Goose

Have you ever been attacked by a goose?

Overview

Goose is a Rust load testing tool inspired by Locust. User behavior is defined with standard Rust code. Load tests are applications that have a dependency on the Goose library. Web requests are made with the Reqwest HTTP Client.

Getting Started

The in-line documentation offers much more detail about Goose specifics. For a general background to help you get started with Rust and Goose, read on.

Cargo is the Rust package manager. To create a new load test, use Cargo to create a new application (you can name your application anything, we've generically selected loadtest):

$ cargo new loadtest
     Created binary (application) `loadtest` package
$ cd loadtest/

This creates a new directory named loadtest/ containing loadtest/Cargo.toml and loadtest/src/main.rs. Start by editing Cargo.toml adding Goose under the dependencies heading:

[dependencies]
goose = "^0.8"

At this point it's possible to compile all dependencies, though the resulting binary only displays "Hello, world!":

$ cargo run
    Updating crates.io index
  Downloaded goose v0.8.1
      ...
   Compiling goose v0.8.1
   Compiling loadtest v0.1.0 (/home/jandrews/devel/rust/loadtest)
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 52.97s
     Running `target/debug/loadtest`
Hello, world!

To create an actual load test, you first have to add the following boilerplate to the top of src/main.rs:

use goose::prelude::*;

Then create a new load testing function. For our example we're simply going to load the front page of the website we're load-testing. Goose passes all load testing functions a mutable pointer to a GooseUser object, which is used to track statistics and make web requests. Thanks to the Reqwest library, the Goose client manages things like cookies, headers, and sessions for you. Load testing functions must be declared async.

In load tests functions you typically do not set the host, and instead configure the host at run time, so you can easily run your load test against different environments without recompiling:

async fn loadtest_index(user: &GooseUser) {
    let _response = user.get("/").await;
}

Finally, edit the main() function, removing the hello world text and replacing it as follows:

fn main() {
    GooseAttack::initialize()
        .register_taskset(taskset!("LoadtestTasks")
            .register_task(task!(loadtest_index))
        )
        .execute();
}

And that's it, you've created your first load test! Let's run it and see what happens.

$ cargo run
   Compiling loadtest v0.1.0 (/home/jandrews/devel/rust/loadtest)
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 3.56s
     Running `target/debug/loadtest`
12:09:56 [ERROR] Host must be defined globally or per-TaskSet. No host defined for LoadtestTasks.

Goose is unable to run, as it doesn't know the domain you want to load test. So, let's try again, this time passing in the --host flag. After running for a few seconds, we then press ctrl-c to stop Goose:

$ cargo run -- --host http://apache.fosciana/
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.07s
     Running `target/debug/loadtest --host 'http://apache.fosciana/'`
^C12:12:47 [ WARN] caught ctrl-c, stopping...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 Name                    | # reqs         | # fails        | req/s  | fail/s
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 905            | 0 (0%)         | 301    | 0    
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Name                    | Avg (ms)   | Min        | Max        | Median    
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 3139       | 952        | 102412     | 3000      
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Slowest page load within specified percentile of requests (in ms):
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Name                    | 50%    | 75%    | 98%    | 99%    | 99.9%  | 99.99%
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 3000   | 4000   | 5000   | 6000   | 8000   |   8000

When printing statistics, Goose displays three tables. The first shows the total number of requests made (905), how many of those failed (0), the everage number of requests per second (301), and the average number of failed requests per second (0).

The second table shows the average time required to load a page (3139 milliseconds), the mininimum time to load a page (952 ms), the maximum time to load a page (102412 ms) and the median time to load a page (3000 ms).

The final table shows the slowest page load time for a range of percentiles. In our example, in the 50% fastest page loads, the slowest page loaded in 3000 ms. In the 75% fastest page loads, the slowest page loadd in 4000 ms, etc.

In most load tests you'll make have different tasks being run, and each will be split out in the statistics, along with a line showing all totaled together in aggregate.

Refer to the examples directory for more complicated and useful load test examples.

Tips

• Avoid unwrap() in your task functions -- Goose generates a lot of load, and this tends to trigger errors. Embrace Rust's warnings and properly handle all possible errors, this will save you time debugging later.
• When running your load test for real, use the cargo --release flag to generate optimized code. This can generate considerably more load test traffic.

