README
1Autobench - an HTTP benchmarking suite
2
3Copyright (C) 2001-2003 Julian T. J. Midgley <jtjm@xenoclast.org>
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5Homepage: http://www.xenoclast.org/autobench/
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7Licence
8-------
9
10Autobench is distributed under the terms of the GNU Public Licence, a
11copy of which may be found in the file "LICENCE".
12
13Manifest
14--------
15
16The 'autobench' package comprises the following programs:
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18 autobench
19 - A command-line wrapper for httperf which runs httperf a number
20 of times against a target host, producing a CSV or TSV format
21 file for later analysis/graphing.
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23 autobench_admin
24 - The administrative controller for distributed autobench. Used
25 to issue commands to a cluster of machines running autobenchd,
26 in order to conduct synchronised multiple-client benchmarks
27 against a target host. Collates the results from all the
28 clients in the cluster, and outputs CSV or TSV format file as
29 with autobench.
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31 autobenchd
32 - The client dameon for distributed autobench. Listens for
33 commands from autobench_admin, and runs httperf to benchmark
34 the target host. Summarises the results and returns them to
35 autobench_admin for collation.
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37 bench2graph
38 - Takes TSV benchmark results files produced by autobench or
39 autobench_admin and plots them using gnuplot.
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41 crfile
42 - small utility for rapidly creating files filled with random
43 data of a specified size. Useful for creating data sets for
44 benchmarking.
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46 sesslog
47 - Creates session logs for use with the --wsesslog argument of
48 httperf from NCSA Combined or NCSA Common Log Format web access
49 logs. Useful for generating real-life workloads from your log
50 files.
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52Man pages are included for all of the above.
53
54Installation
55------------
56
57See the file "INSTALL" for installation instructions.
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59Use
60---
61
62Autobench can be used in one of two modes. In the non-distributed
63mode, a single autobench client runs benchmarks against one or two
64servers. See the "autobench(1)" man page for details of this mode.
65
66The distributed mode allows a server to be benchmarked using several
67clients simultaneously (reducing the risk that the clients themselves
68will become the bottleneck). See the "autobench_admin(1)" and
69"autobenchd(1)" man pages for details.
70