Pumba is a chaos testing command line tool for Docker containers. Pumba disturbs your containers by:
- Crashing containerized applications
- Emulating network failures (latency, packet loss, etc.)
- Manipulating both incoming and outgoing network traffic
- Stress-testing container resources (CPU, memory, I/O)
- Creating complex, realistic network chaos scenarios
Important::
Minimal required Docker version v18.06.0.
You can download Pumba binary for your OS from release page.
$ pumba help
Pumba version [VERSION](./blob/master/VERSION)
NAME:
Pumba - Pumba is a resilience testing tool, that helps applications tolerate random Docker container failures: process, network and performance.
USAGE:
pumba [global options] command [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
VERSION:
[VERSION](./blob/master/VERSION) - `git rev-parse HEAD --short` and `build time`
COMMANDS:
kill kill specified containers
exec exec specified containers
restart restart specified containers
stop stop containers
pause pause all processes
rm remove containers
stress stress test a specified containers
netem emulate the properties of wide area networks
iptables apply IPv4 packet filter on incoming IP packets
help, h Shows a list of commands or help for one command
GLOBAL OPTIONS:
--host value, -H value daemon socket to connect to (default: "unix:///var/run/docker.sock") [$DOCKER_HOST]
--tls use TLS; implied by --tlsverify
--tlsverify use TLS and verify the remote [$DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY]
--tlscacert value trust certs signed only by this CA (default: "/etc/ssl/docker/ca.pem")
--tlscert value client certificate for TLS authentication (default: "/etc/ssl/docker/cert.pem")
--tlskey value client key for TLS authentication (default: "/etc/ssl/docker/key.pem")
--log-level value, -l value set log level (debug, info, warning(*), error, fatal, panic) (default: "warning") [$LOG_LEVEL]
--json, -j produce log in JSON format: Logstash and Splunk friendly [$LOG_JSON]
--slackhook value web hook url; send Pumba log events to Slack
--slackchannel value Slack channel (default #pumba) (default: "#pumba")
--interval value, -i value recurrent interval for chaos command; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h' (default: 0s)
--label value filter containers by labels, e.g '--label key=value' (multiple labels supported)
--random, -r randomly select single matching container from list of target containers
--dry-run dry run does not create chaos, only logs planned chaos commands [$DRY-RUN]
--skip-error skip chaos command error and retry to execute the command on next interval tick
--help, -h show help
--version, -v print the version
pumba kill -h
NAME:
pumba kill - kill specified containers
USAGE:
pumba [global options] kill [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
send termination signal to the main process inside target container(s)
OPTIONS:
--signal value, -s value termination signal, that will be sent by Pumba to the main process inside target container(s) (default: "SIGKILL")
--limit value, -l value limit to number of container to kill (0: kill all matching) (default: 0)
pumba pause -h
NAME:
pumba pause - pause all processes
USAGE:
pumba pause [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
pause all running processes within target containers
OPTIONS:
--duration value, -d value pause duration: should be smaller than recurrent interval; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h'
pumba stop -h
NAME:
pumba stop - stop containers
USAGE:
pumba stop [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
stop the main process inside target containers, sending SIGTERM, and then SIGKILL after a grace period
OPTIONS:
--time value, -t value seconds to wait for stop before killing container (default 10) (default: 10)
pumba rm -h
NAME:
pumba rm - remove containers
USAGE:
pumba rm [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
remove target containers, with links and voluems
OPTIONS:
--force, -f force the removal of a running container (with SIGKILL, default: true)
--links, -l remove container links (default: false)
--volumes, -v remove volumes associated with the container (default: true)
pumba netem -h
NAME:
Pumba netem - delay, loss, duplicate and re-order (run 'netem') packets, to emulate different network problems
USAGE:
Pumba netem command [command options] [arguments...]