Simple Example

The -h flag will show all run-time configuration options available to Goose load tests. For example, pass the -h flag to the simple example, cargo run --example simple -- -h:

Goose 0.8.1
CLI options available when launching a Goose load test

USAGE:
    simple [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS:
    -h, --help             Prints help information
    -l, --list             Shows list of all possible Goose tasks and exits
    -g, --log-level        Log level (-g, -gg, -ggg, etc.)
        --manager          Enables manager mode
        --no-hash-check    Ignore worker load test checksum
        --no-stats         Don't print stats in the console
        --only-summary     Only prints summary stats
        --reset-stats      Resets statistics once hatching has been completed
        --status-codes     Includes status code counts in console stats
        --sticky-follow    User follows redirect of base_url with subsequent requests
    -V, --version          Prints version information
    -v, --verbose          Debug level (-v, -vv, -vvv, etc.)
        --worker           Enables worker mode

OPTIONS:
        --expect-workers <expect-workers>
            Required when in manager mode, how many workers to expect [default: 0]

    -r, --hatch-rate <hatch-rate>                  How many users to spawn per second [default: 1]
    -H, --host <host>                              Host to load test, for example: http://10.21.32.33 [default: ]
        --log-file <log-file>                      Log file name [default: goose.log]
        --manager-bind-host <manager-bind-host>    Define host manager listens on, formatted x.x.x.x [default: 0.0.0.0]
        --manager-bind-port <manager-bind-port>    Define port manager listens on [default: 5115]
        --manager-host <manager-host>              Host manager is running on [default: 127.0.0.1]
        --manager-port <manager-port>              Port manager is listening on [default: 5115]
    -t, --run-time <run-time>                      Stop after e.g. (300s, 20m, 3h, 1h30m, etc.) [default: ]
    -s, --stats-log-file <stats-log-file>          Statistics log file name [default: ]
        --stats-log-format <stats-log-format>      Statistics log format ('csv', 'json', or 'raw') [default: json]
    -u, --users <users>                            Number of concurrent Goose users (defaults to available CPUs)

The examples/simple.rs example copies the simple load test documented on the locust.io web page, rewritten in Rust for Goose. It uses minimal advanced functionality, but demonstrates how to GET and POST pages. It defines a single Task Set which has the user log in and then load a couple of pages.

Goose can make use of all available CPU cores. By default, it will launch 1 user per core, and it can be configured to launch many more. The following was configured instead to launch 1,024 users. Each user randomly pauses 5 to 15 seconds after each task is loaded, so it's possible to spin up a large number of users. Here is a snapshot of top when running this example on an 8-core VM with 10G of available RAM -- there were ample resources to launch considerably more "users", though ulimit had to be resized:

top - 11:14:57 up 16 days,  4:40,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.01
Tasks: 129 total,   1 running, 128 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.3 us,  0.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.2 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.2 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   9993.6 total,   6695.1 free,   1269.3 used,   2029.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap:  10237.0 total,  10234.7 free,      2.3 used.   8401.5 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                   
19776 goose     20   0    9.8g 874688   8252 S   6.3   8.5   0:42.90 simple                                                    

Here's the output of running the loadtest. The -v flag sends INFO and more critical messages to stdout (in addition to the log file). The -u1024 tells Goose to spin up 1,024 users. The -r32 option tells Goose to spin up 32 users per second. The -t 10m option tells Goose to run the load test for 10 minutes, or 600 seconds. The --print-stats flag tells Goose to collect statistics during the load test, and the --status-codes flag tells it to include statistics about HTTP Status codes returned by the server. Finally, the --only-summary flag tells Goose to only display the statistics when the load test finishes, otherwise it would display running statistics every 15 seconds for the duration of the test.

$ cargo run --release --example simple -- --host http://apache.fosciana -v -c1024 -r32 -t 10m --print-stats --status-codes --only-summary
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 0.05s
     Running `target/release/examples/simple --host 'http://apache.fosciana' -v -c1024 -r32 -t 10m --print-stats --status-codes --only-summary`
18:42:48 [ INFO] Output verbosity level: INFO
18:42:48 [ INFO] Logfile verbosity level: INFO
18:42:48 [ INFO] Writing to log file: goose.log
18:42:48 [ INFO] run_time = 600
18:42:48 [ INFO] global host configured: http://apache.fosciana
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 1 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 2 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 3 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 4 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 5 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 6 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 7 from WebsiteUser...
18:42:53 [ INFO] launching user 8 from WebsiteUser...

...

