[plug] proxying

[Matt Kemner]

On Fri, 20 Nov 1998, Shackleton, Kevin wrote:

> I've been trying to set up squid for a couple of days now without
> success.  I can dial the ISP, and Netscape on the clients looks for port
> 3128 on the proxy server, but nothing much happens in between.  I have
> to have this working on Monday for a meeting . .

Can the linux machine see the outside world?
eg. can you type "telnet www.wn.com.au 80", and get a connection?

Have you configured your squid to use your ISP's proxy server as a parent?

Can you ping the linux machine from the clients?
what happens if you type "telnet localhost 3128" on the linux machine? Do
you get a connection?

> I guess I've got basic settings wrong.  I changed the IP forwarding to
> true in RH but couldn't find the equivalent in Debian. 

You don't need IP Forwarding if you're only setting up a squid proxy.
However, you will need it for Masquerading, if you plan to set that up in
the future.. To enable IP Forwarding under any version of linux running
a kernel later than 2.0.30, or 2.1.6x (from memory) you type
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

 - add this to your boot scripts to have it done automatically on boot.. A
good place to put your personal commands in Debian's boot scripts, is in
an executable file in /etc/rc.boot
eg, create a file /etc/rc.boot/mystuff containing the lines:
#!/bin/sh
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

And make sure you make the file executable (chmod 700 should do the trick)

> I don't know
> what to set the DNS server to - when dialled in it would want to be the
> ISP's DNS (203.13.74.1) but does that cause a problem before we have got
> a connection?

Not really, because the DNS queries will just time out.. You can run your
own DNS server if you want, but that's not necessary.  However, you may
want to run squid with the -D option to tell it not to try doing DNS
lookups on startup (see an earlier thread on this list)

> I've looked at the ppp and squid references and have got a little way,
> for instance with a minimal squid.conf.

You may want to post your squid.conf to this list, and have the resident
experts look it over..

> If anyone's got a good to-do list, or can spare a Saturday arvo on the
> phone, it would be a big help . .

Unfortunately I have no idea what I'm doing Saturday Arvo (or in general
this weekend) so I can't volunteer to do this. I'll be reading my mail
until 5pm though.

 - Matt