[squid-users] Do I need to be technical to use squid proxy?

[Amos Jeffries]

On 16/08/18 18:59, Oldman wrote:
> Thanks a lot . I take your advice  delete every thing and install a new os
> but I will need help 

That is not what was being suggested (unless you installed the whole OS
from a source without knowing what was going on). Just using safe
practices when installing software.

Reading that script it does use your OS providers package installer and
repository. So that part is safe enough.

The weird parts are how it then completely replaces your squid.conf with
its own broken config file and some (wrong) claims it makes about
htpasswd hashing.

You should be able to just drop in the default config for your Squid
version. Which should be one of these:

<https://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/ConfiguringSquid#Do_you_have_a_squid.conf_example.3F>

OR, a squid.conf.default file containing the above with a few more
comments should have been installed with your Squid.


A Squid using those defaults should "just work". So your needed
technical know-how scales with the complexity of what you are trying to
do - from none (default setup) to expert (lots of custom config).


eg. if you have sufficient technical know-how to read that installer
script and understand it - then choosing to run it can be okay as you
should then also know how to fix the broken bits in it.


> Can you please point me to one online tutuorial that is easy to understand
> and I can just
> enter command ?  I will install centos I suppose

If you are already familiar with that OS then sure. Just be aware CentOS
is targeted at corporate installations, so a moderate level of expertise
is assumed and building/patching ones own software more common in that
community.

distrowatch.com is a pretty good resource for getting into OpenSource
systems. For example; it lists the top-ten most popular OS distributions
as currently:

Rank 	Distribution
1 	Manjaro
2 	Mint
3 	Ubuntu
4 	Debian
5 	elementary
6 	Solus
7 	MX Linux
8 	Antergos
9 	Fedora
10 	openSUSE

The distro popularity tends to mean they are more polished and easier to
use than the less popular OS (which likewise tend to be more targeted at
specific uses). Or at very least there are a lot of people knowing about
them to be found.

[Manjaro being #1 surprises me. The others all match what I have heard
from many sources in terms of OS people are finding easy to use.]

Tutorials and How-To's should be readily available for most OS. Via your
favourite search engine, if not the distribution itself. If you cannot
find something you understand for a particular OS it's likely not a good
choice to be installing as a beginner.

That level of help is technically off-topic here. Once you have a
machine you can use, help with the Squid installation and setup parts is
what we are all about.

HTH
Amos