1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
|
.\" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
.\" DO NOT EDIT! Generated from XML source.
.\" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
.de Sh \" Subsection
.br
.if t .Sp
.ne 5
.PP
\fB\\$1\fR
.PP
..
.de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP)
.if t .sp .5v
.if n .sp
..
.de Ip \" List item
.br
.ie \\n(.$>=3 .ne \\$3
.el .ne 3
.IP "\\$1" \\$2
..
.TH "AB" 8 "2004-11-14" "Apache HTTP Server" "ab"
.SH NAME
ab \- Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.PP
\fBab\fR [ -\fBA\fR \fIauth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR ] [ -\fBc\fR \fIconcurrency\fR ] [ -\fBC\fR \fIcookie-name\fR=\fIvalue\fR ] [ -\fBd\fR ] [ -\fBe\fR \fIcsv-file\fR ] [ -\fBg\fR \fIgnuplot-file\fR ] [ -\fBh\fR ] [ -\fBH\fR \fIcustom-header\fR ] [ -\fBi\fR ] [ -\fBk\fR ] [ -\fBn\fR \fIrequests\fR ] [ -\fBp\fR \fIPOST-file\fR ] [ -\fBP\fR \fIproxy-auth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR ] [ -\fBq\fR ] [ -\fBs\fR ] [ -\fBS\fR ] [ -\fBt\fR \fItimelimit\fR ] [ -\fBT\fR \fIcontent-type\fR ] [ -\fBv\fR \fIverbosity\fR] [ -\fBV\fR ] [ -\fBw\fR ] [ -\fBx\fR \fI<table>-attributes\fR ] [ -\fBX\fR \fIproxy\fR[:\fIport\fR] ] [ -\fBy\fR \fI<tr>-attributes\fR ] [ -\fBz\fR \fI<td>-attributes\fR ] [http://]\fIhostname\fR[:\fIport\fR]/\fIpath\fR
.SH "SUMMARY"
.PP
ab is a tool for benchmarking your Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server\&. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current Apache installation performs\&. This especially shows you how many requests per second your Apache installation is capable of serving\&.
.SH "OPTIONS"
.TP
-A \fIauth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR
Supply BASIC Authentication credentials to the server\&. The username and password are separated by a single : and sent on the wire base64 encoded\&. The string is sent regardless of whether the server needs it (\fIi\&.e\&.\fR, has sent an 401 authentication needed)\&.
.TP
-c \fIconcurrency\fR
Number of multiple requests to perform at a time\&. Default is one request at a time\&.
.TP
-C \fIcookie-name\fR=\fIvalue\fR
Add a Cookie: line to the request\&. The argument is typically in the form of a \fIname\fR=\fIvalue\fR pair\&. This field is repeatable\&.
.TP
-d
Do not display the "percentage served within XX [ms] table"\&. (legacy support)\&.
.TP
-e \fIcsv-file\fR
Write a Comma separated value (CSV) file which contains for each percentage (from 1% to 100%) the time (in milliseconds) it took to serve that percentage of the requests\&. This is usually more useful than the 'gnuplot' file; as the results are already 'binned'\&.
.TP
-g \fIgnuplot-file\fR
Write all measured values out as a 'gnuplot' or TSV (Tab separate values) file\&. This file can easily be imported into packages like Gnuplot, IDL, Mathematica, Igor or even Excel\&. The labels are on the first line of the file\&.
.TP
-h
Display usage information\&.
.TP
-H \fIcustom-header\fR
Append extra headers to the request\&. The argument is typically in the form of a valid header line, containing a colon-separated field-value pair (\fIi\&.e\&.\fR, "Accept-Encoding: zip/zop;8bit")\&.
.TP
-i
Do HEAD requests instead of GET\&.
.TP
-k
Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature, \fIi\&.e\&.\fR, perform multiple requests within one HTTP session\&. Default is no KeepAlive\&.
.TP
-n \fIrequests\fR
Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session\&. The default is to just perform a single request which usually leads to non-representative benchmarking results\&.
.TP
-p \fIPOST-file\fR
File containing data to POST\&.
.TP
-P \fIproxy-auth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR
Supply BASIC Authentication credentials to a proxy en-route\&. The username and password are separated by a single : and sent on the wire base64 encoded\&. The string is sent regardless of whether the proxy needs it (\fIi\&.e\&.\fR, has sent an 407 proxy authentication needed)\&.
.TP
-q
When processing more than 150 requests, ab outputs a progress count on stderr every 10% or 100 requests or so\&. The -q flag will suppress these messages\&.
.TP
-s
When compiled in (ab -h will show you) use the SSL protected https rather than the http protocol\&. This feature is experimental and \fIvery\fR rudimentary\&. You probably do not want to use it\&.
.TP
-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)\&.
.TP
-t \fItimelimit\fR
Maximum number of seconds to spend for benchmarking\&. This implies a -n 50000 internally\&. Use this to benchmark the server within a fixed total amount of time\&. Per default there is no timelimit\&.
.TP
-T \fIcontent-type\fR
Content-type header to use for POST data\&.
.TP
-v \fIverbosity\fR
Set verbosity level - 4 and above prints information on headers, 3 and above prints response codes (404, 200, etc\&.), 2 and above prints warnings and info\&.
.TP
-V
Display version number and exit\&.
.TP
-w
Print out results in HTML tables\&. Default table is two columns wide, with a white background\&.
.TP
-x \fI<table>-attributes\fR
String to use as attributes for <table>\&. Attributes are inserted <table \fIhere\fR >\&.
.TP
-X \fIproxy\fR[:\fIport\fR]
Use a proxy server for the requests\&.
.TP
-y \fI<tr>-attributes\fR
String to use as attributes for <tr>\&.
.TP
-z \fI<td>-attributes\fR
String to use as attributes for <td>\&.
.SH "BUGS"
.PP
There are various statically declared buffers of fixed length\&. Combined with the lazy parsing of the command line arguments, the response headers from the server and other external inputs, this might bite you\&.
.PP
It does not implement HTTP/1\&.x fully; only accepts some 'expected' forms of responses\&. The rather heavy use of strstr(3) shows up top in profile, which might indicate a performance problem; \fIi\&.e\&.\fR, you would measure the ab performance rather than the server's\&.
|