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Kyverno Policy Unit Tests📜

This document will guide developers on creating unit tests for Kyverno Policies.

Overview📜

The following resources in chart/templates/tests are setup to support testing Kyverno policies:

  • Service Account: Account used for pod running the tests
  • Cluster Role: RBAC permissions to create, delete, and view Kyverno and test resources
  • Cluster Role Binding: Attaches cluster role to service account
  • Config Map: Manifests (.yaml) to use for testing policies. These are located in chart/tests/manifests
  • GluOn: Big Bang library to create a Config Map holding the script and a Pod for running the script. The script is located in chart/tests/scripts

In addition, bbtest values from tests/test-values.yaml are used to configure the test pod.

When a helm test is started, the pod kyverno-policies-script-test will run with the following attributes:

  • Runs a kubectl container using an Iron Bank image
  • Test manifests (in ConfigMap) are mounted to /yaml
  • Test scripts (in ConfigMap) are mounted to /src
  • Contains an environmental variable named ENABLED_POLICIES that holds a list of policies that should be tested
  • Runs using service account for additional privileges

Local Testing📜

  1. Deploy Kyverno using the Kyverno Helm chart

  2. Deploy Kyverno Policies using the Helm chart and test values:

    helm upgrade -i -n kyverno --create-namespace -f tests/test-values.yaml kyverno-policies chart

  3. Run Helm tests

    helm test -n kyverno kyverno-policies

Test Values📜

All validation policies should be set to “Audit” for the failure action. This allows Kyverno to capture multiple violations in a policy report. Setting policies to “enforce” will cause Kyverno to stop after the first resource violation.

Policies should have values setup to allow for both enforcement and non-enforcement of the policy. Enforcement means the policy blocks, generates, or mutates a resource. Non-enforcement means the policy allows or ignores a resource (e.g exception).

Tests📜

The following tests are run in the test script:

  1. Enabled cluster policies are deployed and ready Verifies that all the cluster policies from ENABLED_POLICIES successfully deployed and are in the “Ready” state. A failure indicates a syntax problem with the policy.
  2. Disabled cluster policies are not deployed Verifies no unexpected policies were deployed. A failure means the .enabled flag was not implemented properly in the policy.
  3. All enabled policies have a test Verifies every policy has at least one test case for enforcement (e.g. blocked, generated, mutated) and one test case for non-enforcement (e.g. allowed, excluded).
  4. Validation policies allow or block manifests properly Verifies that test manifests are either allowed or blocked by a validate policy.
  5. Generate policies create resources when appropriate Verifies that test manifests trigger or don’t trigger the generation of a resource by a generate policy.
  6. Mutate policies modify manifests when appropriate Verifies that test manifests are mutated or left alone by a mutate policy.

Test Manifests📜

Test manifests are located in chart/tests/manifests/*.yaml. They are designed to deploy resources that tests enforcement or nonenforcement of a single policy. Each manifest should be named the same as the policy it is enforcing. Manifests can contain multiple resources.

Inside the manifest, each test case should have a comment describing what is being tested. For example Test 1: Containers adding non-approved capabilities should not be allowed.

Annotations are required for the script to know how to test each policy:

  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/type: Indicates the type of test that should be applied to the manifest. This can be either validate, generate, or mutate.

Validate Policies📜

  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/expected: The expected action that Kyverno will take with the manifest. Use pass for allow or fail for block.

Generate Policies📜

  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/expected: The expected action that Kyverno will take with the manifest. Use generate to indicate a resource should be generated or ignore for no action.
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/kind: The kind of the generated resource to check
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/name: The name of the generated resource to check
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/namespace: If the generation is in a different namespace than the annotated resource, the namespace to find the generated resource.

If expected is set to ignore, kind, name and namespace will still be used to validate that the resource was NOT generated.

Mutate Policies📜

  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/expected: The expected action that Kyverno will take with the manifest. Use mutate to indicate the manifest should be mutated or ignore for no action.
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/key: The JMES path to the key that should be mutated. The syntax should work with kubectl’s --jsonpath option
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/value: The expected value of the key after mutation.
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/kind: If the mutation is not on the annotated resource, the kind of the mutated resource to check
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/name: If the mutation is not on the annotated resource, the name of the mutated resource to check
  • kyverno-policies-bbtest/namespace: If the mutation is not on the annotated resource and the mutated resource is in a different namespace than the annotated resource, the namespace to find the mutated resource.

If expected is set to ignore, key and value will still be used to validate the result. The test will check that key does NOT exist or that the key’s value does NOT match value. Leaving key blank will result in a failure.

Last update: 2023-09-22 by Michael Martin