COMMANDS:
delay delay egress traffic
loss
duplicate
corrupt
rate limit egress traffic
OPTIONS:
--duration value, -d value network emulation duration; should be smaller than recurrent interval; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h'
--interface value, -i value network interface to apply delay on (default: "eth0")
--target value, -t value target IP filter; comma separated. netem will impact only on traffic to target IP(s)
--tc-image value Docker image with tc (iproute2 package); try 'ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-debian-nettools'
--help, -h show help
pumba netem delay -h
NAME:
Pumba netem delay - delay egress traffic
USAGE:
Pumba netem delay [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
delay egress traffic for specified containers; networks show variability so it is possible to add random variation; delay variation isn't purely random, so to emulate that there is a correlation
OPTIONS:
--time value, -t value delay time; in milliseconds (default: 100)
--jitter value, -j value random delay variation (jitter); in milliseconds; example: 100ms ± 10ms (default: 10)
--correlation value, -c value delay correlation; in percentage (default: 20)
--distribution value, -d value delay distribution, can be one of {<empty> | uniform | normal | pareto | paretonormal}
pumba netem loss -h
NAME:
Pumba netem loss - adds packet losses
USAGE:
Pumba netem loss [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
adds packet losses, based on independent (Bernoulli) probability model
see: http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/burstloss.html
OPTIONS:
--percent value, -p value packet loss percentage (default: 0)
--correlation value, -c value loss correlation; in percentage (default: 0)
pumba netem loss-state -h
NAME:
Pumba netem loss-state - adds packet losses, based on 4-state Markov probability model
USAGE:
Pumba netem loss-state [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
adds a packet losses, based on 4-state Markov probability model
state (1) – packet received successfully
state (2) – packet received within a burst
state (3) – packet lost within a burst
state (4) – isolated packet lost within a gap
see: http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/burstloss.html
OPTIONS:
--p13 value probability to go from state (1) to state (3) (default: 0)
--p31 value probability to go from state (3) to state (1) (default: 100)
--p32 value probability to go from state (3) to state (2) (default: 0)
--p23 value probability to go from state (2) to state (3) (default: 100)
--p14 value probability to go from state (1) to state (4) (default: 0)
pumba netem loss-gemodel -h
NAME:
Pumba netem loss-gemodel - adds packet losses, according to the Gilbert-Elliot loss model
USAGE:
Pumba netem loss-gemodel [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
adds packet losses, according to the Gilbert-Elliot loss model
see: http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/burstloss.html
OPTIONS:
--pg value, -p value transition probability into the bad state (default: 0)
--pb value, -r value transition probability into the good state (default: 100)
--one-h value loss probability in the bad state (default: 100)
--one-k value loss probability in the good state (default: 0)
pumba netem rate -h
NAME:
Pumba netem rate - rate limit egress traffic
USAGE:
Pumba netem rate [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
rate limit egress traffic for specified containers
OPTIONS:
--rate value, -r value delay outgoing packets; in common units (default: "100kbit")
--packetoverhead value, -p value per packet overhead; in bytes (default: 0)
--cellsize value, -s value cell size of the simulated link layer scheme (default: 0)
--celloverhead value, -c value per cell overhead; in bytes (default: 0)
pumba netem duplicate -h
NAME:
Pumba netem duplicate - adds duplicate packets
USAGE:
Pumba netem duplicate [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
adds duplicate packets, based on independent (Bernoulli) probability model
see: http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/burstloss.html
OPTIONS:
--percent value, -p value packet duplicate percentage (default: 0)
--correlation value, -c value duplicate correlation; in percentage (default: 0)
pumba netem corrupt -h
NAME:
Pumba netem corrupt - adds corrupt packets
USAGE:
Pumba netem corrupt [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
adds corrupt packets, based on independent (Bernoulli) probability model
see: http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/burstloss.html
OPTIONS:
--percent value, -p value packet corrupt percentage (default: 0)
--correlation value, -c value corrupt correlation; in percentage (default: 0)
# add 3 seconds delay for all outgoing packets on device `eth0` (default) of `mydb` Docker container for 5 minutes
pumba netem --duration 5m delay --time 3000 mydb
# add a delay of 3000ms ± 30ms, with the next random element depending 20% on the last one,
# for all outgoing packets on device `eth1` of all Docker container, with name start with `test`
# for 5 minutes
pumba netem --duration 5m --interface eth1 delay \
--time 3000 \
--jitter 30 \
--correlation 20 \
"re2:^test"
# add a delay of 3000ms ± 40ms, where variation in delay is described by `normal` distribution,
# for all outgoing packets on device `eth0` of randomly chosen Docker container from the list
# for 5 minutes
pumba --random netem --duration 5m \
delay \
--time 3000 \
--jitter 40 \
--distribution normal \
container1 container2 container3
# Corrupt 10% of the packets from the `mydb` Docker container for 5 minutes
pumba netem --duration 5m corrupt --percent 10 mydb
# Using the multi-arch nettools image explicitly
# This is useful when you need to ensure both netem and iptables commands use the same image
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 5m \
delay --time 1000 \
--jitter 100 \
myapp
For more examples of combining netem with iptables commands, see the Advanced Network Chaos Scenarios section.
