Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar
I didn’t feel all that well last night. Not sure if I’m coming down with something, or if it’s something else. I’ve actually felt a little weird for the last couple of days, so I’ve been sucking down zinc lozenges, and I remembered Steve DeLassus’ advice the last time I got sick: swallow a raw garlic clove. I felt fine the next day. So guess what I had for breakfast this morning? That’ll solve the problem of anyone wanting to come near me all day…
I napped a good part of the evening, but I got a little work done. I finally got the guts to raise my hand in the Sorcerer mailing list and ask if anyone else was having problems compiling XFree86. Turns out there was a bug. So now I don’t feel so stupid. It took a couple of hours to compile, and at first I configured it wrong, but now I’ve got a usable GUI.
I also installed Squid on the Sorcerer box. There isn’t a spell for Squid yet, and I’m not positive I can write it (it requires adding users and doinking with configuration files, and editing configuration files automatically goes a little beyond my Unix lack-of-expertise), but I may give it a try. One thing that annoys me about Squid: It uses really lame compiler options, and it ignores the system default options. I need to learn the syntax of make files so I can try to override that. The main reason to run Squid is for performance, so who wouldn’t want a Squid compiled to wring every ounce of performance it can out of the CPU?
But at any rate, I installed it, and did minimal–and I mean minimal–configuration: adding a user “squid” and setting it to run as that user, changing ownership of its directory hierarchy, opening it up to the world (I’m behind a firewall), running squid -NCd1, and putting a really lame script in /etc/rc3.d. Here’s the script:
#!/bin/sh
echo “Starting Squid…”
/usr/local/squid/bin/squid
See? Told you it was lame.
Performance? It smokes. There are a few sites that Squid seems to slow down no matter what, but www.kcstar.com absolutely rips now, so I can get my Royals updates faster.
It makes sense. My Squid boxes have previously been TurboLinux boxes, which are nice, minimalist systems, but they’re designed for portability. In other words, they’re still 386-optimized. Plus, they’re running the 2.2 kernel and ext2. This one’s running 2.4.9, disk formatted reiserfs, with everything optimized for i686.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.