The sys admin's daily grind: Siege
Siege Warfare
© chrisharvey, Fotolia
The siege of Troy is said to have taken 10 years, ending only after Odysseus introduced a wooden horse into the mix. Charly is planning a siege, too, and the target is his own web server. Of course, he doesn't have 10 years to complete the task, and Odysseus isn't on his team.
When contemplating my Apache server, I'm reminded of the mythical sea creature Scylla, which wiped out no fewer than six of Odysseus's men on his way home from Troy. My server's Worker MPM can devour multiple requests in one fell swoop. But where's the limit? How many threads do I need to configure to achieve maximum performance? And how many threads are just overkill?
Stress Test
With the use of the attack tool Siege [1], I will try to answer these questions with a stress test. Siege supports two modes of attack. The first simulates human web-surfing behavior, which explains the gaps of three seconds between individual access instances.
In the second mode, benchmark mode, these gaps are dropped and Siege incessantly throws requests at the server. To make the server sweat, Siege fields a configurable army of users – 10 by default, but you can use the following parameter to increase the size of the virtual vanguard until either the web server cries mercy or the attackers run out of system resources:
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
-
System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.