Pumba uses the tc Linux tool for network emulation and iptables for packet filtering.
You have two options:
-
Make sure that the container you want to disturb has the required tools available and properly installed (install
iproute2andiptablespackages) -
Use provided network tools images with the
--tc-imageoption (for netem commands) or--iptables-imageoption (for iptables commands)Pumba will create a new container from this image, adding
NET_ADMINcapability to it and reusing the target container's network stack.
By default, Pumba now uses multi-tool container images that include both tc and iptables tools:
ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest- Alpine-based image with both tc and iptablesghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-debian-nettools:latest- Debian-based image with both tc and iptables
These images provide several benefits:
- Efficiency: Both the
netemandiptablescommands can use the same container image - Multi-architecture: Images are built for both
amd64andarm64architectures - Command reuse: A neutral entrypoint keeps the helper container alive between commands
Usage Example:
# Use the same nettools image for both netem and iptables commands
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest delay --time 100 mycontainer
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest loss --probability 0.2 mycontainer The nettools images are built for multiple CPU architectures:
amd64(x86_64) - Standard 64-bit Intel/AMD architecturearm64(aarch64) - 64-bit ARM architecture (Apple M1/M2, AWS Graviton, etc.)
Docker will automatically pull the correct image for your architecture.
You can build the network tools images locally using the provided Makefile commands:
# Build single-arch images for local testing
make build-local-nettools
# Build multi-architecture images locally (doesn't push)
make build-nettools-images
# Build and push the multi-architecture images to GitHub Container Registry
make push-nettools-imagesBefore pushing to GitHub Container Registry, you need to authenticate:
- Create a GitHub Personal Access Token with
write:packagespermission - Set environment variables and login:
# Set your GitHub username and token
export GITHUB_USERNAME=your-github-username
export GITHUB_TOKEN=your-personal-access-token
# Login to GitHub Container Registry
echo $GITHUB_TOKEN | docker login ghcr.io -u $GITHUB_USERNAME --password-stdin
# Run the make command with the environment variables
make push-nettools-imagesYou can also set the variables inline with the make command:
GITHUB_USERNAME=your-github-username GITHUB_TOKEN=your-personal-access-token make push-nettools-imagespumba iptables -h
NAME:
Pumba iptables - emulate loss of incoming packets, all ports and address arguments will result in seperate rules
USAGE:
Pumba iptables command [command options] containers (name, list of names, or RE2 regex if prefixed with "re2:"
COMMANDS:
loss adds iptables rules to generate packet loss on ingress traffic
OPTIONS:
--duration value, -d value network emulation duration; should be smaller than recurrent interval; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h' (default: 0s)
--interface value, -i value network interface to apply input rules on (default: "eth0")
--protocol value, -p value protocol to apply input rules on (any, udp, tcp or icmp) (default: "any")
--source value, --src value, -s value source IP filter; supports multiple IPs; supports CIDR notation
--destination value, --dest value destination IP filter; supports multiple IPs; supports CIDR notation
--src-port value, --sport value source port filter; supports multiple ports (comma-separated)
--dst-port value, --dport value destination port filter; supports multiple ports (comma-separated)
--iptables-image value Docker image with iptables and tc tools (default: "ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest")
--pull-image force pull iptables-image
--help, -h show help
pumba iptables loss -h
NAME:
Pumba iptables loss - adds iptables rules to generate packet loss on ingress traffic
USAGE:
Pumba iptables loss [command options] containers (name, list of names, or RE2 regex if prefixed with "re2:"
DESCRIPTION:
adds packet losses on ingress traffic by setting iptable statistic rules
see: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/iptables-extensions.8.html
OPTIONS:
--mode value matching mode, supported modes are random and nth (default: "random")
--probability value set the probability for a packet to me matched in random mode, between 0.0 and 1.0 (default: 0)
--every value match one packet every nth packet, works only with nth mode (default: 0)
--packet value set the initial counter value (0 <= packet <= n-1, default 0) for nth mode (default: 0)
Pumba's iptables command allows you to simulate packet loss for incoming network traffic, with powerful filtering options. This can be
used to test application resilience to network issues.
