How to make apache slow and unreliable?

Question

I'm writing some code on a mobile device that uses a REST service to retrieve data from a host. That REST services is being proxied by Apache. In test mode I would like to be able to simulate network outages (as if the device has lost it's cell connection) to test the applications handling of intermittent failures. I also need to validate it's behavior with slow network connections.

I'm currently using Traffic Shaper XP to slow the network connection, but now I need something to make the Apache server send connection resets both randomly and on predefined sequences (to setup and repeat specific test scenarios).

As of OS X 10.7 (Lion) Apple has bundled a tool with XCode called the Network Link Conditioner. It provides the required functionality. — Jack Cox, Aug 11 '11 at 13:51

DavidC · Answer 1 · 2019-08-27T13:57:57.163

I highly recommend https://github.com/Shopify/toxiproxy from Shopify:

Download https://github.com/Shopify/toxiproxy/releases the cli and server

Run the server:

 ./toxiproxy-server-linux-amd64

On the cli setup proxy to apache on another port e.g. 8080

./toxiproxy-cli create apache -l localhost:8080 -u localhost:80

Make connection slow and unreliable:

./toxiproxy-cli toxic add apache -t latency -a latency=3000 
./toxiproxy-cli toxic add apache -t limit_data -a bytes=1000 --tox=0.01

here add 3 second of latency and stop after 1000 bytes for 1% of requests there are other options for bandwidth etc. You can add or remove these during use. Lots of other features and libraries there.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 12 '12 at 18:26

In Apache2 you can make it slow by adjust prefork settings in apache2.conf. The settings below ought to make apache pretty fn slow. They made my local web application take 700% longer to load.

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers          2
    MinSpareServers       2
    MaxSpareServers      2
    MaxClients          4
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0
</IfModule>

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 14 '19 at 15:49

2

It looks like DummyNet is the closest thing, but it’s still not quite there. For repeatable testing it would be good to have some control over dropped packets and resets.

edited Jun 14 '19 at 15:49

TRiG

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answered Jul 24 '09 at 13:09

Jack Cox

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 10 '09 at 15:34

1

Write a little proxy that forwards TCP connections from your app to the apache server and that you can set up in your test to cut the connection after x number of bytes or milliseconds.

answered Jul 10 '09 at 15:34

Nat

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 24 '09 at 13:12

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On a different (or on the same) computer use the commandline tool ab to get some load on the apache. More informations here.

answered Jul 24 '09 at 13:12

TheHippo

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score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 10 '09 at 15:50

-1

Is this a Unix or Linux environment? nice it up to give it lower priority then run a high CPU usage task like listening to music, playing a movie, calculating pi, etc. The low priority for Apache should create problems similar to what you're looking for.

answered Jul 10 '09 at 15:50

Weegee

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It's a Windows (aaack) environment. I'm thinking that I may need to standup a Linux VM to really have the control I need. I'm also thinking that I may need to write an apache module to get the level of control that I want. – Jack Cox Jul 10 '09 at 17:26
You might be able to do the same thing with Windows. Just set the priority to lowest (if it lets you), and then run [SuperPI](http://www.xtremesystems.com/superpi/). – Weegee Jul 10 '09 at 18:01

How to make apache slow and unreliable?

6 Answers6