Playing with Squid

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

Mandrake Squid. To turn a Mandrake server install into a Squid server, here’s all you have to do. Issue the command squid -NCd1 to build the cache directory structure. Then, issue the command mv /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/K25squid /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S25squid so that Squid runs at startup (assuming your server’s set to run in text mode, as servers should be–why waste all that memory and CPU cycles keeping a GUI running when those resources can be dedicated to server tasks?). If it you boot and run GUI mode automatically, (maybe you want to run Squid on your workstation), add the command mv /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/K25squid /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S25squid to the mix.

Now to start Squid, you can do one of two things. You can reboot, which is the Windows way of doing things, or you can just start the daemon, which is the Unix way of doing things. I like the Unix way. Run Squid’s startup script manually by issuing the command /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S25squid restart. (There are other ways to do it too of course but I like this way.)

Single-floppy Squid. And just in case you haven’t seen everything yet, you can get a single-floppy FreeBSD-based Squid server. Head over to www.ryuchi.org/~ilovefd/1fdsquid/1fdsquidus.shtml for the goods. It uses the system’s hard drive for storage. You want a semi-powerful CPU (a Pentium-133 is sufficient for a small workgroup) and a fair bit of memory (I’m thinking 64 megs is the minimum). That’s less power than you need for a Windows workstation these days, but considering you can do a light-duty Unix-based fileserver with a 33 MHz 486, it’s a comparatively powerful machine.

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