1 Welcome to iExploder. a highly inefficient, but fairly effective web 2 browser tester. The code still has a lot of work to be done, but it's 3 definitely usable. Here are some notable features: 4 5 * Tests all HTML tags and CSS attributes, as parsed from various 6 open-source browsers. 7 * HTTP Header testing 8 * Basic Media format fuzzing (jpeg, png, snd, wav, etc.) 9 * Numeric, and String overflow and formatting tests 10 * Sequential and Randomized Test Case Generation 11 * Test Case Lookups 12 * Subtest generation 13 * Test harness mode that controls your browser process and testcase 14 generation. 15 16 Requirements: 17 ------------- 18 Make sure you have Ruby installed (comes with Mac OS X, most Linux 19 distributions). See http://www.ruby-lang.org/ if you do not. 20 21 22 Harness mode (Mac OS X, Linux, other UNIX based operating systems) 23 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 In this mode, iExploder controls the stopping and starting of your 25 web browser, reproducing crashes, and writing test cases. This is 26 the recommended mode of operation for most cases. 27 28 29 Usage: browser_harness.rb [options] -- <browser path> <browser options> 30 -t, --test NUM Test to start at 31 -p, --port NUM Listen on TCP port NUM (random) 32 -c, --config PATH Use PATH for configuration file 33 -d, --testdir PATH Use PATH to save testcases (/tmp) 34 -l, --logdir PATH Use PATH to save logs (/tmp) 35 -w, --watchdog NUM How many seconds to wait for pages to load (45s) 36 -r, --random Generate test numbers pseudo-randomly 37 -s, --scan NUM How often to check for new log data (5s) 38 -h, --help Display this screen 39 40 Here is an example use with Chrome starting at test number 1000: 41 42 % ./browser_harness.rb -t 1000 -- /usr/local/chrome-linux/chrome --incognito 43 44 For proper use, the harness mode must *ALWAYS* be used with the browser 45 configured to not restore sessions after a restart. Here are some example 46 command lines to use: 47 48 chrome --incognito 49 opera --nosession -newprivatetab 50 firefox -private 51 52 On Mac OS X you may call the binary directly, or use the .app directory. The latter 53 is required for Safari.app, but does not allow arguments to be passed. Here is an 54 example: 55 56 % ./browser_harness.rb /Applications/Safari.app 57 58 By default, all testcases and logs will be written to ../output 59 60 61 62 Viewing testcases: 63 ------------------ 64 Many test-cases make use of references to external objects (ogg, jpg, etc.) 65 where we are fuzzing the HTTP header data. When the browser harness saves a 66 testcase in HTML form, it rewrites all references to these external objects 67 to refer to http://127.0.0.1:3100/ 68 69 To properly view these saved .html testcases, please run the built-in 70 webserver in the background. 71 72 % ruby webserver.rb 73 74 75 Standalone Webserver mode: 76 -------------------------- 77 If you do not already have a webserver setup, you can use the server 78 built into iexploder. Simply go into the src/ directory and type: 79 80 % ruby webserver.rb 81 82 A webserver will then start on port 3100 with the iexploder form. You can 83 also pass a -p or --port option to select a different location: 84 85 % ruby webserver.rb -p 2001 86 87 All requests will be logged to the path specified in 'access_log_path' 88 parameter in config.yaml. 89 90 91 92 Third-party webserver mode: 93 --------------------------- 94 Copy the contents of the src/ folder to any directory served 95 by your webserver. Make sure that directory can execute CGI scripts. 96 Performance is likely to be very slow unless you use something that 97 keeps the interpreter alive like mod_ruby. 98 99 100 FAQ: 101 ---- 102 1) Are the tests always the same? 103 104 The test cases should always be the same on a single installation, but not 105 necessarily on different installations of iExploder. Random generator seeds 106 may differ between operating systems and platforms. If you alter config.yaml, 107 it is likely to change the test cases as well. 108 109 110 2) I found a crash - how do I stop testing for it? 111 112 See the 'exclude' section of config.yaml. It allows you to blacklist certain 113 tag combinations that are known to result in a crash condition. 114 115 116 3) How do I look up the last successful test for a client? 117 118 Look at your access log. There is a handy tool to parse access logs and show 119 the most recent test for each host and user-agent combo. Try: 120 121 tools/lasthit.rb /path/to/access_log 122 123 124 4) How do subtests work? 125 126 Subtests are how iexploder attempts to isolate the crashing line of code for 127 a particular HTML document. It's a multi-pass algorithm, which delivers 128 nasty tags to your browser in the following order: 129 130 * 1 combination, single line 131 * 2 combinations, 3 lines per combination 132 * 3 combinations, 5 lines per combination 133 * 4 combinations... 134 * 5 combinations... 135 * Your original document (in case we haven't crashed by now) 136 137 138 5) How come I can't seem to repeat the crash? 139 140 Many browser crashes are race conditions that are not easy to repeat. Some 141 crashes only happen when going from test 4 -> test 5 -> test 6. If you can't 142 repeat the crash through subtests or a lookup of the failing test, try going 143 back a few tests. 144 145 That said, some crashes are due to race conditions that are very difficult 146 to replicate. 147 148 149 6) Why did you write this? 150 151 I wanted to make sure that FireFox had as many bugs fixed in it as possible 152 before the 1.0 release. After 1.0 came out, I kept improving it. 153 154 155 7) Why does Internet Explorer run the tests so slowly? 156 157 <META> refresh tags are very fragile in Internet Explorer, and can be easily 158 be rendered useless by other tags on the page. If this happens, a javascript 159 refresh will execute after a 1 second delay. 160 161 162 8) How do I change the number of tags iExploder tests per page? 163 164 See config.yaml. 165 166 167 9) What other performance enhancements can I make? 168 169 * Use Private Browsing or Incognito mode in your browser 170 * Before using iExploder, clear your browser history 171 * Minimize your browser while iExploder is running 172 * If you are using browser_harness, try adjusting the -w and -s options. 173 174 175
