siege - Man Page

• Test a URL with default settings: siege https://example.com
• Test a list of URLs: siege --file path/to/url_list.txt
• Test list of URLs in a random order (Simulates internet traffic): siege --internet --file path/to/url_list.txt
• Benchmark a list of URLs (without waiting between requests): siege --benchmark --file path/to/url_list.txt
• Set the amount of concurrent connections: siege --concurrent=50 --file path/to/url_list.txt
• Set how long for the siege to run for: siege --time=30s --file path/to/url_list.txt

tldr.sh

  siege [options]
  siege [options] <URL>
  siege [options] -g <URL>
  siege [options] -f urls.txt

siege is a multi-threaded HTTP/FTP load tester and benchmarking  utility. It supports most of the features detailed in RFCs 2616 (HTTP) and 959 (FTP). Properties can be set both from the command line and in a configuration file. When the same property is set in both locations, the command line takes precedence.

The default configuration file is $HOME/.siege/siege.conf If you don't  have a $HOME/.siege directory and a siege.conf and cookies.txt file,  siege will generate a new config directory when it runs. You can  generate your config directory with the following command: siege.config

siege supports RFC 1738 URL formats but it takes pains to implement commonly used shortcuts for your convenience. In addition to RFC 1738  formats, siege introduces its own URL format to indicate protocol method.

An RFC 1738 URL looks like this:
 <scheme>://<username>:<password>@<hostname>:<port>/<path>;<params>?<query>#<frag>

A siege URL with a method indicator looks like this:
 <scheme>://<username>:<password>@<hostname>:<port>/<path> POST <query>

You can also post the contents of a file using the redirect character like this:
 <scheme>://<username>:<password>@<hostname>:<port>/<path> POST </home/jeff/haha.txt

Here are two examples with the siege method indicator:
 http://www.joedog.org/ POST haha=papa&dada=mama
 ftp://ftp.armstrong.com/ PUT </home/jdfulmer/etc/tests/bbc.jpg

NOTE: If you set URLs with method indicators at the command-line, then  you MUST quote the thing or your shell will treat it like three separate arguments. If the URL is in a urls.txt file, then you shouldn't quote it.

As mentioned above, siege goes to great lengths to allow commonly  used shortcuts that you're used to from most browser implementations.  It treats many parts of the 1738 URL as optional. In this example, the  parts in brackets are optional:
 [scheme://] host.domain.xxx [:port] [/path/file]

When siege receives a host name it builds the URL with default  assumptions.  www.joedog.org becomes http://www.joedog.org:80/

From the section called Option Syntax above we learn that siege  can take a URL as an argument. siege -c -r2 www.joedog.org will  request the JoeDog index page twice.  But what if you want to hit large portions of the site? siege will allow you to fill a file  with URLs so that it can run through list.

The format for the file is one URL per line:
 https://www.joedog.org/
 https://www.joedog.org/haha/
 https://www.joedog.org/haha/ POST homer=simpson&marge=doestoo

The file also supports UNIX-style commenting:
 # Comment looks like this
 https://www.joedog.org/
 https://www.joedog.org/haha/
 https://www.joedog.org/haha/ POST homer=simpson&marge=doestoo

It supports shell-style variable declaration and references. This is  convenient if you want to run the same test on two different tiers or two different schemes:

  SCHEME=https
  HOST=bart.joedog.org
  $(SCHEME)://$(HOST)/
  $(SCHEME)://$(HOST)/haha/
  $(SCHEME)://$(HOST)/haha/ POST homer=simpson&marge=doestoo

You can tell siege about this file with the -f/--file option:
 siege -c1 -r50 -f /home/jeff/urls.txt

When its run is complete, siege will gather performance data from all its clients and summarize them after the run. (You can also choose to log these numbers). The command-line output is modeled after Lincoln  Stein's torture.pl script:

  Transactions:                   2000 hits
  Availability:                 100.00 %
  Elapsed time:                  58.57 secs
  Data transferred:               5.75 MB
  Response time:                  0.25 secs
  Transaction rate:              34.15 trans/sec
  Throughput:                     0.10 MB/sec
  Concurrency:                    8.45
  Successful transactions:        2000
  Failed transactions:               0
  Longest transaction:            4.62
  Shortest transaction:           0.00

  Transactions
      This number represents the total number of HTTP requests. In this
      example, we ran 25 simulated users [-c25] and each ran ten times
      [-r10]. Twenty-five times ten equals 250 so why is the transaction 
      total 2000? That's because siege counts every request. This run 
      included a META redirect, a 301 redirect and the page it requested 
      contained several elements that were also downloaded.

  Availability
      This is the percentage of socket connections successfully handled 
      by the server. It is the result of socket failures (including 
      timeouts) divided by the sum of all connection attempts. This 
      number does not include 400 and 500 level server errors which are
      recorded in "Failed transactions" described below.  

  Elapsed time
      The duration of the entire siege test. This is measured from the 
      time the user invokes siege until the last simulated user 
      completes its transactions. Shown above, the test took 58.57 
      seconds to complete.

  Data transferred
      The sum of data transferred to every siege simulated user. It 
      includes the header information as well as content. Because it
      includes header information, the number reported by siege will 
      be larger then the number reported by the server. In internet 
      mode, which hits random URLs in a configuration file, this 
      number is expected to vary from run to run.

  Response time
      The average time it took to respond to each simulated user's requests.

  Transaction rate
      The average number of transactions the server was able to handle
      per second, in a nutshell: it is the count of all transactions 
      divided by elapsed time.

  Throughput
      The average number of bytes transferred every second from the 
      server to all the simulated users.

  Concurrency
      This is the average number of simultaneous connections. The metric
      is calculated like this: the sum of all transaction times divided
      by elapsed time (how long siege ran) 

  Successful transactions
      The number of times the server responded with a return code < 400.

  Failed transactions
      The number of times the socket transactions failed which includes 
      socket timeouts.

  Longest transaction
      The greatest amount of time that any single transaction took, out 
      of all transactions.

  Shortest transaction
      The smallest amount of time that any single transaction took, out
      of all transactions.

Jeffrey Fulmer, et al. <jeff@joedog.org> is the primary author of siege. Numerous people  throughout the globe also contributed to this program. Their  contributions are noted in the source code ChangeLog

Copyright by Jeffrey Fulmer, et al. <jeff@joedog.org>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the  Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your  option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU  General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along  with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,  675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

The most recent released version of siege is available by HTTP  download:
 http://download.joedog.org/pub/siege

siege.config(1) bombardment(1) siege2csv(1)

bombardment(1).