Best Steps To Install Siege on Ubuntu 22.04 – OrcaCore

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through How To Install Siege on Ubuntu 22.04. For web administrators, optimizing website performance is a continuous task. A slow website can deter potential clients and customers. To effectively optimize, benchmarking your sites to understand their current performance is essential.

One tool designed for website benchmarking is the command-line application, Siege. Siege conducts web server load testing and provides detailed information regarding:

The number of transactions.
Response time.
Data transfer rate.
Concurrency.
Server response codes.

Siege supports both HTTP/1.0 and 1.1 protocols, GET and POST directives, cookies, transaction logging, and basic authentication. This makes it a versatile tool for evaluating web server performance under different conditions.

Install and Use Siege Stress Tester on Ubuntu 22.04

Before we begin, ensure you are logged into your Ubuntu 22.04 server as a non-root user with sudo privileges. If you haven’t already, you can refer to our guide on Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 22.04.

1. Install Siege on Ubuntu 22.04

First, update and upgrade your local package index to ensure you have the latest package information:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Siege is available in the default Ubuntu 22.04 repository. Install it using the following command:

sudo apt install siege -y

Verify the installation by checking the Siege version:

siege --version

2. Configure Siege Stress Tester on Ubuntu 22.04

Now, configure the Siege config file. A key option to modify is the log path.

Open the configuration file using your preferred text editor (e.g., vi):

sudo vi /etc/siege/siegerc

Locate the following line and uncomment it by removing the # at the beginning:

logfile = $(HOME)/var/log/siege.log

Save and close the file. This ensures that Siege logs are written to the user’s home directory, which can be helpful for debugging and analysis.

3. Common Options of Siege

Here are some useful options for Siege on Ubuntu 22.04:

-c: Specify the number of concurrent users.
-t: Specify the duration of the test (e.g., -t 1m for one minute).
-d: Specify the delay before each request.
-f: Specify a file containing a list of URLs to test.
-l: Log the test results to a file.
-v: Enable verbose output.
-b: No delay between requests.
--concurrent: Number of concurrent users.

4. How To Use Siege Stress Tester?

Now, test your web server. Be aware that running a load test can resemble a DDOS attack to some firewalls and WAFs. Ensure you have permission before running any HTTP benchmarking tool, and ideally, only use it on your own servers.

To run a basic test with the default 25 concurrent workers for one minute, use the following command:

siege https://www.example.com -t 1m

To increase the number of concurrent workers, use the -c option. For example, to simulate 100 users, use:

siege https://www.example.com -c 100 -t 2m

Siege can also manage multiple domains. Create a file (e.g., /etc/siege/urls.txt) and add the URLs you want to test:

sudo vi /etc/siege/urls.txt

Add the URLs:

https://www.example.com
https://www.example2.com
http://192.168.50.1

Save and close the file.

Execute the multiple website stress test using:

siege -f /etc/siege/urls.txt

Conclusion

You have now learned How To Install Siege on Ubuntu 22.04 and use it for basic web server load testing. Siege is valuable for performing load testing and stress testing on web applications. It simulates multiple users accessing a website simultaneously to measure its performance, identify potential issues, and ensure it can handle high traffic effectively.

Alternative Solutions for Web Server Load Testing

While Siege is a useful tool, other solutions exist for web server load testing. Here are two alternatives:

1. ApacheBench (ab)

Explanation: ApacheBench (ab) is a command-line tool specifically designed for benchmarking HTTP servers. It is part of the Apache HTTP Server utilities and is often pre-installed on many systems or easily installed through package managers. ab is straightforward to use, making it ideal for quick and simple load tests. It simulates multiple concurrent requests to a specified URL and reports statistics such as requests per second, time per request, and transfer rates.

Code Example:

To install ab on Ubuntu, if it’s not already installed:

sudo apt install apache2-utils

To run a test simulating 1000 requests with a concurrency of 10:

ab -n 1000 -c 10 https://www.example.com/

Explanation of Parameters:

-n 1000: Specifies that a total of 1000 requests should be made.
-c 10: Specifies that 10 concurrent requests should be made at a time.

Advantages:

Simple and easy to use.
Part of the Apache HTTP Server utilities, so it’s widely available.
Provides basic but useful performance metrics.

Disadvantages:

Less feature-rich than Siege.
Doesn’t support complex scenarios like session management or cookies without additional scripting.
Output is less detailed compared to more advanced tools.

2. Locust

Explanation: Locust is an open-source load testing tool written in Python. It allows you to define user behavior in Python code, making it highly flexible and customizable. Locust can simulate millions of concurrent users and provides a web-based interface for monitoring the test in real-time. This tool is well-suited for complex load testing scenarios where you need fine-grained control over user behavior.

Code Example:

First, install Locust using pip:

pip install locust

Create a Locust file (e.g., locustfile.py) with the following content:

from locust import HttpUser, task, between

class WebsiteUser(HttpUser):
    wait_time = between(1, 2)

    @task
    def index_page(self):
        self.client.get("/")

    @task
    def about_page(self):
        self.client.get("/about/")

Explanation:

HttpUser: Base class representing a user making HTTP requests.
wait_time: Specifies the wait time between tasks.
@task: Decorator to define a task that the user will perform.
self.client: HTTP client for making requests.

To run the test:

locust -f locustfile.py --host=https://www.example.com

Then, open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8089 to access the Locust web interface.