Setup Squid as a HTTP proxy to browse blocked web sites!

[Bharat]

Have you ever worried about your government,workplace,school or ISP limitations for web sites? Are you behind Great firewall of china? are you worried about browsing speeds with overloaded or slow web proxy services?
HTTP proxies are the best solution for you. And with squid cache you can make a nice HTTP proxy for your personal or family use.
In my case I have tried SSH SOCKS5 method for access blocked sites but I feel it too slow because connection is encrypted but its so secure than HTTP proxy.
But I don?t need much security like SOCKS5 offer So I have decided to setup squid as a proxy server for my personal use. And felt that its delivering blazing fast speed as same as I?m browsing without proxies.
So now all my firefox traffic is going through HTTP Squid proxy running on UK 512MB XEN box that I had spare and I don?t thinking about going back to normal no proxy mode because speed is same as no proxy.
So here is my guide to setup squid as a proxy server on ubuntu or debian for you!

What you will need-

• A VPS or dedicated server with minimum ram of 64MB (64MB of ram will be enough because squid doesn?t eat much ram)
• Debian or Ubuntu installed on your server
• NANO text editor installed on your server ( run ?apt-get install nano? to install it if you dont have it already)

Steps-

Install squid on your ubuntu or debian server, issue this command over SSH

apt-get install squid

Then squid is successfully installed and you need to setup squid to access internet because its currently set only for localhost
squid?s config file is huge so we need to find some lines using nano on squid config file.
Issue this commands to open squid config file with NANO text editor.

nano /etc/squid/squid.conf

On there we need to add 2 lines to configure this for our personal use.


You can add then on top of the page. those 2 lines are

http_access allow all

http_access allow localnet

Here is the squid.conf file after adding that 2 lines





So that?s it on server side. Restart squid to load our configuration.

restart squid

Like I said previously on this guide I?m not focused on setting up security for squid like adding ACL (Access Control Lists) to prevent other users using your proxy etc.
But this is 1000 times better than setting up a php web based proxy to browse the web.
While server side setup complete we need to setup our web browsers to use our proxy. I think you are probably using firefox to browse the web so here is the configuration for firefox for other programs you can use the same.
On firefox navigate to Tools=>Options=>Advanced=>Network=>Settings=>Manua l Proxy Configuration
On that page enter your IP address that squid is installed and port as 3128 because we didn?t changed the default squid port. Also click the checkbox ?Use this proxy server for all protocols?





Thats it!
Note that

• We didn?t setup Access Control Lists so any one who knows your squid server ip address and port can use your proxy.
• When choosing a server for setting up squid for your use try to get a server which gives lowest ping times for your location which will help you to browse more fast.

Bharat Reviewed by Bharat on 29th Sep 2011. Setup Squid as a HTTP proxy to browse blocked web sites! Have you ever worried about your government,workplace,school or ISP limitations for web sites? Are you behind Great firewall of china? are you worried about browsing speeds with overloaded or slow web proxy services? HTTP proxies are the best solution for you. And with squid cache you can make a nice HTTP proxy for your personal or family use. In my case I have tried SSH SOCKS5 method for access blocked sites but I feel it too slow because connection is encrypted but its so secure than Rating: 5

[Sukhvinder]

when i put:-

start squid

it says me this:-

start: Job failed to start

please help me!

[CuraHack]

sudo /etc/init.d/squid start
sudo /etc/init.d/squid restart

If it doesn't check the logs

[Apathetic]

Any guide for CentOS?

I did

yum install squid -y
nano /etc/squid/squid.conf
and inserted the 2 lines

[Bharat]

Any guide for CentOS?

I did

yum install squid -y
nano /etc/squid/squid.conf
and inserted the 2 lines

Alright buddy i'll make a guide for centos . Thanks

[Apathetic]

^Would be looking forward to that

[tig3r07]

thanks very good post... I will try this.