NAME¶
rabid - program to test POP server throughput.
SYNOPSIS¶
rabid [-r max-connections-per-minute] [-p processes] [-l
local-address] [-c messages-per-connection] [-a] [-s ssl-percentage]
[-i imap-percentage] [-b qmail-pop] [-d
download-percentage[:delete-percentage]] [-[z|Z] debug-file] [-u]
pop-server user-list-filename
DESCRIPTION¶
This manual page documents briefly the
rabid, program.
It is designed to test the performance of POP email servers by reading all
messages from randomly selected accounts as fast as possible. A future version
will support rate limiting to provide a constant load (for testing SMTP
servers).
The
pop-server parameter specifies the IP address or name of the mail
server that the mail is to downloaded from. If you want to specify a port
other than port 110 then enclose the host address in square brackets and have
the port address immidiately following. If you want a DNS lookup for every
connection (for testing round-robin DNS) then immediately preceed the host
address with a '+' character.
The
user-list-filename is the name of a file which contains a list of
user's email addresses and passwords. It will have one address per line and
the password follows the address with a space to seperate.
The
processes parameter is the number of processes that should be forked
off to attempt seperate connections. A well configured mail server won't
accept an unlimited number of connections so make sure you don't specify a
number larger than the number your mail server is configured to handle. Also
for sensible results make sure that you don't use enough to make your server
thrash as the results won't be representative of real-world use.
The
max-connections-per-minute parameter is for limiting the number of
connections that the program makes. This is designed to be used when you want
to test the performance of other programs when the system is under load. The
default is 24000 connections per minute.
The
messages-per-connection parameter specifies the maximum number of
messages to download in a single POP session. The default is -1 (unlimited).
The
local-address parameter specifies which local IP address(es) are used
to make the outbound connections. Specified in the same way as the remote
address. This is good for testing LocalDirectors or other devices that perform
differently depending on which source IP address was used.
The
-a command turns on all logging. All message data received will be
logged. This will make it slow and it may not be able to saturate a fast
Ethernet link...
The
-s switch specifies the percentage of connections which are to use
TLS AKA
SSL. Use 0 for no SSL, or 100 for always SSL, or any
number in between. Default is 0.
The
-i switch specifies the percentage of IMAP connections (default is
POP).
The
-b switch allows you to specify breakage strings. Currently the only
option is for Qmail POP server which adds an extra blank line at the end of
each message.
-b qmail-pop means to not report this as an error.
-d download-percentage[:delete-percentage] allows you to specify what
percentage of the messages are downloaded and what percentage of the
downloaded messages are deleted. Default is 100%.
The
-u switch causes the domain of user-names to be ignored. This allows
you to have a single file with user-names and passwords which can be used by
postal and rabid when using a server which doesn't accept a domain. By default
postal will ignore the password field, rabid may or may not need the domain
depending on the configuration of the POP server. The default is to use the
domain (which is required if the same user is present in multiple domains),
this switch causes the domain part to be stripped from the user-name field.
The
-z switch allows you to specify a debugging file base. From this base
one file is created for each thread (with a ':' and the thread number
appended), each file is used to log all IO performed by that thread for
debugging purposes.
The
-Z switch is the same but creates a separate file for each connection
as well with an attitional ':' appended followed by the connection number.
BUGS¶
Doesn't actually do SSL or IMAP yet.
RETURN CODES¶
- 0
- No Error
- 1
- Bad Parameters
- 2
- System Error, lack of memory or some other resource
AUTHOR¶
This program, it's manual page, and the Debian package were written by Russell
Coker <russell@coker.com.au>.
AVAILABILITY¶
The source is available from
http://doc.coker.com.au/projects/postal/ .
See
http://etbe.coker.com.au/category/benchmark for further information.
SEE ALSO¶
postal(8),
bhm(8)