rabid(8)							      Postal								  rabid(8)

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-per-
       centage] [-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 connec-
       tion 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)

russell@coker.com.au						       0.70								  rabid(8)