18:43:25 [ INFO] launching user 1022 from WebsiteUser...
18:43:25 [ INFO] launching user 1023 from WebsiteUser...
18:43:25 [ INFO] launching user 1024 from WebsiteUser...
18:43:25 [ INFO] launched 1024 users...
18:53:26 [ INFO] stopping after 600 seconds...
18:53:26 [ INFO] waiting for users to exit
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 Name                    | # reqs         | # fails        | req/s  | fail/s
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 34,077         | 582 (1.7%)     | 53     | 0    
 GET /about/             | 34,044         | 610 (1.8%)     | 53     | 0    
 POST /login             | 1,024          | 0 (0%)         | 1      | 0    
 ------------------------+----------------+----------------+-------+---------- 
 Aggregated              | 69,145         | 1,192 (1.7%)   | 107    | 1    
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Name                    | Avg (ms)   | Min        | Max        | Median      
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 12.38      | 0.01       | 1001.10    | 0.09      
 GET /about/             | 12.80      | 0.01       | 1001.10    | 0.08      
 POST /login             | 0.21       | 0.15       | 1.82       | 0.20      
 ------------------------+------------+------------+------------+------------- 
 Aggregated              | 12.41      | 0.01       | 1001.10    | 0.02      
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Slowest page load within specified percentile of requests (in ms):
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Name                    | 50%    | 75%    | 98%    | 99%    | 99.9%  | 99.99%
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 0.09   | 0.10   | 345.18 | 500.60 | 1000.93 | 1001.09
 GET /about/             | 0.08   | 0.10   | 356.65 | 500.61 | 1000.94 | 1001.08
 POST /login             | 0.20   | 0.22   | 0.27   | 0.34   | 1.36   |   1.82
 ------------------------+------------+------------+------------+------------- 
 Aggregated              | 0.08   | 0.10   | 349.40 | 500.60 | 1000.93 | 1001.09
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Name                    | Status codes              
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 GET /                   | 33,495 [200], 582 [0]      
 GET /about/             | 33,434 [200], 610 [0]      
 POST /login             | 1,024 [200]              
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Aggregated              | 67,953 [200]              

Logging Load Test Requests

Goose can optionally log details about all load test requests to a file. To enable, add the --stats-log-file=foo command line option, where foo is either a relative or absolute path of the log file to create. Any existing file that may already exist will be overwritten.

When operating in Gaggle-mode, the --stats-log-file option can be enabled on worker processes and/or on the manager process. You can therefor configure Goose to spread out the overhead of writing logs by enabling the option on workers, or you can configure Goose to create a single combined log of all requests by enabling the option on the manager.

By default, logs are written in JSON Lines format. For example:

{"elapsed":30,"final_url":"http://local.dev/user/42","method":"POST","name":"/login","redirected":true,"response_time":220,"status_code":200,"success":true,"update":false,"url":"http://local.dev/login","user":0}
{"elapsed":251,"final_url":"http://local.dev/","method":"GET","name":"/","redirected":false,"response_time":3,"status_code":200,"success":true,"update":false,"url":"http://local.dev/","user":0}
{"elapsed":1027,"final_url":"http://local.dev/user/13","method":"POST","name":"/login","redirected":true,"response_time":266,"status_code":200,"success":true,"update":false,"url":"http://local.dev/login","user":1}
{"elapsed":1294,"final_url":"http://local.dev/","method":"GET","name":"/","redirected":false,"response_time":4,"status_code":200,"success":true,"update":false,"url":"http://local.dev/","user":1}

Logs include the entire GooseRawRequest object as defined in src/goose.rs, which are created on all requests. This object includes the following fields:

• elapsed: total milliseconds between when this GooseUser thread started and this request was made;
• method: the type of HTTP request made;
• name: the name of the request;
• url: the URL that was requested;
• final_url: the URL that was returned;
• redirected: true or false if the request was redirected;
• response_time: how many milliseconds the request took;
• status_code: the HTTP response code returned for this request;
• success: true or false if this was a successful request;
• update: true or false if this is a recurrence of a previous log entery, but with success toggling between true and false. This happens when a load test calls set_success() on a request that Goose previously interpreted as a failure, or set_failure() on a request that Goose interpreted as a success;
• user: an integer value indicating which GooseUser thread made this request.

In the first line of the above example, GooseUser thread 0 made a POST request to /login and was successfully redirected to /user/42 in 220 milliseconds. The second line is the same GooseUser thread which then made a GET request to / in 3 milliseconds. The third and fourth lines are a second GooseUser thread doing the same thing, first logging in and then loading the front page.

