Technology Insights

How To Tell If httperf Is Using SSL

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I had created a script to run ask for a couple CLI arguements and then run httperf against a server. The goal was to load test a server for HTTP and for HTTPS. I added the –ssl switch but could not verify a couple things including if httperf had been compiled with SSL support or if the –ssl was working at all.

1. Was httperf installed with SSL support?
This is an easy one. If the –ssl option exists then your httperf was compiled with SSL support. I wasn’t sure since I installed httperf via YUM in CentOS. I also tested by compiling myself and both versions had SSL support. If you do compile yourself you can check compile-dir/config.status and see if SSL support compiled properly.

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Using httperf for posting xml data against ruby applications

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I recently ran into an issue with load testing ruby on rails while attempting to post xml data to a ruby appplication via httperf. Everything seemed correct except I could not get httperf to post this data correctly. The issue ended up being that the httperf switch -add-header requires a \n at the end of your HTTP header to process correctly. The entire command to test against the ruby application is below.