--- name: "hammerhead" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "hammerhead" version: "2.1.3-9.1" release: "Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/hammerhead" --- # hammerhead(1) perform load testing on a given machine/port with a set of http requests ## NAME hammerhead - perform load testing on a given machine/port with a set of http requests ## SYNOPSIS **hammerhead** \[ *options* \] \[ *resultsFile* \] ## DESCRIPTION **Hammerhead** is a web site coverage and stress testing tool. It's also useful for benchmarking your web servers. It's been designed to emulate multiple users from multiple IP addresses and designed for maximum speed unlike it's interpreted counterparts. It's highly configurable and supports scenario based requests. The **hammerhead** command is sends HTTP requests to a nominated machine/port (as specified in the **configFile)** to simulate load on that port. It can be used to test the behaviour of the port under load, or the ability of the port to service a set of requests. The behaviour of **hammerhead** is defined (almost) entirely by the **configfile.** See the description of this file below for an explanation of all of the configuration options. **hammerhead** loads a set of requests from a number of files, each of which may contain a number of scenarios (one request per scenario). Scenarios may be linked into sequences, in order to simulate real users actions. Once the scenarios are loaded, **hammerhead** starts up a number of threads and sends requests to the port. The expected result of a request may be specified in a scenario, and any result from the port which does not match with the expected result will be reported as an error. If no expected results are specified, then any result from the port will be accepted as valid. Specifying an expected result for any scenario has the effect of specifying the same result for **all** scenarios which have the same request. Any failure to get a connection to the port, or any failure to receive a reply to a request will also be reported. ## OPTIONS The following options are supported: - **-s or --seconds** Seconds to run tests for - **-o or --outfile** Output result file - **-t or --test** Test the scenarios in the conf file. - **-C or --checkconf** Check config file - **-c or --conffile** Config file path - **-h or --help** Display help information - **-v or --version** Output version ## OPERANDS The following operand is supported: - *resultsFile:* Create an optimized scenario file to make **hammerhead** load faster. ## CONFIGURATION FILE The configuration file is a plain text file, containing a set of attribute/value pairs. Attribute names are matched without regard to case. Any line in the file beginning with a hash (#) is treated as a comment, and ignored. The attributes which may be defined in this file are: ### Scenario\_directory The directory in which to find the Scenario file(s). All scenario files in this directory will be loaded. A scenario file is any file with the extension **.scn** (case sensitive). There may be more than one directive on a configuration file. Each directory shall be examined for scenario files. default value: /var/tmp/scenarios/ ### Scenario\_file A specific file from which to read scenarios. There may be more than one directive on a configuration file. ### Log\_filename The file in which all log messages will be written. If this file cannot be created, **hammerhead** will default to using standard error. default value: /var/tmp/hammerhead/hh.log ### Load\_images A flag indicating whether to automatically load images which are referenced in the result of a request. posible values: on, off default value: off ### Sessions The number of threads to start up. default value: 1000 ### Seed The random number seed used for the random selection of requests. Setting this number to any non-zero value will give deterministic behaviour (i.e. the same sequence of requests will be selected) default value: 0 ### Sequence\_probability The percentage of the time that **hammerhead** will follow the sequence that the current request is in. Setting this to 100 will force hammerhead to follow any sequence it encounters to its completion. default value: 75 ### Sleep\_time The amount of time (in milliseconds) to sleep between requests. In fact, this is the average sleep time, and **hammerhead** will sleep for a randomly selected period, between 0 milliseconds, and twice this value. default value: 0 ### Run\_time The number of seconds to run each thread. If this value is 0, the threads run for-ever. This can be used to set up tests which run for a particular length of time. default value: 0 ### Machine\_IP The IP number (and possibly port) of the machine/port to hammer. The format is \\[:\\], where \ is as described in **man inet\_addr** and \ is optional. This is the **only** attribute that must be defined in a configuration file default value: no default for \, 8080 for \ ### Ip\_Alias The outgoing IP numbers; allows Hammerhead to simulate multiple machines (upto 1 machine / session). May be any of the following forms: 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.\*, 10.0.\*.\*, 10.0.1-5.\*, 10.0.0.1-5. default value: the hammering machines normal IP address ### Premature\_Close The percentage of requests that will be improperly terminated before sending/receiving is completed properly (to test problems such as FIN\_WAIT1). default value: 0 ### Bad\_Request The percentage of requests the will be scrambled requests (outside the properly defined scenarios). default value: 0 ### Report\_Time The time interval upon which to written report summaries to the report log. default value: 0 (report only once at test end.) ### Report\_Log The log file which is to contain the report summaries. default value: /var/tmp/report.log ### Robot\_ID The robot id to be passed to the servers being hammered. Currently not implemented. ### Send\_Cookie Turn on to allow the sending of cookies with requests. Incoming cookies are buffered with each session when a Set-Cookie header is found. They're sent back with further requests to that session. Cookies are capped at 4K. default value: off ### Premature\_Close The percentage of connections which will close permaturely before the request reply has been fully read back from the server. default value: 0 ### Log\_Level Log