ab.8 revision 64185f9824e42f21ca7b9ae6c004484215c031a7
ab 1 "March 1998"
Copyright (c) 1998-2000 The Apache Software Foundation. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
software must display the following acknowledgment:
"This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation
for use in the Apache HTTP server project (http://www.apache.org/)."

4. The names "Apache Server" and "Apache Software Foundation" must not be used to
endorse or promote products derived from this software without
prior written permission.

5. Products derived from this software may not be called "Apache"
nor may "Apache" appear in their names without prior written
permission of the Apache Software Foundation.

6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following
acknowledgment:
"This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation
for use in the Apache HTTP server project (http://www.apache.org/)."

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE Apache Software Foundation ``AS IS'' AND ANY
EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE Apache Software Foundation OR
ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,
STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED
OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
====================================================================

This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
individuals on behalf of the Apache Software Foundation and was originally based
on public domain software written at the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
For more information on the Apache Software Foundation and the Apache HTTP server
project, please see <http://www.apache.org/>.
NAME
ab - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
SYNOPSIS
ab [ -k ] [ -n " requests" ] [ -t " timelimit" ] [ -c " concurrency" ] [ -p " POST file" ] [ -A " Authenticate username:password" ] [ -P " Proxy Authenticate username:password" ] [ -H " Custom header" ] [ -C " Cookie name=value" ] [ -T " content-type" ] [ -v " verbosity" ] ] [ -w " output HTML" ] ] [ -x " <table> attributes" ] ] [ -y " <tr> attributes" ] ] [ -z " <td> attributes" ] [http://]hostname[:port]/path ab [ -V ] [ -h ]

DESCRIPTION
ab is a tool for benchmarking your Apache HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression on how performant is your current Apache installation. This especially shows you how much requests per time your Apache installation is capable to serve.

OPTIONS

12 -k Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature, i.e. perform multiple requests within one HTTP session instead. Default is no KeepAlive.

12 -n " requests" Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session. The default is to just perform one single request which usually leads to not very representative benchmarking results.

12 -t " timelimit" Seconds to max. 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.

12 -c " concurrency" Number of multiple requests per time to perform. Default is one request per time.

12 -p " POST file" File containing data to POST.

12 -A " Authorization username:password" Supply BASIC Authentification credentials to the server. The username and password are separated by a single ':' and send on the wire uuencoded. The string is send regardless of wether the server needs it; (i.e. has send an 401. Authentifcation needed).

12 -p " Proxy-Authorization username:password" Supply BASIC Authentification credentials to a proxy en-route. The username and password are separated by a single ':' and send on the wire uuencoded. The string is send regardless of wether the proxy needs it; (i.e. has send an 407 Proxy authentifcation needed).

12 -C " Cookie name=value" Add a 'Cookie:' line to the request. The argument is typically in the form of a 'name=value' pair. This field is repeatable.

12 -p " Header string" Postfix extra headers to the request. The argument is typically in the form of a valid header line; containing a colon separated field value pair. (i.e. 'Accept-Encoding: zip/zop;8bit').

12 -T " content-type" Content-type header to use for POST data.

12 -v 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.

12 -w Print out results in HTML tables. Default table is two columns wide, with a white background.

12 -x " attributes" String to use as attributes for <table>. Attributes are inserted <table here >

12 -y " attributes" String to use as attributes for <tr>.

12 -z " attributes" String to use as attributes for <td>.

12 -V Display version number and exit.

12 -h Display usage information.

BUGS
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.

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; i.e. you would measure the ab performance rather than the server's.

SEE ALSO
httpd(8) .