
WHAT IS IT?

The LoadWorm is a tool to load a website with programmed requests, and to
record the resultant performance, from a web client's perspective.  It can
also be used for various investigative purposes, such as validation of the
website, or discovering all the referrers to a page, etc. I have already
used it to discover faults that have lead to a major re-architecting here
at SaveSmart commercial site(s). It runs, unaltered, on Unix and Win32
(tested on Solaris 2.4, Linux, and WinNT 4.0).

This is an application, written in Perl, that uses LWP, LWP::Parallel,
sockets (lots of them!), and Tk, so there is plenty to get your hands onto
here. The pod will tell you how to operate it.



INSTALLATION
 
To install LoadWorm, all you do is the usual

perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

There is no 'make test', yet.  If LWP and Tk work, then LoadWorm should work.

'make install' will install LoadWorm.pm in the site/ directory of perl.  You
will find the working components of the LoadWorm ("loadworm.pl", "loadmaster.pl",
loadslave.pl) in your current directory.  You will find an example "loadworm.cfg"
configuration file in the ./eg/ directory.



DEPENDENCIES

LoadWorm depends on the following modules for it's function.

Perl 5.004 (thanks, Larry!)

LWP from libwww-perl-5_20

LWP::Parallel from ParallelUserAgent-2.30 (thanks to Marc Langheinrich!)

Tk from Tk402_003

Time::Local and Time::HiRes for Unix OS.

Win32 for Win32 OS.

And various core Perl modules, including 
    English, File::Path, File::Copy, Socket, Carp, FileHandle, Sys::Hostname.




AUTHOR: Glenn Wood, C<glenwood@alumni.caltech.edu>

Copyright 1997-1998 SaveSmart, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Released under the Perl Artistic License.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.


#---------------------------------------------------------------------#
( $VERSION ) = sprintf("%d.%02d", q$Revision: 1.2 $ =~ /(\d+)\.(\d+)/)
===========================================================================================
HISTORY

01.05.18 Version 1.02 - return after long hiatus; improved release process; no other changes.
98.11.14 Version 0.12 - make dist without the \015's
98.06.30 Version 0.11
98.06.30 Implemented Makefile.PL
98.06.30 Restored AnyURL.pm, into eg/.
98.06.30 Improved version calculation.
98.06.27 Renamed LoadWorm.pm - the package is named "LoadWorm".

98.06.23 Version 0.10 uploaded to CPAN.
98.06.23 AnyURL.pm removed; caused problems with proper CPAN distribution.