By default Goose logs statistics in JSON Lines format. The --stats-log-format option can be used to log in csv, json or raw format. The raw format is Rust's debug output of the entire GooseRawRequest object.

For example, csv output of the same requests logged above would look like:

elapsed,method,name,url,final_url,redirected,response_time,status_code,success,update,user
30,POST,"/login","http://local.dev/login","http://local.dev/user/42",true,30,200,true,false,0
251,GET,"/","http://local.dev/","http://local.dev/",false,3,200,true,false,0
1027,POST,"/login","http://local.dev/login","http://local.dev/user/13",true,266,200,true,false,1
1294,GET,"/","http://local.dev/","http://local.dev/",false,4,200,true,false,1

Gaggle: Distributed Load Test

Goose also supports distributed load testing. A Gaggle is one Goose process running in manager mode, and 1 or more Goose processes running in worker mode. The manager coordinates starting and stopping the workers, and collects aggregated statistics. Gaggle support is a cargo feature that must be enabled at compile-time as documented below. To launch a Gaggle, you must copy your load test application to all servers from which you wish to generate load.

Gaggle Compile-time Feature

Gaggle support is a compile-time Cargo feature that must be enabled. Goose uses the nng library to manage network connections, and compiling nng requires that cmake be available.

The gaggle feature can be enabled from the command line by adding --features gaggle to your cargo command.

When writing load test applications, you can default to compiling in the Gaggle feature in the dependencies section of your Cargo.toml, for example:

[dependencies]
goose = { version = "^0.8", features = ["gaggle"] }

Goose Manager

To launch a Gaggle, you first must start a Goose application in manager mode. All configuration happens in the manager. To start, add the --manager flag and the --expect-workers flag, the latter necessary to tell the Manager process how many Worker processes it will be coordinating. For example:

cargo run --features gaggle --example simple -- --manager --expect-workers 2 --host http://local.dev/ -v

This configures a Goose manager to listen on all interfaces on the default port (0.0.0.0:5115) for 2 Goose worker processes.

Goose Worker

At this time, a Goose process can be either a manager or a worker, not both. Therefor, it makes sense to launch your first worker on the same server that the manager is running on. If not otherwise configured, a Goose worker will try to connect to the manager on the localhost. This can be done as folows:

cargo run --features gaggle --example simple -- --worker -v

In our above example, we expected 2 workers. The second Goose process should be started on a different server. This will require telling it the host where the Goose manager proocess is running. For example:

cargo run --example simple -- --worker --manager-host 192.168.1.55 -v

Once all expected workers are running, the distributed load test will automatically start. We set the -v flag so Goose provides verbose output indicating what is happening. In our example, the load test will run until it is canceled. You can cancel the manager or either of the worker processes, and the test will stop on all servers.

Goose Run-time Flags

• --manager: starts a Goose process in manager mode. There currently can only be one manager per Gaggle.
• --worker: starts a Goose process in worker mode. How many workers are in a given Gaggle is defined by the --expect-workers option, documented below.
• --no-hash-check: tells Goose to ignore if the load test applications don't match between worker(s) and manager. Not recommended.

The --no-stats, --only-summary, --reset-stats, --status-codes, and --no-hash-check flags must be set on the manager. Workers inheret these flags from the manager

Goose Run-time Options

• --manager-bind-host <manager-bind-host>: configures the host that the manager listens on. By default Goose will listen on all interfaces, or 0.0.0.0.
• --manager-bind-port <manager-bind-port>: configures the port that the manager listens on. By default Goose will listen on port 5115.
• --manager-host <manager-host>: configures the host that the worker will talk to the manager on. By default, a Goose worker will connect to the localhost, or 127.0.0.1. In a distributed load test, this must be set to the IP of the Goose manager.
• --manager-port <manager-port>: configures the port that a worker will talk to the manager on. By default, a Goose worker will connect to port 5115.

The --users, --hatch-rate, --host, and --run-time options must be set on the manager. Workers inheret these options from the manager.

Technical Details

Goose uses nng to send network messages between the manager and all workers. Serde and Serde CBOR are used to serialize messages into Concise Binary Object Representation.

Workers initiate all network connections, and push a HashMap containing load test statistics up to the manager process.

Roadmap

The Goose project roadmap is documented in TODO.md.