[Wylug-help] Squid for home user?

[Stephen Patterson]

On 02 Dec 05, pahardy at blueyonder.co.uk (pahardy at blueyonder.co.uk) wrote:
>     My question(s) is/are; how sensible (& above all, simple)is it to use
> a proxy on a single home machine connected to a cable modem, & would
> all content filter solutions need to use a proxy?

I've got squid with a handcrafted (mainly ad-blocking) access list running fine
here on a Cyrix 300 with only 64MB RAM, so it should fly on your box.

For site access blocking, there are basically 2 options
1) block the site address with iptables - this would block anything on a
   specific IP address/range, so you could end up blocking more than you wanted
2) use a proxy server (caching or non-caching) - this should let you block sites
   based on any combination of IP address, hostname, url path, file type ...
   (squid can do all of these)
   
>     Squid needs to be compiled with a few dependencies
there should be a package for your distribution, some of the dependencies may be
optional if you don't envisage using a particular feature (i.e. LDAP auth).

If you've got a linux router, the following iptables rule will let it run as a
transparent proxy (assuming squid is on the same box), just replace $internal
with whatever ethX device is facing your lan.

	iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $internal -p tcp --dport 80 \
	    -j REDIRECT --to-port 3128

Give me a shout if you need any more info, I had a squid server ready to roll at
my last workplace, then I found a better job :)

-- 
Stephen Patterson steve at patter.mine.nu http://patter.mine.nu/ GPG: E3E8E974 
Jabber: patter on jabber.earth.li MSN: stephenpatterson893 at hotmail.com
GMail invites to anyone who wants one
"Whoever said nothing is impossible never tried slamming a revolving door."
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