Mastering Siege: Install, Configure, and Run HTTP Load Tests on Linux

Introduction

Siege is an HTTP/HTTPS load‑testing and benchmarking tool designed to help web developers understand the performance of their code under stress.

Siege supports basic authentication, cookies, HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols. Users can configure the number of concurrent users to simulate, making it a convenient tool for stress testing.

Official website: http://www.joedog.org/

Download: http://www.joedog.org/pub/siege/

Installation & Configuration

Version: Siege‑4.0.2 Operating System: CentOS 7.x

1. Install: shell> yum install siege -y 2. Basic usage:

shell> siege -V</code>
<code>SIEGE 4.0.2</code>
<code>shell> siege --help</code>
<code>-C, --config          Show current configuration</code>
<code>-V, --version         Show version information</code>
<code>-c, --concurrent=NUM  Number of concurrent users (default 10)</code>
<code>-t, --time=NUMm       Test duration (e.g., -t5 for 5 minutes)</code>
<code>-b, --benchmark       Benchmark mode (no delay between requests)</code>
<code>-g, --get             Use GET method for requests</code>
<code>-d, --delay=NUM       Delay between requests (seconds)</code>
<code>-i, --internet        Simulate random URLs</code>
<code>-r, --reps=NUM        Number of repetitions per connection</code>
<code>-f, --file=FILE       File containing a list of URLs (one per line)</code>
<code>-m, --mark="text"     Mark string in log output</code>
<code>-H, --header="text"   Add custom header</code>
<code>-A, --user-agent="text"  Set custom User‑Agent</code>
<code>-u, --url="URL"        Target URL for testing

3. Example:

# 10 concurrent users, each making 10 requests with 1‑second delay</code>
<code>shell> siege -u www.baidu.com -d1 -r10 -c 10</code>
<code># Sample result (truncated)</code>
<code>HTTP/1.1 200 0.05 secs: 143913 bytes => GET /static/superman/js/lib/jquery-1-cc52697ab1.10.2.js</code>
<code>... (additional request lines) ...</code>
<code>Transactions:            1017 hits</code>
<code>Availability:            100.00 %</code>
<code>Elapsed time:            10.06 secs</code>
<code>Data transferred:         35.65 MB</code>
<code>Response time:           0.03 secs</code>
<code>Transaction rate:        101.09 trans/sec</code>
<code>Throughput:              3.54 MB/sec</code>
<code>Concurrency:            3.38</code>
<code>Successful transactions: 1017</code>
<code>Failed transactions:     0</code>
<code>Longest transaction:     0.33 secs</code>
<code>Shortest transaction:    0.00 secs

4. GET‑method test:

shell> siege -g www.baidu.com</code>
<code>HEAD / HTTP/1.0</code>
<code>Host: www.baidu.com</code>
<code>Accept: */*</code>
<code>User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (redhat-x86_64-linux-gnu) Siege/4.0.2</code>
<code>Connection: close</code>
<code>HTTP/1.0 200 OK</code>
<code>... (response headers) ...</code>
<code>Transactions:            1 hits</code>
<code>Availability:            100.00 %</code>
<code>Elapsed time:            0.52 secs</code>
<code>Response time:           0.05 secs</code>
<code>Transaction rate:        1.92 trans/sec</code>
<code>Throughput:              0.00 MB/sec</code>
<code>Concurrency:            0.10</code>
<code>Successful transactions: 1</code>
<code>Failed transactions:     0</code>
<code>Longest transaction:     0.05 secs</code>
<code>Shortest transaction:    0.05 secs

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