# Drop 20% of incoming packets for a container named "web"
pumba iptables loss --probability 0.2 web# Drop every 5th packet coming from IP 192.168.1.100 to container "api" on port 8080
pumba iptables loss --mode nth --every 5 --protocol tcp --source 192.168.1.100 --dst-port 8080 api# Drop 15% of incoming ICMP packets (ping) for all containers with names matching "database"
pumba iptables loss --probability 0.15 --protocol icmp "re2:database"# Complex example: Drop 25% of TCP traffic coming to port 443 from a specific subnet, for 30 seconds
pumba iptables --duration 30s --protocol tcp --source 10.0.0.0/24 --dst-port 443 \
loss --probability 0.25 mycontainerPumba uses the nettools images (which include both tc and iptables) for filtering incoming network traffic.
You have two options:
-
Make sure the target container has the
iptablestool installed (install theiptablespackage) -
Use the
--iptables-imageoption to specify a Docker image with theiptablestool.Pumba will create a helper container from this image with
NET_ADMINcapability and reuse the target container's network stack.The recommended images are:
ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest(Alpine-based)ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-debian-nettools:latest(Debian-based)
Both images support multiple architectures (amd64, arm64).
Pumba allows you to create complex and realistic network chaos scenarios by combining multiple network manipulation commands. This is particularly useful for simulating real-world network conditions where multiple issues might occur simultaneously.
In real networks, upload and download speeds/quality often differ. You can simulate this using a combination of netem for outgoing traffic
and iptables for incoming traffic:
# Add delay to outgoing traffic (slow uploads)
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 5m delay --time 500 myapp &
# Add packet loss to incoming traffic (unreliable downloads)
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 5m loss --probability 0.1 myapp &Test how your application handles multiple concurrent network issues:
# Limit bandwidth and add packet corruption
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 10m rate --rate 1mbit myapp &
# Add packet loss to incoming traffic
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 10m loss --probability 0.05 myapp &Use Pumba to test how your microservices architecture responds to network failures between specific services:
# Add high latency between service A and service B
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--target service-b-ip --duration 5m delay --time 2000 --jitter 500 service-a &
# Add packet loss from service B to service C
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--source service-c-ip --duration 5m loss --probability 0.2 service-b &You can find a complete example script for combined chaos testing in the examples directory.
For detailed guidance on advanced network chaos testing scenarios, best practices, and troubleshooting, see the Advanced Network Chaos Testing Documentation.
Pumba can inject stress-ng
testing tool into a target container(s) cgroup and control stress test run.
NAME:
pumba stress - stress test a specified containers
USAGE:
pumba stress [command options] containers (name, list of names, or RE2 regex if prefixed with "re2:")
DESCRIPTION:
stress test target container(s)
OPTIONS:
--duration value, -d value stress duration: must be shorter than recurrent interval; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h'
--stress-image value Docker image with stress-ng tool, cgroup-bin and docker packages, and dockhack script (default: "alexeiled/stress-ng:latest-ubuntu")
--pull-image pull stress-image form Docker registry
--stressors value stress-ng stressors; see https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~cking/stress-ng/ (default: "--cpu 4 --timeout 60s")
Pumba uses
alexeiled/stress-ng:latest-ubuntu
stress-ng Ubuntu-based Docker image with statically linked stress-ng tool.
You can provide your own image, but it must include the following tools:
stress-ngtool (in$PATH)- Bash shell
dockhackhelper Bash script (in$PATH)dockerclient CLI tool (runnable withoutsudo)cgexectool, available fromcgroups-toolsor/andcgroup-binpackages
If you choose to use Pumba Docker image on Linux, use the following command:
# run 10 Docker containers named test_(index)
for i in `seq 1 10`; do docker run -d --name test_$i --rm alpine tail -f /dev/null; done
# once in a 10 seconds, try to kill (with `SIGKILL` signal) all containers named **test(something)**
# on same Docker host, where Pumba container is running
$ docker run -it --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock gaiaadm/pumba --interval=10s --random --log-level=info kill --signal=SIGKILL "re2:^test"
Note: from version 0.6 Pumba Docker image is a scratch Docker image,
that contains only single pumba binary file and ENTRYPOINT set to the
pumba command.
Note: For Windows and OS X you will need to use --host argument, since
there is no unix socket /var/run/docker.sock to mount.
If you are running Kubernetes, you can take advantage of DaemonSets to
automatically deploy the Pumba on selected K8s nodes, using nodeSelector or
nodeAffinity, see
Assigning Pods to Nodes.
