Related Documentation

A happy user's squidGuard page

Fabrice Prigent, Network Administrator at the University of Toulouse, France, has written an excellent page about squidGuard in both French and English. He has done a neutral comparison of known free redirectors for Squid. He also has links to some URL/domain lists/patterns you may find useful in conjunction with Squid and squidGuard.

Useful hints from Justin J. Novack about creating an adblock with squidGuard using Adblock Plus' Easylist.

SquidGuard addon for the use with IPCop

Franck has a created a SquidGuard addon for the use with IPCop. Detailed information can be found here (in French).

A user contributed FAQ:

An alternative FAQ by Andrea Berger

The official Squid Releases Site:

The Squid programmers/authors original documentation on Squid's redirector interface of the latest devel, pre and stable releases.

Pointers to Squid redirector packages and more.

The official Squid FAQ:

Answers to almost all your questions about Squid are now available in the Squid Wiki.

Squid related documentation:

Pointers to even more Squid related documentation.

Useful software links

squidGuard:

Well, that is what this is all about :-)

Squid:

The proxy software Squid.

libdb.a - Berkeley DB - The Berkeley Database library:

squidGuard requires this library. You must install at least version 2.7.7 of DB if your system does not already have it. Later versions are to be preferred. The Berkeley Database library can be used free of charge with squidGuard since squidGuard is GPL.

A Webmin Module:

A Webmin Module for squidGuard. Thanks to Tim Niemueller.

Gzip - GNU's replacement for compress:

You need gzip/gunzip/zcat to unzip the squidGuard distribution. If you ever plan to work with freeware for UNIX-like environments then gzip/gunzip/zcat is a must.

Gmake - GNU make:

If you don't have a development environment with a "make" compatible build tool and stuff listed below, then the Free Software Foundation is your best friend. The Free Software Foundation makes free versions of everything you need to set up a development environment for UNIX-like systems. Besides the University of California, Berkeley/Berkeley Software Design, the free software from the Free Software Foundation is the main reason there are things called 386bsd, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. etc. Thanks to the constant open source revision and refinement via the Internet over the years since 1983, the Free Software Foundation in most cases makes faster, better and less buggy reincarnations of most UNIX-like tools an libraries than the commercial vendors do and the code runs on almost any UNIX-like platform you can think of so you can set up a more uniform environment on a multivendor fleet. Therefor we recommend using GNU tools wherever you can!

Gcc - The GNU C Compiler:

If you don't have an ANSI C compiler then the Free Software Foundation is your best friend. Gcc makes faster and less buggy code than many commercial compilers and runs on almost any UNIX-like platforms you can think of, so we recommend using it anyway unless your commercial compiler is really clever. squidGuard is currently developed with gcc-3.3.6.

Bison - The GNU/FSF parser generator, Bison:

Byacc - The Berkeley Yacc parser generator:

If you for some strange reason don't have a "yacc" (Yet Another Compiler Compiler) compatible parser generator then The GNU/FSF parser generator, (bison) and The Berkeley Yacc parser generator (byacc) are your friends. You need yacc, byacc or bison to compile src/sg.y into src/y.tab.c and src/y.tab.h. Bison makes faster parsers than most commercial versions of yacc, so we recommend using it anyway as long as its copyright isn't a problem for you (You may not use Bison to build commercial software). If you can't use Bison and lack yacc, use byacc which has a more liberal copyright. (Though the parser speed doesn't matter much for squidGuard since it is used for parsing the config file only).

Flex - The Fast Lexical Analyzer Generator:

If you for some strange reason don't have a "lex" compatible lexical analyzer generator then the Fast Lexical Analyzer Generator (flex) is your friend. You need lex/flex to compile src/sg.l into src/lex.yy.c. Flex makes faster scanners than many (most/all?) commercial versions of lex, so we recommend using it anyway. (Though the lexer speed doesn't matter much for squidGuard since it is used for parsing the config file only). squidGuard is currently developed with flex-2.5.33.

Regex - the GNU regex library:

Rx - A fast replacement for the GNU regex library:

squidGuard must be linked with a regular expression library that supports regcomp() and regexec(). If your system for some strange reason don't have this the GNU regex or rx libraries may be good alternatives. We haven't done any comparison of these libraries yet, but have successfully linked squidGuard with both. These may be faster than many commercial variants anyway, so you may consider using one of them even if your system have a compatible library. Finding a fast regular expression executer, regexec(), may be critical for good performance if you run squidGuard with many and/or complex regular expressions. The performance of the regular expression compiler regcomp() is less critical since all expression compilation is done at load time, not when handling requests.

Apache - The most popular web server on the Internet:

Although your redirectors could point to nonexisting URLs, it would be a better idea in most configurations to redirect to existing URLs. So you probably need a web server. If you don't have a web server we strongly recommend Apache. You can install it on the proxy server or a nearby server.

Perl - The popular all in one language:

You don't really need Perl to run squidGuard, but it comes very handy when making CGI scripts, HTML parsers, URL collectors, database compactors etc. etc.

Pidentd - a free Portable Ident Daemon for Unix:

To be able to use user IDs in the client rules definitions the actual clients must support RFC931/RFC1413. Pidentd is for Unix.
Nowadays you may find that squiguard can work well non user names even without an identd running.

squidlog2combined:

squidlog2combined is a free tool that lets you convert native Squid accesslogs to the Apache combined log format, suitable for log analyzers like Webalizer and others. It has some really nice options.

Webalizer -a free web server log file analyzer:

Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser. With Squid you may find it usefull in combination with squidlog2combined and Apache's logresolve.