Follow these steps to install Java JDK:

Here are the steps to set up the JAVA_HOME environment variable on Windows and Unix operating systems.

To see all the options available to start JMeter, run the JMeter executable with the -? command. The options provided are as follows:

./jmeter.sh -?

-?
    print command line options and exit
-h, --help
    print usage information and exit
-v, --version
    print the version information and exit
-p, --propfile <argument>
    the jmeter property file to use
-q, --addprop <argument>
    additional JMeter property file(s)
-t, --testfile <argument>
    the jmeter test(.jmx) file to run
-l, --logfile <argument>
    the file to log samples to
-j, --jmeterlogfile <argument>
    jmeter run log file (jmeter.log)
-n, --nongui
    run JMeter in nongui mode
...
-J, --jmeterproperty <argument>=<value>
    Define additional JMeter properties
-G, --globalproperty <argument>=<value>
    Define Global properties (sent to servers)
    e.g. -Gport=123
         or -Gglobal.properties
-D, --systemproperty <argument>=<value>
    Define additional system properties
-S, --systemPropertyFile <argument>
    additional system property file(s)

This is a snippet (non-exhaustive list) of what you might see if you did the same. We will explore some, but not all, of these options as we go through the book.

Since JMeter is 100 percent pure Java, it comes packed with functionalities to get most of the test cases scripted. However, there might come a time when you need to pull in a functionality provided by a third-party library, or one developed by yourself, which is not present by default. As such, JMeter provides two directories where such third-party libraries can be placed to be auto discovered on its classpath:

If you are working from behind a corporate firewall, you may need to configure JMeter to work with it, providing it with the proxy server host and port number. To do so, supply additional command-line parameters to JMeter when starting it up. Some of them are as follows:

./jmeter.sh -H proxy.server -P 7567 -u username -a password

On Windows, run the jmeter.bat file instead.

The screen is displayed as follows:

JMeter GUI

As described earlier, JMeter can run in non-GUI mode. This is needed when you run remotely, or want to optimize your testing system by not taking the extra overhead cost of running the GUI. Normally, you will run the default (GUI) when preparing your test scripts and running light load, but run the non-GUI mode for higher loads.

To do so, use the following command-line options:

In addition, you can also use the -H and -P options to specify proxy server host and post, as we saw earlier:

./jmeter.sh -n -t test_plan_01.jmx -l log.jtl

This is used when performing distributed testing, that is, using more testing servers to generate additional load on your system. JMeter will be kicked off in server mode on each remote server (slave), and then a GUI on the master server will be used to control the slave nodes. We will discuss this in detail when we dive into distributed testing in Chapter 4, Managing Sessions:

./jmeter-server.sh

JMeter provides two ways to override Java, JMeter, and logging properties. One way is to directly edit jmeter.properties, which resides in the JMETER_HOME/bin folder. I suggest that you take a peek into this file and see the vast number of properties you can override. This is one of the things that makes JMeter so powerful and flexible. On most occasions, you will not need to override the defaults, as they have sensible default values.

The other way to override these values is directly from the command line when starting JMeter.

The options available to you include the following ones:

-D<property name>=<value>

-J<property name>=<value>

-G<property name>=<value>

-G<property file>

-L<category>=<priority>
./jmeter.sh -Duser.dir=/home/bobbyflare/jmeter_stuff 
-Jremote_hosts=127.0.0.1 -Ljmeter.engine=DEBUG