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22 .TH "AB" 1 "2012-01-09" "Apache HTTP Server" "ab"
25 ab \- Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
30 \fBab\fR [ -\fBA\fR \fIauth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR ] [ -\fBb\fR \fIwindowsize\fR ] [ -\fBB\fR \fIlocal-address\fR ] [ -\fBc\fR \fIconcurrency\fR ] [ -\fBC\fR \fIcookie-name\fR=\fIvalue\fR ] [ -\fBd\fR ] [ -\fBe\fR \fIcsv-file\fR ] [ -\fBf\fR \fIprotocol\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 ] [ -\fBr\fR ] [ -\fBs\fR ] [ -\fBS\fR ] [ -\fBt\fR \fItimelimit\fR ] [ -\fBT\fR \fIcontent-type\fR ] [ -\fBu\fR \fIPUT-file\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 ] [ -\fBZ\fR \fIciphersuite\fR ] [http[s]://]\fIhostname\fR[:\fIport\fR]/\fIpath\fR
36 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\&.
43 -A \fIauth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR
44 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)\&.
47 Size of TCP send/receive buffer, in bytes\&.
49 -B \fIlocal-address\fR
50 Address to bind to when making outgoing connections\&.
53 Number of multiple requests to perform at a time\&. Default is one request at a time\&.
55 -C \fIcookie-name\fR=\fIvalue\fR
56 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\&.
59 Do not display the "percentage served within XX [ms] table"\&. (legacy support)\&.
62 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'\&.
65 Specify SSL/TLS protocol (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1, or ALL)\&.
68 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\&.
71 Display usage information\&.
73 -H \fIcustom-header\fR
74 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")\&.
77 Do HEAD requests instead of GET\&.
80 Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature, \fIi\&.e\&.\fR, perform multiple requests within one HTTP session\&. Default is no KeepAlive\&.
83 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\&.
86 File containing data to POST\&. Remember to also set -T\&.
88 -P \fIproxy-auth-username\fR:\fIpassword\fR
89 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)\&.
92 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\&.
95 Don't exit on socket receive errors\&.
98 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\&.
101 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)\&.
104 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\&.
106 -T \fIcontent-type\fR
107 Content-type header to use for POST/PUT data, eg\&. application/x-www-form-urlencoded\&. Default: text/plain\&.
110 File containing data to PUT\&. Remember to also set -T\&.
113 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\&.
116 Display version number and exit\&.
119 Print out results in HTML tables\&. Default table is two columns wide, with a white background\&.
121 -x \fI<table>-attributes\fR
122 String to use as attributes for <table>\&. Attributes are inserted <table \fIhere\fR >\&.
124 -X \fIproxy\fR[:\fIport\fR]
125 Use a proxy server for the requests\&.
127 -y \fI<tr>-attributes\fR
128 String to use as attributes for <tr>\&.
130 -z \fI<td>-attributes\fR
131 String to use as attributes for <td>\&.
134 Specify SSL/TLS cipher suite (See openssl ciphers)
139 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\&.
142 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\&.