snowbox

A local test environment for testing Snowflake

Building the docker container

docker build -t snowbox --build-arg USER_ID=$(id -u) --build-arg GROUP_ID=$(id -g) .

Running the test environment

The first step is to clone the snowflake repostory locally onto your machine. You must then set up the configuration file by running ./mktestenvconfig

This will create the file testenv_config that you may edit with the path to your local snowflake repository.

If you haven't run the container yet, you will need to create the network with the command

docker network create vnc

The command ./snowbox_run will run the snowbox Docker container and mount the snowflake repository to the container with the following command:

docker rm snow_test; docker run --name snow_test -p 8080:8080 -it  -v ${SNOWFLAKE_REPO}:/go/src/snowflake -v ${SNOWFLAKE_WEBEXT_REPO}:/go/src/snowflake-webext snowbox /bin/bash

Building snowflake inside the Docker container

Inside the snowbox container, execute build to build and run each component of snowflake.

$ build [ -b | --build ] [ -c | --client ] [--chromium | --gecko ]

Attaching additional terminals to the test environment

Open a new terminal and execute ./snowbox_run --attach. Excluding the --attach argument will prompt the script to attempt an attachment if the container is already running.

Running a browser-based proxy

To run and debug a browser-based proxy, execute build as described above to prepare the embeded and webextension proxies for use with the local broker. The best way to test browser-based proxies is to then load the badge or the webextension from outside the container.

Testing the embedded badge

After getting the broker running in snowbox, open snowflake-webext.git/build/embed.html in a broswer. It should be pointing to the broker at http://localhost:8080 after running the build script.

In firefox it doesn't work as CORS blocks non-http requests. This can be solved by setting privacy.file_unique_origin to false in about:config.

Testing the webextension

After getting the broker running in snowbox, navigate to about:debugging and select the "load temporary extension" option. Select snowflake.git/proxy/webext/manifest.json

Running a client

To test a snowflake client, run run-client. The log output should appear in two files in your current directory: snowflake_client-N.log contains logs from snowflake itself client-N.log contains log messages from the client tor process