Load Testing X11 Servers?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "There is a site that wishes to test more than 450 users running thin-client X on a server without having to have 450 client terminals. Is there a simple method to do this. So far I've thought of the following options: 1) recording X network packets then sending them from multiple dummy 'clients' on the same PC. (This was done during the Mindcraft benchmarking episode by simulating 'netbench'). 2) some sort of scripting process that can simulate typical X11 usage on the server. Unfortunately, expensive load testing software is not an option."

Comments

Balance LOCAL and remote X

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X windows - where your ideas of client and server get reversed.

In the old days we made a foray into the leading edge of technology - we bought X terminals, mostly from NCD, some from Tektronix.

They worked pretty good because the network worked well. It was generally pretty fast and reliable.

But not fast enough sometimes to get rid of latency from mouseclicks and keyboard events going to X applications running on the application server down the hall.

So we found that running the X server on the X terminal was made a better environment by also running the window manager on the X terminal. From there, it's only a small step to consider running a few more X applications on the X terminal. Basically, run everything locally where interactive response is of paramount importance, then those applications requiring huge resources like disk access, fast CPU's with lots of memory, down the hall.

Back in those days our application servers were equipped with less memory and less CPU than my current desktop PC. These days there hardly seems to be any excuse for not running X applications locally. For day-to-day graphics, a PC makes a killer good X terminal, plus a whole lot more.

I will admit that system administration for the diskless X terminals was easier than for fat client machines, in that all user profiles, applications, data, etc. sat on the big application servers.

I don't mean to digress too much from your initial question, but do suggest that you look carefully into improving interactive response and decreasing the network load by running as many applications as possible on the local desktops.