The passage walks you through installing the Siege load‑testing tool on a fresh Debian 11 (Bullseye) system, optionally adding the backports repository to obtain a newer version that supports modern TLS. It shows how to update APT, install Siege either from the stable repo or with -t bullseye-backports, and verify the installation with siege --version. Then it demonstrates creating a simple URL list, running a quick test (siege -c1 -t10S -f urls.txt), and interpreting the output to confirm connectivity. Finally, it offers practical advice on tuning concurrency with the -c flag and cleaning up the log file when you’re finished.

Install Siege Benchmarking Tool on Debian 11 Bullseye

What you’ll get out of this

In this short guide you’ll learn how to pull the Siege load‑testing utility onto a fresh Debian 11 install and get it ready for hammering your web server. By the end you’ll have a working binary, the basic configuration file in place, and a one‑liner test that shows response times and concurrency limits.

Add the official repository (optional)

Debian’s default package list ships an older Siege version that still works, but if you want the latest patches pull it from the backports repo.

1. Open /etc/apt/sources.list with your favorite editor (nano or vim).

2. Append the line:

   deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main
   

3. Run apt update. This tells APT to refresh its catalog, making newer packages visible.

Why bother? I once ran Siege from the stable repo on a server that had just received a security update; the old binary choked on TLS 1.3 handshakes and gave me misleading latency numbers. The backports version handles modern OpenSSL without fuss.

Install the package

If you’re happy with the distro version, skip the repository step and install directly:

sudo apt install siege

For the backported build, add -t bullseye-backports:

sudo apt -t bullseye-backports install siege

Apt resolves dependencies automatically, pulling in libssl and other libraries Siege needs to talk HTTP/HTTPS.

Verify the installation

Run:

siege --version

You should see something like “Siege 4.1.2 (stable)”. If the command isn’t found, double‑check that /usr/bin is in your $PATH.

Quick sanity test

Create a tiny URL list file called urls.txt:

http://localhost/

Then launch Siege with a single user for ten seconds:

siege -c1 -t10S -f urls.txt

The output will include “Transaction rate” and “Response time”. If you see “0 transactions”, the web server isn’t reachable – maybe your firewall is still blocking port 80.

Real‑world tip: tune concurrency

When I first used Siege on a small VPS, I started with -c10 (ten concurrent users) and watched the CPU spike to 100 %. Scaling back to -c5 gave smooth numbers without killing the box. Adjust the -c flag until your server’s load stays in a comfortable range; that’s the sweet spot for meaningful benchmark data.

Clean up (optional)

Siege writes a log file at ~/.siege/log. If you’re done experimenting, delete it to keep your home directory tidy:

rm -f ~/.siege/log

That’s all there is to getting Siege running on Bullseye. Now go ahead and throw some traffic at that web app – just remember not to point it at production services without permission.