flip_in_mem_edsm_server is a "simple" webserver binary intended to be used for benchmarking and comparison of HTTP and SPDY.

It can also be used as a SPDY<->HTTP reverse proxy to further enable deployment or testing.

In its original (server) nmode, you need to provide it content (which it will cache in-memory, so nothing too large!), possibly some cert files (if using SPDY), and configure its options properly.

This guide assumes that you've checked out the latest chromium code, and your current working directory is chromium/src

In case you're wondering, EDSM stands for event driven state machine.

If you don't already have a test key.pem and certificate.pem, you can generate one like so:

openssl genrsa -out key.pem 1024

openssl req -new -key key.pem -out request.pem  # and answer the questions at the prompt with whatever

openssl x509 -req -days 30 -in request.pem -signkey key.pem -out cert.pem

This will leave you with testkey.pem and testcertificate.pem which you can use with the server.

If running flip_in_mem_edsm_server in server mode, you'll want something for it to serve. The easiest way to generate that data is to launch chrome with the following command-line-flag

  chrome --record-mode

Chrome will then store everything in the cache... so you'll want to go and visit whatever sites you'd like to benchmark later-- chrome will be storing that on disk as you go. Keep in mind it stores the whole shebang, including cookies, so be aware if sending these files to your colleagues! 

Unfortunately, you're not done yet. We still have to dump the chrome cache files into a format that the flip_in_mem_edsm_server can read. That will require another binary, so lets build it now: As far as I know, this binary only works on Windows.

  make out/Debug/flip_in_mem_edsm_server

Assuming that you already have cached data from Chrome that you want to benchmark and the SSL files (from above), you'd stick all of those files into:

$CWD/GET_ (assuming that the method of the requests was GET. If you wanted responses to a request with HEAD method, then you'd stick the appropriate responses into a directory named HEAD_, etc).

You'd put the test cert and key into the $CWD/cert.pem and $CWD/key.pem, respectively.

At this point you can run the flip_in_mem_edsm_server by doing:

  ./out/Debug/flip_in_mem_edsm_server

By default, the server will look for key.pem and cert.pem in the current-working-directory, and will run HTTPS on port 16002, and SPDY (SSL) on port 10040.

Another common use-case would be to want to serve HTTP and SPDY (NO-SSL). To do this, find FLAGS_use_ssl = true; and change it to FLAGS_use_ssl = false; then recompile.

Yet another common use-case would be to serve files which were *not* captured by Chrome's record mode. To do this, you'll want to turn off URL encoding (or figure out how to encode your URLs..).

You can turn off encoding by finding FLAGS_need_to_encode_url = true; and changing the 'true' to 'false' and then (of course) recompiling.

The binary supports these flags:

   -accept_backlog_size (The size of the TCP accept backlog) type: int32

      default: 1024

    -accepts_per_wake (The number of times that accept() will be called when

      the  alarm goes off when the accept_using_alarm flag is set to true. If

      set to 0, accept() will be performed until the accept queue is completely

      drained and the accept() call returns an error) type: int32 default: 0

    -cache_base_dir (The directory where cache locates) type: string

      default: "."

    -flip_port (The port on which the flip server listens) type: int32

      default: 10040

    -need_to_encode_url (If true, then encode url to filename) type: bool

      default: true

    -no_nagle (If true, then disables the nagle algorithm) type: bool

      default: true

    -pageload_html_file (The path to the html that does the pageload in iframe)

      type: string

      default: "experimental/users/fenix/flip/loadtime_measurement.html"

    -port (The port on which the http server listens) type: int32

      default: 16002

    -record_mode (If set to true, record requests in file named as fd used)

      type: bool default: false

    -record_path (The path to save the record files) type: string default: "."

    -response_count_until_close (The number of responses given before the

      server closes the connection) type: int32 default: 1000000

    -reuseport (If set to false a single socket will be used. If set to true

      then a new socket will be created for each accept thread. Note that this

      only works with kernels that support SO_REUSEPORT) type: bool

      default: false

    -server_think_time_in_s ( The amount of time the server delays before

      sending back thereply) type: double default: 0

    -ssl_cert_name (The name of the cert .pem file) type: string

      default: "cert.pem"

    -ssl_key_name (The name of the key .pem file) type: string

      default: "key.pem"

    -urls_file (The path to the urls file which includes the urls for testing)

      type: string default: "experimental/users/fenix/flip/urls.txt"

    -use_compression (Does the server compress data frames) type: bool

      default: false

    -use_cwnd_opener (Does the server advance cwnd by sending no-op packets)

      type: bool default: false

    -use_ssl (If set to true, then the server will act as an SSL server for

      both HTTP and FLIP) type: bool default: true

    -use_xac (Does the server send X-Associated-Content headers) type: bool

      default: false

    -use_xsub (Does the server send X-Subresource headers) type: bool

      default: false

If you're not encoding your filenames, you'll need to modify the value of the --need_to_encode_url variable to be false.