[Filterproxy-devel] Re: FilterProxy quick question

[Bob M. <mce...@dr...>]

What version of FilterProxy do you use?

Pete Gonzalez [go...@ra...] wrote:
> At 10:55 PM 10/24/2001, you wrote:
> >Pete Gonzalez [go...@ra...] wrote:
> > > 1. I want to configure FilterProxy to refuse connections from all
> > > internet hosts except for a specific list of IP addresses.  Is
> > > this possible?
> >
> >Not currently, no.  You can restrict incoming connections to localhost, =
or the
> >host specified as $HOST in FilterProxy.pl.
> >I will happily accept a patch for this if you want to implement it thoug=
h.
>=20
> This would be a good feature to have.  I ended up hacking FilterProxy.pl
> implement this, but it would probably be pretty easy to add it to the
> config file.
>=20
> I ran into a couple problems though:  First, if I try to view the
> administration page remotely, it seems to go into an infinite loop
> connecting and re-connecting to itself.  This is unfortunate because
> only lynx is available on the server itself.

I view the config pages remotely on a regular basis.  Can you turn on debug=
 and
send me a snippet of the log file?  You're not the first to report this, bu=
t I
can't reproduce it.

> Secondly, it seems to be forking a lot of copies of itself in memory.
> Would it be difficult to limit the number of forks?

It forks one copy for each connection from the browser, and then tries to k=
eep
those connections open as long as possible.  Normally this will generate 8
connections per user.  This is a fast and reasonable approach as long as the
number of users are small, and the browser is recent.  Old browsers (Netsca=
pe
3.x) which open one connection per page/image and use HTTP/1.0 can generate=
 a
disasterous load due to forking.

A pre-fork model as used by Apache would be desirable for older browsers or
HTTP/1.0 and a large number of users.  This is a bit of work though, and I
don't really have the motivation to do it since I use it, and intend it to =
be a
"personal" filtering proxy.  I would happily accept a patch if you want to
implement this feature though!  I think there are some notes about it in my
TODO file.

> > > 2. How do you use the authentication feature?
> >Mozilla/IE will ask you for a username/password when you make a connecti=
on.
>=20
> Hmm... this didn't work for me.

What does it do?  You enabled authentication on the config page, right?  Wh=
at
happens when you request a page?  Do you get a 407 response (Proxy Auth
required) or an error?

Cheers,
-- Bob

Bob McElrath (rsm...@st...)=20
Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics