[TriLUG] Proxy server for Home

[David Black]

Hi Roy,

I use squid + dansguardian for this and am happy with it.  Squid with aggressive cache settings helps with the performance lost from dansguardian filtering.  Especially with a couple add-on pattern packages for dansguardian, the filtering is quite thorough.

Some people do transparent proxying at a router via port redirect(s).  While I've done that in the past and it works well enough, my preference these days is a proxy.pac/wpad.dat javascript file on a LAN web server.   I don't need strict "block if not filtered" enforcement and this method provides more fine-grained control of what's proxied.  With all family web browsers set to 'automatically discover' network settings, the browser picks up this file and redirects to dansguardian.  BTW, that's the default for IE but has to be set in Firefox Advanced/Network settings.  Don't know about other browsers.  

FYI, this is what my proxy.pac file (symlinked to wpad.dat at the web server document root) looks like.  Dansguardian is running on 10.7.65.110:3129, and will be bypassed if down.  Last, there is a wpad.mydomain.name entry in internal DNS pointing to that web server - how the browser knows where to find the file.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
        if (isInNet(host, "10.0.0.0", "255.0.0.0") ||
            isInNet(host, "127.0.0.0", "255.0.0.0") ||
            (url.substring(0, 6) == "https:")) {
                return "DIRECT";
        } else {
                return "PROXY 10.7.65.110:3129; DIRECT";
        }
}

Dave

----- "Roy Vestal" <rvestal at trilug.org> wrote:

> Hey all,
>   I'm wanting to build a proxy server for the house, specifically for
> my 
> kids. I'd like to block their MAC and only unlock the sites I deem
> ok.
> 
> Any suggestions of where to start?
> 
> TIA,
> -Roy
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