Siege is available through most major Linux distributors. That makes us feel like important uppity-ups. It also cuts down on the time we spend walking n00bs through the compile process. Unfortunately, it comes with a downside. Because most people use distributed versions, it takes a while for news of buggie bugs to reach us.

We applied a patch to version 3.1.1 that introduced one such bug. Versions 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 incorrectly handle HTTP POST. Instead of following protocol, those versions make this request:

POST /test POST ha=1&ho=2 HTTP/1.0

Well, that’s embarrassing! Version 3.1.3 fixes that mess. Your JoeDog regrets the SNAFU.

This latest version does another thing! It may look like a bug, but it’s a feature. Beginning with siege-3.1.3 you will no longer be able to run siege with more than 1000 users without changing your configuration. This allows us to Dog-splain in the rc file why you’re probably doing something foolish.

The siegerc file now contains a limit directive which caps the number of users at 1000 by default. Frankly, that’s probably still too high. If the limit directive is not present in that file, then siege defaults to a hardcoded limit. If you want to run siege with more than 1000 users, you’ll have to set that ceiling in the rc file yourself:

limit = 1001

Please understand, if you jack that up and make a mess, we’re not going to be very sympathetic.

[SIEGE: 3.1.3]