The Grinder 3 Properties File
The Grinder worker and agent processes are controlled by setting properties in the grinder.properties file.
All properties have default values. If you start The Grinder agent process without a grinder.properties file it will communicate with the console using default addresses, use one worker process, one thread, and make one run through the test script found in the file grinder.py. This is not much use, so read on...
Table of properties
This table lists the properties understood by The Grinder engine.
| Property | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| grinder.processes | The number of worker processes the agent should start. | 1 |
| grinder.threads | The number of worker threads that each worker process spawns. | 1 |
| grinder.runs | The number of runs of the test script each thread performs. 0 means "run forever", and should be used when you are using the console to control your test runs. | 1 |
| grinder.processIncrement | If set, the agent will ramp up the number of worker processes, starting the number specified every grinder.processesIncrementInterval milliseconds. The upper limit is set by grinder.processes. | Start all worker processes together. |
| grinder.processIncrementInterval | Used in conjunction with grinder.processIncrement, this property sets the interval in milliseconds at which the agent starts new worker processes. | 60000 ms |
| grinder.initialProcesses | Used in conjunction with grinder.processIncrement, this property sets the initial number of worker processes to start. | The value of grinder.processIncrement. |
| grinder.duration | The maximum length of time in milliseconds that each worker process should run for. grinder.duration can be specified in conjunction with grinder.runs, in which case the worker processes will terminate if either the duration time or the number of runs is exceeded. | Run forever. |
| grinder.script | The file name of the Jython script to run. | grinder.py |
| grinder.jvm | Use an alternate JVM for worker processes. Defaults to java so you do not need to specify this if your PATH is sensible. | java |
| grinder.jvm.classpath | Use to adjust the classpath used for the worker process JVMs. Anything specified here will be prepended to the classpath used to start the Grinder processes. | |
| grinder.jvm.arguments | Additional arguments to worker process JVMs. | |
| grinder.logDirectory | Directory to write log files to. Created if it doesn't already exist. | The local directory. |
| grinder.numberOfOldLogs | The number of archived logs from previous runs that should be kept. | 1 |
| grinder.hostID | Override the "host" string used in log filenames and logs. | The host name. |
| grinder.consoleHost | The IP address or host name that the agent and worker processes use to contact the console. | All the network interfaces of the local machine. |
| grinder.consolePort | The IP port that the agent and worker processes use to contact the console. | 6372 |
| grinder.useConsole | Set to false to set the agent and worker processes not to use the console. | true |
| grinder.reportToConsole.interval | The period at which each process sends updates to the console. This also controls the frequency at which the data files are flushed. | 500 ms |
| grinder.initialSleepTime | The maximum time in milliseconds that each thread waits before starting. Unlike the sleep times specified in scripts, this is varied according to a flat random distribution. The actual sleep time will be a random value between 0 and the specified value. Affected by grinder.sleepTimeFactor, but not grinder.sleepTimeVariation. | 0 ms |
| grinder.sleepTimeFactor | Apply a factor to all the sleep times you've specified, either through a property of in a script. Setting this to 0.1 would run the script ten times as fast. | 1 |
| grinder.sleepTimeVariation | The Grinder varies the sleep times specified in scripts according to a Normal distribution. This property specifies a fractional range within which nearly all (99.75%) of the times will lie. E.g., if the sleep time is specified as 1000 and the sleepTimeVariation is set to 0.1, then 99.75% of the actual sleep times will be between 900 and 1100 milliseconds. | 0.2 |
| grinder.logProcessStreams | Set to false to disable the logging of output and error steams for worker processes. You might want to use this to reduce the overhead of running a client thread. | true |
| grinder.reportTimesToConsole | Set to false to disable reporting of timing information to the console; other statistics are still reported. | true |
| grinder.debug.singleprocess | If set to true, the agent process spawns engines in threads rather than processes, using special class loaders to isolate the engines. This allows the engine to be easily run in a debugger. This is primarily a tool for debugging The Grinder engine, but it might also be useful to advanced users. | false |
| grinder.useNanoTime | If set to true, System.nanoTime() is used for measuring time instead of System.currentTimeMills(). The Grinder will still report times in milliseconds. The precision of these methods depends on the JVM implementation and the operating system. Setting to true requires J2SE 5 or later. | false |
Specifying properties on the command line
You can also specify these properties as Java system properties in the agent command line. For example, on UNIX systems the following command line can be used to generate log directories based on the current date.
java -Dgrinder.logDirectory="log/$(date +%y%m%d)" net.grinder.Grinder