How to run a JMeter test from the command line

To run a JMeter test from the command line, we need to follow the steps below:

  1. Open a terminal or command prompt.
  2. Navigate to the directory where the JMeter executable file is located.
    • In our case, the file is inside the JMeter’s bin directory /opt/jmeter/bin. If we have added the directory that contains the jmeter command to our system’s PATH environment variable, we can run the jmeter command from any directory.

      Note: To find the full path of our saved file in the current directory and its subdirectories, we can use the find command in the following manner: find . -name "test.jmx" where test.jmx is the name of our executable file.

  3. Enter the following command to run the test:
    jmeter -n -t /path/to/your/test.jmx -l /path/to/save/results.csv

Let’s take a look at how we can do this.

Run the test.jmx file

To add the directory (/opt/jmeter/bin) to the PATH environment variable permanently (not just for the current session) from the terminal, enter the following command:

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/jmeter/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

  • Line 1: The echo command appends the export PATH="PATH:/opt/jmeter/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc line to the end of the .bashrc file[object Object] in the user’s home directory (~ refers to the user’s home directory). This sets the PATH variable for the current user and allows the jmeter command to be executed from anywhere in the terminal.

  • Line 2: The source ~/.bashrc reloads the .bashrc file in the current shell session so that the updated PATH variable is available for the current session.

To gain hands-on experience, please run the above commands in the following terminal to add the bin directory to the PATH environment variable.

Terminal 1
Terminal
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If we want to run the test.jmx file and place the test results in the result.csv file that we have already created in the JMeter’s bin folder, we enter the following commands:

# command to run the JMeter test
jmeter -n -t ./opt/jmeter/bin/test.jmx -l result.csv
# command to display the contents of the CSV file (result.csv) in a human-readable format
csvtool readable result.csv

In the code above:

  • -n specifies JMeter to run the test in a non-GUI (CLI) mode

  • -t specifies the path to the JMeter test file (.jmx)

  • -l specifies the path to save the test results file

  • csvtool displays the .csv file in the terminal in a human-readable format with headers for each column

We have included the commands above in the terminal below. Click the terminal to see the tests being executed.

Terminal 1
Terminal
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