Starting Jmeter

It all started when I was told that now we are going to use a Tool for Load Testing in our company. “The name of the Tool is 'Jmeter' and you've to learn it first and then take forward the team with that”, Tarun told me a couple of days back. Now I was provided a Java utility and was scraching my head hard [As there was not much documentation available] to make that thing work when this very horrible idea stuck me, “How I am going to teach this tool to my team mates and the other people who are going to join soon”? I got the answer as soon as this idea stuck me. It occured to me that I should write everything up. So that whenever someone asks me that what is Jmeter, I can say, 'This is link on everything I know about Jmeter, go check it out'. So starting today, I'll add everything, which I learn about Jmeter, daily untill the day I leave learning it.
So, what is Jmeter? The complete theoretical definition is here at wikipedia
The best place to start Jmeter is its official site http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/index.html. This link tells a lot about What is Jmeter? and all that stuff. So better start with that. Then download Jmeter. Lets do it step by step, so that if you don't feel like missing anything.

DOWNLOAD JMETER:
1. Go to http://jakarta.apache.org/site/downloads/downloads_jmeter.cgi and you can see something like:

2. Click on the appropriate link with respect to the OS you are using. This will start the download
3. The downloaded file is in a compressed format (.zip or .tgz). Use a decompressing software like (winzip or uncompressor or 7-zip etc.) to decompress it.
4. The decompressed folder structure will be something like this:

jakarta-jmeter
+bin
+docs
+extras
+lib
+printable_docs
-licence
-manifest
-notice
-readme

Once the Jmeter folder has been decompressed, it is the time to run it for the first time. Follow the following steps:
1. Open a Terminal [Command Prompt in Windows]
2. Navigate to the jakarta folder using the cd command
3. Once your are in jakarta-jmeter folder type the following commands:
cd bin
sh jmeter.sh [...for Windows simply type: jmeter]



A new Jmeter window will appear as below: