ab(1)
ab - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
As shipped in IRIX 6.5.22. Added in IRIX 6.5.19.
NAME ab - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool SYNOPSIS ab [ -k ] [ -e ] [ -q ] [ -S ] [ -i ] [ -s ] [ -n requests ] [ -t timelimit ] [ -c concurrency ] [ -p POST file ] [ -A Authenticate username:password ] [ -X proxy [ :port ] ] [ -P Proxy Authenticate username:password ] [ -H Custom header ] [ -C Cookie name=value ] [ -T content-type ] [ -v verbosity ] ] [ -w output HTML ] ] [ -g output GNUPLOT ] ] [ -e output CSV ] ] [ -x <table> attributes ] ] [ -y <tr> attributes ] ] [ -z <td> attributes ] [http[s]://]hostname[:port]/path ab [ -V ] [ -h ] DESCRIPTION ab is a tool for benchmarking the performance of your Apache HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It does this by giving you an indication of how many requests per second your Apache installation can serve. OPTIONS -k Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature; that is, perform multiple requests within one HTTP session. Default is no KeepAlive. -d Do not display the "percentage served within XX [ms] table". (legacy support). -S Do not display the median and standard deviation values, nor display the warning/error messages when the average and median are more than one or two times the standard deviation apart. And default to the min/avg/max values. (legacy support). -s When compiled in (bb -h will show you) use the SSL protected https rather than the http protocol. This feature is experimen- tal and very rudimentary. You propably do not want to use it. -k Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature; that is, perform multiple requests within one HTTP session. Default is no KeepAlive. -i Use an HTTP 'HEAD' instead of the GET method. Cannot be mixed with POST. -n requests The number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session. The default is to perform just one single request, which will not give representative benchmarking results. -t timelimit The number of seconds to spend benchmarking. Using this option automatically set the number of requests for the benchmarking session to 50000. Use this to benchmark the server for a fixed period of time. By default, there is no timelimit. -c concurrency The number of simultaneous requests to perform. The default is to perform one HTTP request at at time, that is, no concur- rency. -p POST file A file containing data that the program will send to the Apache server in any HTTP POST requests. -A Authorization username:password Supply Basic Authentication credentials to the server. The username and password are separated by a single ':', and sent as uuencoded data. The string is sent regardless of whether the server needs it; that is, has sent a 401 Authentication needed. -X proxy[:port] Route all requests through the proxy (at optional port). -P Proxy-Authorization username:password Supply Basic Authentication credentials to a proxy en-route. The username and password are separated by a single ':', and sent as uuencoded data. The string is sent regardless of whether the proxy needs it; that is, has sent a 407 Proxy au- thentication needed. -C Cookie name=value Add a 'Cookie:' line to the request. The argument is typically a 'name=value' pair. This option may be repeated. -p Header string Append extra headers to the request. The argument is typically in the form of a valid header line, usually a colon separated field value pair, for example, 'Accept-Encoding: zip/zop;8bit'. -T content-type The content-type header to use for POST data. -g gnuplot file Write all measured values out as a 'gnuplot' or TSV (Tab sepa- rate values) file. This file can easily be imported into pack- ages like Gnuplot, IDL, Mathematica, Igor or even Excell. The labels are on the first line of the file. -q When processing more than 150 requsts; ab outputs a progress count on stderr every 10% or 100 requests or so. The -q flag qill suppress these messages. -e CSV file Write a Comma separated value (CSV) file which contains for each percentage (from 1% to 100%) the time (in milli seconds) it took to serve that percentage of the requests. This is usu- ally more usefull than the 'gnuplot' file; as the results are already -v Sets the verbosity level. Level 4 and above prints information on headers, level 3 and above prints response codes (for exam- ple, 404, 200), and level 2 and above prints warnings and in- formational messages. -w Print out results in HTML tables. The default table is two columns wide, with a white background. -x attributes The string to use as attributes for <table>. Attributes are inserted <table here > -y attributes The string to use as attributes for <tr>. -z attributes The string to use as attributes for <td>. -V Display the version number and exit. -h Display usage information. BUGS There are various statically declared buffers of fixed length. Combined with inefficient parsing of the command line arguments, the response head- ers from the server, and other external inputs, these buffers might over- flow. Ab does not implement HTTP/1.x fully; instead, it only accepts some 'ex- pected' forms of responses. The rather heavy use of strstr(3) by the program may skew performance re- sults, since it uses significant CPU resources. Make sure that performance limits are not hit by ab before your server's limit is reached. The HTML output is not as complete as the text output. Up to version 1.3d ab has propably reported values way to low for most mea- surements; as a single timeout (which is usually in the order of seconds) will shift several thousands of milli-second responses by a considerable factor. This was further componded by a serious interger overrun which would for realistic run's (i.e. those longer than a few minutes) produce believable but totally bogus results. Thanks to Sander Temme for solving this riddle. SEE ALSO httpd(8)