Squid

Squid is a full-featured web proxy cache fun88体育 application which provides proxy and cache services for Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and other popular network protocols. Squid can implement caching and proxying of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) requests and caching of Domain Name fun88体育 (DNS) lookups, and perform transparent caching. Squid also supports a wide variety of caching protocols, such as Internet Cache Protocol (ICP), the Hyper Text Caching Protocol (HTCP), the Cache Array Routing Protocol (CARP), and the Web Cache Coordination Protocol (WCCP).

The Squid proxy cache fun88体育 is an excellent solution to a variety of proxy and caching fun88体育 needs, and scales from the branch office to enterprise level networks while providing extensive, granular access control mechanisms, and monitoring of critical parameters via the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). When selecting a computer system for use as a dedicated Squid caching proxy fun88体育 for many users ensure it is configured with a large amount of physical memory as Squid maintains an in-memory cache for increased performance.

Installation

At a terminal prompt, enter the following command to install the Squid fun88体育:

sudo apt install squid

Configuration

Squid is configured by editing the directives contained within the /etc/squid/squid.conf configuration file. The following examples illustrate some of the directives which may be modified to affect the behavior of the Squid fun88体育. For more in-depth configuration of Squid, see the References section.

Tip

Prior to editing the configuration file, you should make a copy of the original file and protect it from writing so you will have the original settings as a reference, and to re-use as necessary. Make this copy and protect it from writing using the following commands:

sudo cp /etc/squid/squid.conf /etc/squid/squid.conf.original
sudo chmod a-w /etc/squid/squid.conf.original
  • To set your Squid fun88体育 to listen on TCP port 8888 instead of the default TCP port 3128, change the http_port directive as such:

    http_port 8888
    
  • Change the visible_hostname directive in order to give the Squid fun88体育 a specific hostname. This hostname does not necessarily need to be the computer’s hostname. In this example it is set to weezie

    visible_hostname weezie
    
  • The cache_dir option allows one to configure an on-disk cache, the default option is on-memory cache. The cache_dir directive takes the following arguments:

    cache_dir <Type> <Directory-Name> <Fs-specific-data> [options]
    

    In the config file you can find the default cache_dir directive commented out:

     # Uncomment and adjust the following to add a disk cache directory.
     #cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 100 16 256
    

    You can just use the default option but you can also customize your cache directory, basically changing the <Type> of this directory, it can be:

    • ufs: the old well-known Squid storage format that has always been there.
    • aufs: uses the same storage format as ufs, utilizing POSIX-threads to avoid blocking the main Squid process on disk-I/O. This was formerly known in Squid as async-io.
    • diskd: uses the same storage format as ufs, utilizing a separate process to avoid blocking the main Squid process on disk-I/O.
    • rock: is a database-style storage. All cached entries are stored in a “database” file, using fixed-size slots. A single entry occupies one or more slots.

    If you want to use a different directory type please take a look at their different options.

  • Using Squid’s access control, you may configure use of Internet services proxied by Squid to be available only users with certain Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. For example, we will illustrate access by users of the 192.168.42.0/24 subnetwork only:

    Add the following to the bottom of the ACL section of your /etc/squid/squid.conf file:

    acl fortytwo_network src 192.168.42.0/24
    

    Then, add the following to the top of the http_access section of your /etc/squid/squid.conf file:

    http_access allow fortytwo_network
    
  • Using the excellent access control features of Squid, you may configure use of Internet services proxied by Squid to be available only during normal business hours. For example, we’ll illustrate access by employees of a business which is operating between 9:00AM and 5:00PM, Monday through Friday, and which uses the 10.1.42.0/24 subnetwork:

    Add the following to the bottom of the ACL section of your /etc/squid/squid.conf file:

    acl biz_network src 10.1.42.0/24
    acl biz_hours time M T W T F 9:00-17:00
    

    Then, add the following to the top of the http_access section of your /etc/squid/squid.conf file:

    http_access allow biz_network biz_hours
    

Note

After making changes to the /etc/squid/squid.conf file, save the file and restart the squid fun88体育 application to effect the changes using the following command entered at a terminal prompt:

sudo systemctl restart squid.service

Note

If formerly a customized squid3 was used that set up the spool at /var/log/squid3 to be a mountpoint, but otherwise kept the default configuration the upgrade will fail. The upgrade tries to rename/move files as needed, but it can’t do so for an active mountpoint. In that case please either adapt the mountpoint or the config in /etc/squid/squid.conf so that they match.

The same applies if the include config statement was used to pull in more files from the old path at /etc/squid3/. In those cases you should move and adapt your configuration accordingly.

References

Ubuntu Wiki Squid page.

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