You'll then be able to deploy the DaemonSet with the command:
kubectl create -f deploy/pumba_kube.ymlK8s automatically assigns labels to Docker container, and you can use Pumba
--label filter to create chaos for specific Pods and Namespaces.
K8s auto-assigned container labels, than can be used by Pumba:
"io.kubernetes.container.name": "test-container"
"io.kubernetes.pod.name": "test-pod"
"io.kubernetes.pod.namespace": "test-namespace"It's possible to run multiple Pumba commands in the same DaemonSet using
multiple Pumba containers, see deploy/pumba_kube.yml example.
If you are not running Kubernetes >= 1.1.0 or do not want to use DaemonSets, you can also run the Pumba as a regular docker container on each node you want to make chaos (see above)
Note: running pumba netem commands on minikube clusters will not work,
because the sch_netem kernel module is missing in the minikube VM!
You can build Pumba with or without Go installed on your machine.
In order to build Pumba, you need to have Go 1.6+ setup on your machine.
Here is the approximate list of commands you will need to run:
# create required folder
cd $GOPATH
mkdir github.com/alexei-led && cd github.com/alexei-led
# clone pumba
git clone git@github.com:alexei-led/pumba.git
cd pumba
# build pumba binary
make
# run tests and create HTML coverage report
make test-coverage
# create pumba binaries for multiple platforms
make releaseYou do not have to install and configure Go in order to build and test Pumba project. Pumba uses Docker multistage build to create final tiny Docker image.
First of all clone Pumba git repository:
git clone git@github.com:alexei-led/pumba.git
cd pumbaNow create a new Pumba Docker image.
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build -t pumba -f docker/Dockerfile .pumba exec -h
NAME:
pumba exec - exec specified containers
USAGE:
pumba [global options] exec [command options] containers (name, list of names, RE2 regex)
DESCRIPTION:
send command to target container(s)
OPTIONS:
--command value, -s value shell command, that will be sent by Pumba to the target container(s) (default: "kill 1")
--args value, -a value additional arguments for the command (can be repeated for multiple arguments)
--limit value, -l value limit number of container to exec (0: exec all matching) (default: 0)
# Execute default command (kill 1) in container named web
pumba exec web# Execute a custom command (echo) with a single argument in container named web
pumba exec --command "echo" --args "hello" web# Execute ls with multiple arguments in all containers matching regex
# Use repeated --args flags for multiple arguments
pumba exec --command "ls" --args "-la" --args "/etc" "re2:^api.*"# Limit execution to only 2 containers even if more match
pumba exec --command "touch" --args "/tmp/test-file" --limit 2 "re2:.*"Pumba uses the tc Linux tool for network emulation and iptables for packet filtering.
You have two options:
-
Make sure that the container you want to disturb has the required tools available and properly installed (install
iproute2andiptablespackages) -
Use provided network tools images with the
--tc-imageoption (for netem commands) or--iptables-imageoption (for iptables commands)Pumba will create a new container from this image, adding
NET_ADMINcapability to it and reusing the target container's network stack.
By default, Pumba now uses multi-tool container images that include both tc and iptables tools:
ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest- Alpine-based image with both tc and iptablesghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-debian-nettools:latest- Debian-based image with both tc and iptables
These images provide several benefits:
- Efficiency: Both the
netemandiptablescommands can use the same container image - Multi-architecture: Images are built for both
amd64andarm64architectures - Command reuse: A neutral entrypoint keeps the helper container alive between commands
Usage Example:
# Use the same nettools image for both netem and iptables commands
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest delay --time 100 mycontainer
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest loss --probability 0.2 mycontainer The nettools images are built for multiple CPU architectures:
amd64(x86_64) - Standard 64-bit Intel/AMD architecturearm64(aarch64) - 64-bit ARM architecture (Apple M1/M2, AWS Graviton, etc.)
Docker will automatically pull the correct image for your architecture.
You can build the network tools images locally using the provided Makefile commands:
# Build single-arch images for local testing
make build-local-nettools
# Build multi-architecture images locally (doesn't push)
make build-nettools-images
# Build and push the multi-architecture images to GitHub Container Registry
make push-nettools-imagesBefore pushing to GitHub Container Registry, you need to authenticate:
- Create a GitHub Personal Access Token with
write:packagespermission - Set environment variables and login:
# Set your GitHub username and token
export GITHUB_USERNAME=your-github-username
export GITHUB_TOKEN=your-personal-access-token
# Login to GitHub Container Registry
echo $GITHUB_TOKEN | docker login ghcr.io -u $GITHUB_USERNAME --password-stdin
# Run the make command with the environment variables
make push-nettools-imagesYou can also set the variables inline with the make command:
GITHUB_USERNAME=your-github-username GITHUB_TOKEN=your-personal-access-token make push-nettools-imagespumba iptables -h
NAME:
Pumba iptables - emulate loss of incoming packets, all ports and address arguments will result in seperate rules
USAGE:
Pumba iptables command [command options] containers (name, list of names, or RE2 regex if prefixed with "re2:"
COMMANDS:
loss adds iptables rules to generate packet loss on ingress traffic
OPTIONS:
--duration value, -d value network emulation duration; should be smaller than recurrent interval; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h' (default: 0s)
--interface value, -i value network interface to apply input rules on (default: "eth0")
--protocol value, -p value protocol to apply input rules on (any, udp, tcp or icmp) (default: "any")
--source value, --src value, -s value source IP filter; supports multiple IPs; supports CIDR notation
--destination value, --dest value destination IP filter; supports multiple IPs; supports CIDR notation
--src-port value, --sport value source port filter; supports multiple ports (comma-separated)
--dst-port value, --dport value destination port filter; supports multiple ports (comma-separated)
--iptables-image value Docker image with iptables and tc tools (default: "ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest")
--pull-image force pull iptables-image
--help, -h show help
pumba iptables loss -h
NAME:
Pumba iptables loss - adds iptables rules to generate packet loss on ingress traffic
USAGE:
Pumba iptables loss [command options] containers (name, list of names, or RE2 regex if prefixed with "re2:"
DESCRIPTION:
adds packet losses on ingress traffic by setting iptable statistic rules
see: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/iptables-extensions.8.html
OPTIONS:
--mode value matching mode, supported modes are random and nth (default: "random")
--probability value set the probability for a packet to me matched in random mode, between 0.0 and 1.0 (default: 0)
--every value match one packet every nth packet, works only with nth mode (default: 0)
--packet value set the initial counter value (0 <= packet <= n-1, default 0) for nth mode (default: 0)
Pumba's iptables command allows you to simulate packet loss for incoming network traffic, with powerful filtering options. This can be
used to test application resilience to network issues.
# Drop 20% of incoming packets for a container named "web"
pumba iptables loss --probability 0.2 web# Drop every 5th packet coming from IP 192.168.1.100 to container "api" on port 8080
pumba iptables loss --mode nth --every 5 --protocol tcp --source 192.168.1.100 --dst-port 8080 api# Drop 15% of incoming ICMP packets (ping) for all containers with names matching "database"
pumba iptables loss --probability 0.15 --protocol icmp "re2:database"# Complex example: Drop 25% of TCP traffic coming to port 443 from a specific subnet, for 30 seconds
pumba iptables --duration 30s --protocol tcp --source 10.0.0.0/24 --dst-port 443 \
loss --probability 0.25 mycontainerPumba uses the nettools images (which include both tc and iptables) for filtering incoming network traffic.
You have two options:
-
Make sure the target container has the
iptablestool installed (install theiptablespackage) -
Use the
--iptables-imageoption to specify a Docker image with theiptablestool.Pumba will create a helper container from this image with
NET_ADMINcapability and reuse the target container's network stack.The recommended images are:
ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest(Alpine-based)ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-debian-nettools:latest(Debian-based)
Both images support multiple architectures (amd64, arm64).
Pumba allows you to create complex and realistic network chaos scenarios by combining multiple network manipulation commands. This is particularly useful for simulating real-world network conditions where multiple issues might occur simultaneously.
In real networks, upload and download speeds/quality often differ. You can simulate this using a combination of netem for outgoing traffic
and iptables for incoming traffic:
# Add delay to outgoing traffic (slow uploads)
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 5m delay --time 500 myapp &
# Add packet loss to incoming traffic (unreliable downloads)
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 5m loss --probability 0.1 myapp &Test how your application handles multiple concurrent network issues:
# Limit bandwidth and add packet corruption
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 10m rate --rate 1mbit myapp &
# Add packet loss to incoming traffic
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--duration 10m loss --probability 0.05 myapp &Use Pumba to test how your microservices architecture responds to network failures between specific services:
# Add high latency between service A and service B
pumba netem --tc-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--target service-b-ip --duration 5m delay --time 2000 --jitter 500 service-a &
# Add packet loss from service B to service C
pumba iptables --iptables-image ghcr.io/alexei-led/pumba-alpine-nettools:latest \
--source service-c-ip --duration 5m loss --probability 0.2 service-b &You can find a complete example script for combined chaos testing in the examples directory.
