Setting up Squid Proxy server

Squid could be installed from the Packet Manager, like Synaptic, on Ubuntu. However, most of the times, the latest squid version won't be available from packet managers. We can download the latest source code from http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/.

I followed the instructions given here: http://www.technologytricks.com/install-squid-proxy-server/ to install Squid. While initializing the cache using the command:

/usr/local/squid/sbin/squid -z

I received the following error:

WARNING: Cannot write log file: /usr/local/squid/var/logs/cache.log/usr/local/squid/var/logs/cache.log: Permission denied

Following instructions given here:http://vonroeschlaub.com/kurt/server.html, I modified the permissions for the folder /usr/local/squid/var/logs, and all its contents using the commands

user@ubuntu:/usr/local/squid/var$ sudo chmod a+w logs
user@ubuntu:/usr/local/squid/var/logs$ sudo chmod a+w * 

You can then test Squid in debugging mode using the command:

sudo /usr/local/squid/sbin/squid -NCd1

"-NCd1" is used for starting it in debugging mode to look for any further errors. I had to use "sudo", because it threw an error as shown below:

2011/12/09 15:44:18| Accepting  HTTP connections at [::]:3128, FD 12.
2011/12/09 15:44:18| HTCP Disabled.
2011/12/09 15:44:18| /usr/local/squid/var/run/squid.pid: (13) Permission denied
FATAL: Could not write pid file
Aborted

Using "sudo" should make it run successfully in debug mode, like below:

2011/12/09 15:45:29| Accepting  HTTP connections at [::]:3128, FD 12.
2011/12/09 15:45:29| HTCP Disabled.
2011/12/09 15:45:29| Squid plugin modules loaded: 0
2011/12/09 15:45:29| Ready to serve requests.

You can then verify if squid is working from the browser. Just go to the connection settings and fill in the IP address of your machine and port 3128 for the proxy and try to browse a url. After browsing few urls, check the access logs in squid/var/logs folder to verify that squid did indeed see the url requests. If you are accessing the proxy from a subnet other than the one listed on your squid.conf file, you should get an "ACCESS DENIED" page. To allow proper browsing, probably the squid.conf needs to be edited further and squid needs to be restarted to make use of the updated configuration file.