levels defined to work with the crawl functionality - somewhat mystical and not confirmed to be working. default value: 0 ### Bandwidth\_Limit Turn on bandwidth limiting. Not implemented yet. ### Crawl Crawl though the URLs contained in the reply to a request. Scope is somewhat unclear. Use with caution. default value: off ### SelectOn When choosing a new sequence to commence, select from all the scenarios \[ *scenario* \] or select from those scenarios which are at the beginning of a sequence of scenarios \[ *sequence* \]. default value: scenario ### Start\_Lag Start lag is a delay at thread startup before the first request is issued. The delay can be used to control the size of any startup spikes during the commencement of the test. The threads (processes) pause for a time between 0 and (Start\_Lag \* Sessions) milliseconds before issuing their first request. default value: 1 millisecond ### DNS\_Server Allow the specification of an alternate DNS server to use to resolve the machinenames. This resolution is completed once server DNS\_TTL seconds. default value: use the server nominated in */etc/resolv.conf* ### DNS\_TTL The Time To Live for the self cached DNS queries. default value: 120 seconds ### Machine\_Name The name of the machine/s to hammer. Names are resolved to addresses using the DNS resolver. ### Use\_SSL Should SSL be used during each request? default value: no ### HTTP\_Request\_Type Specify the HTTP request version, the default value is recommended as Hammerhead maybe not handle all 1.1 return packets correctly. default value: HTTP/1.0 ### BottleNeck Use connection bottlenecking to extend connecton holding time Not implemented yet. ### Max\_Failures The maximum number of request failures to be tolerated before we abandon the test. The value 0 means that hammerhead will never stop because of an excessive number of request failures. default value: 0 ## SCENARIO FILE A scenario file is a plain text file, containing a set of tagged value lines. The first character of each line is the tag, and the rest of the line is the value. Tags are matched case-sensitively. Any line in the file beginning with a hash (#) is treated as a comment, and ignored. The tag types which are legal in this file are: ### N The name of the scenario. A free-format string default value: the name of the scenario file ### D Any dependencies to be met. Unused at present. ### R The request to make. A valid HTTP request. No default value. Scenarios without a Request are discarded. ### H A header (beyond the basic GET request). No default value. ### B The body of a POST request No default value. ### E Expected results. Note that **hammerhead** will strip off all HTTP header lines from the response (i.e. all lines up to the first blank line in the response). No default value. ### L Expected Log result. Not implemented yet. ### S Name of the next scenario in a sequence No default value. A scenario without a **S** scenario specified is assumed to be the last in a sequence. ### T This option has 3 possible types of value: A number is the "think" (or wait) time in milliseconds. If a '+' proceeds the number then this specifies a fixed time from when Hammerhead begin to wait until (in milliseconds). If the 3rd special value '\_exit' is given, then the thread running this scenario witll terminate after completing it. default value: 0 ### X The number of times this scenario may be cross-referenced by other scenarios (i.e. may be used in a sequence). A value of -1 is used to represent unlimited use, while 0 and positive numbers have the obvious meaning. default value: -1 ### O A number of options relating to a scenario are available. For example, - **SSL** = \[ *on*\|*off* \] This option turns SSL on or off for this request, overriding the use of SSL in the configuration file. - **PORT** = \[ *port* \] This option allows for an alternative port number to be specificed for this scenario, overriding the port specified in the configuration file. ### . End of scenario definition. ## RESULTS FILE The results file contains a log of all requests. Each log line contains a time stamp, the process id of the session, the name of the scenario used, three times, the size of the response, the return code from the server and the server description. The three recorded times are an offset from the initial start time, the time it took to get the first response from the server and the total time it took to get the complete response and process it. Typically these two times are similar, although network issues can cause the total time to be somewhat greater than the response time. Each time value is recorded in milliseconds. ## EXAMPLES ### Configuration File \# example configuration file - test.conf \# find all scenarios in this directory Scenario\_directory /u01/hammerhead/test1 \# put all log messages in this file Log\_filename /u01/hammerhead/test1/test1.log \# Load all embedded images in each page returned by the port Load\_images on \# Simulate 50 users Sessions 50 \# Force all sequences to be completed Sequence\_probability 100 \# Sleep 100ms between each request Sleep\_time 100 \# Run the test for 10 minutes Run\_time 600 \# Hammer goanna, on port 8080 10\.456.789.012:8080 ### Scenario File \# Example Scenario file - test.scn \# Get the main page, then think for one second, then go to \# the next scenario NTest Scenario 1 RGET / HTTP/1.0 STest Scenario 2 T1000000 E\ E\ E\Hammerhead - exploring Hammerland\ E\ E\ . \# Get some random page, don't think, and go nowhere else \# NOTE: . at end of scenario not required at end of file NTest Scenario 2 RGET /coma HTTP/1.0 ### Usage The following example: **example% hammerhead -c test.conf results.log** hammers the machine/port specified in the **test.conf** configuration file. ## EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned: - **0** **hammerhead** ran successfully to completion. - **\>0** An error occurred. ## SEE ALSO **inet\_addr**(3N) ## NOTES The scenario file created by **hammerhead** when using the **resultsFile** operand is optimised to make it quicker for to load. All scenario names will be lost. Since **hammerhead** only ever reports errors in terms of the request being made, this is no great loss. The results generated when using the **resultsFile** operand may contain non-printing characters which may corrupt terminal settings.