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Paranoid Penguin - Building a Secure Squid Web Proxy, Part IV

Issue 184

From Issue #184
August 2009

Aug 01, 2009  By Mick Bauer
 in
Add squidGuard's blacklist functionality to your Squid proxy.
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getting squidguard to work!

Shane's picture
Submitted by Shane (not verified) on Sun, 01/03/2010 - 04:57.

First, I am using ubuntu 9.0.4. My squid is 2.7stable3. My squidguard is 1.2.

Squid has been working fine for several days, I have a fairly complex set of acls and http_access rules because I am trying to dole out computer time to my kids during the holidays. I am also trying to stop access to certain sites during my "peak time" allocated by my ISP. After working through the obvious errors that a relative newb introduces without meaning to, it is stable, and predictable in behaviour and performance. Suffice to say that I have stripped the squid.conf of unneccesary clutter (comments and unused settings) and have added some structure to it that makes sense to me when going in to tweak it. I do have the original file in two places for referencing when I get into trouble, so can always reinstall and add my tweaks if needed.

Next step was to add squidguard for a deeper level of filtering...

So, I have assiduously followed the instructions here even to the point of copying the errors which reveal themselves on re-reading, e.g. "bash-$ /etc/init.d/squid reload" is missing sudo at the start of the line (it is dereferenced in the preceeding paragraph. After correcting the obvious errors

However, the moment I reload squid or restart squid it fails to load

I actually rebuilt a server because this happened the first time (over a week ago now) thinking that I had damaged some system files (of course I hadn't , but it was worth the practice of installing a new version of the server anyway)

So what can I be doing wrong? The only thing that makes sense is that I am adding the squidguard lines in the wrong place, but after having reviewed the original squid.conf my original placement was correct. So, are there any hidden traps for beginners that aren't mentioned in the article.

Shane
Feeling like,... "a Penguin in Bondage, boy!!!

follow-up

Shane's picture
Submitted by Shane (not verified) on Sun, 01/03/2010 - 05:19.

Well - I found it, after checking the squidguard log file

wrong type of braces in the definitions of dest rules

I had used parantheses () instead of curly braces {}, which with my eyesight the way it is these days (even with my computer prescription glasses) are so similar to a glance rather than a close inspection, that it totally slipped on by

Caught by the worst of the gotchas for newbs who aren't new to programming (hangs head in shame)

Ah, well, at least if anyone else runs across this there is a solution already (I'd gone looking for the matching braces problem and found the bigger one)

Shane
bonds loosened but not released, yet!

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