For detailed guidance on advanced network chaos testing scenarios, best practices, and troubleshooting, see the Advanced Network Chaos Testing Documentation.
Pumba can inject stress-ng
testing tool into a target container(s) cgroup and control stress test run.
NAME:
pumba stress - stress test a specified containers
USAGE:
pumba stress [command options] containers (name, list of names, or RE2 regex if prefixed with "re2:")
DESCRIPTION:
stress test target container(s)
OPTIONS:
--duration value, -d value stress duration: must be shorter than recurrent interval; use with optional unit suffix: 'ms/s/m/h'
--stress-image value Docker image with stress-ng tool, cgroup-bin and docker packages, and dockhack script (default: "alexeiled/stress-ng:latest-ubuntu")
--pull-image pull stress-image form Docker registry
--stressors value stress-ng stressors; see https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~cking/stress-ng/ (default: "--cpu 4 --timeout 60s")
Pumba uses
alexeiled/stress-ng:latest-ubuntu
stress-ng Ubuntu-based Docker image with statically linked stress-ng tool.
You can provide your own image, but it must include the following tools:
stress-ngtool (in$PATH)- Bash shell
dockhackhelper Bash script (in$PATH)dockerclient CLI tool (runnable withoutsudo)cgexectool, available fromcgroups-toolsor/andcgroup-binpackages
If you choose to use Pumba Docker image on Linux, use the following command:
# run 10 Docker containers named test_(index)
for i in `seq 1 10`; do docker run -d --name test_$i --rm alpine tail -f /dev/null; done
# once in a 10 seconds, try to kill (with `SIGKILL` signal) all containers named **test(something)**
# on same Docker host, where Pumba container is running
$ docker run -it --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock gaiaadm/pumba --interval=10s --random --log-level=info kill --signal=SIGKILL "re2:^test"
Note: from version 0.6 Pumba Docker image is a scratch Docker image,
that contains only single pumba binary file and ENTRYPOINT set to the
pumba command.
Note: For Windows and OS X you will need to use --host argument, since
there is no unix socket /var/run/docker.sock to mount.
If you are running Kubernetes, you can take advantage of DaemonSets to
automatically deploy the Pumba on selected K8s nodes, using nodeSelector or
nodeAffinity, see
Assigning Pods to Nodes.
You'll then be able to deploy the DaemonSet with the command:
kubectl create -f deploy/pumba_kube.ymlK8s automatically assigns labels to Docker container, and you can use Pumba
--label filter to create chaos for specific Pods and Namespaces.
K8s auto-assigned container labels, than can be used by Pumba:
"io.kubernetes.container.name": "test-container"
"io.kubernetes.pod.name": "test-pod"
"io.kubernetes.pod.namespace": "test-namespace"It's possible to run multiple Pumba commands in the same DaemonSet using
multiple Pumba containers, see deploy/pumba_kube.yml example.
If you are not running Kubernetes >= 1.1.0 or do not want to use DaemonSets, you can also run the Pumba as a regular docker container on each node you want to make chaos (see above)
Note: running pumba netem commands on minikube clusters will not work,
because the sch_netem kernel module is missing in the minikube VM!
You can build Pumba with or without Go installed on your machine.
In order to build Pumba, you need to have Go 1.6+ setup on your machine.
Here is the approximate list of commands you will need to run:
# create required folder
cd $GOPATH
mkdir github.com/alexei-led && cd github.com/alexei-led
# clone pumba
git clone git@github.com:alexei-led/pumba.git
cd pumba
# build pumba binary
make
# run tests and create HTML coverage report
make test-coverage
# create pumba binaries for multiple platforms
make releaseYou do not have to install and configure Go in order to build and test Pumba project. Pumba uses Docker multistage build to create final tiny Docker image.
First of all clone Pumba git repository:
git clone git@github.com:alexei-led/pumba.git
cd pumbaNow create a new Pumba Docker image.
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build -t pumba -f docker/Dockerfile .Code is under the Apache License v2.
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