SSH a perform shell commands directly.

As VirtualBox has decent command line interface (especially VBoxManage command) it shouldn't be that hard to support VirtualBox in openQA's os-autoinst via svirt backend.

My approach will be to use VirtualBox' native CLI instead of svirt's XML crafting ability in installation/bootloader_virtualbox test module, because libvirt vbox driver in Leap does not support VirtualBox 5 API, and because finding correct attributes for vbox libvirt's driver attributes is time consuming and error prone.

Results/Post Mortem

For a decent VirtualBox support in openQA, VirtualBox would have to make serial port reliable as we rely on it heavily. VNC support is also an underdeveloped after-thought, which might break in the future; RDP support is provided as a non-free addon only (openQA does not support RDP anyway).

On the other hand VirtualBox CLI proved to be easy to use.

openQA bits

• backend
• test setup

Bugs

• Add VNC Extension Pack to VirtualBox
• Serial Port output slows down VM
• Exit code missing from "magic string" on svirt