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How to install wrk on linux system?

Cowrie
Cowrie
Dev @ Bswen

1. Purpose

In this post, I will demo how to install wrk, a web url performance test tool on linux/unix/mac systems.

2. The solution

2.1 How to install wrk?

On linux systems, to ensures that your package manager (APT) has the most up-to-date information about available packages, versions, and dependencies, we should update the local cache first:

Terminal window
root@launch-advisor-20191120:/etc/nginx# apt update
....

Then we install the wrk tool using apt install command:

root@launch-advisor-20191120:/etc/nginx# apt install wrk
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package wrk

You can see that we got an error E: Unable to locate package wrk, why?

And wrk can only run on Unix-like systems. Such as linux, mac, solaris, etc. It can only be compiled on these systems.

So we can install it from source:

Download wrk source code:

Terminal window
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev git -y
git clone https://github.com/wg/wrk.git wrk

Then build it:

Terminal window
cd wrk
sudo make

Then we can use the binary:

Terminal window
# move the wrk executable to your PATH
sudo cp wrk /usr/local/bin

2.2 Verify the installation of wrk

Terminal window
root@launch-advisor-20191120:~/wrk# wrk
Usage: wrk <options> <url>
  Options:
    -c, --connections <N>  Connections to keep open
    -d, --duration    <T>  Duration of test
    -t, --threads     <N>  Number of threads to use


    -s, --script      <S>  Load Lua script file
    -H, --header      <H>  Add header to request
        --latency          Print latency statistics
        --timeout     <T>  Socket/request timeout
    -v, --version          Print version details


  Numeric arguments may include a SI unit (1k, 1M, 1G)
  Time arguments may include a time unit (2s, 2m, 2h)
root@launch-advisor-20191120:~/wrk#

It works.

3. Summary

In this post, I demonstrated how to install wrk , a great performance test tool . That’s it, thanks for your reading.

Final Words + More Resources

My intention with this article was to help others who might be considering solving such a problem. So I hope that’s been the case here. If you still have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me by email: Email me

Here are also the most important links from this article along with some further resources that will help you in this scope:

Oh, and if you found these resources useful, don’t forget to support me by starring the repo on GitHub!

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