[squid-users] Re: LiveCD type install for transparent caching of YouTube, etc?

Henrik Nordstrom wrote:
> There is the CacheMARA product from MARA Systems. But it needs a bit of
> updates to work with current hardware (and current Squids), and
> additionally the free version isn't quite ready yet (my fault).

Looks like an interesting product. I've become a big fan of these
appliance devices built on open source software. We are currently using
a Barracuda Web Filter, and it works well, except that we don't have the
fine grained control over the hows and whats of caching. (Really it's
an on/off option.)

> Also
> this is perhaps a bit too stripped down for some peoples needs with the
> OS image only some MB in size and very locked down.

That is in many people's eyes typically a bonus. I wouldn't personally
want X running on a box like that. The OS, (lots of hardware support),
Squid, Apache + a simple configuration webpage, and possibly something
like Dan's Guardian. Footprint of the image shouldn't be too big.

> Adrian is also working on an appliance type Squid installation. Adrian
> is also working on another Appliance style Squid installation. I'll let
> him describe what he is doing if he wants to.

I spoke with Adrian briefly a while ago, and he certainly does have some
interesting bits. Though, as I mentioned, lots of hardware support is
probably the key here.

>> And as we want to be able to cache YouTube, Google Maps, Google Earth,
>> Windows Updates, etc, we need the rewrite rules in the 2.7 branch of
>> Squid. We were thinking of using a good sized hard disk for cache
>> storage, to reduce the internet bandwidth hit as much as possible.
>
> Then you will need to roll your own, as you won't find a ready
> distribution with all this just yet..

I just mentioned those as things that would require the 2.7 branch. We
could write our own, and probably would for a number of sites. For the
major sites, we aren't outside the idea of paying someone to keep our
rules updated.

> Start from something resembling what you want in terms of how the CD
> behaves and with reasonable tools for rolling your own, then add Squid
> and remove what else you don't want to have.

Unfortunately I am a Windows admin professionally, so my Linux is pretty
weak. I spent several years using KnoppMyth (MythTV) and Trixbox
(Asterisk), but the amount of stuff I really needed the command line for
is pretty small. And a lot of stuff I've had to ask my brother about
(who is a Linux admin professionally). I do believe in using the right
tools for the job, and Microsoft's caching solution just seems terrible.
  Squid's on the other hand is pretty much the standard in the industry
that everything else is compared against.

So, I'm not going to be able to roll my own solution by myself, or
realistically even 10% of the work myself.

> The weakest point is perhaps management gui. There isn't very many to
> choose from. webmin is the most complete, but even that is lacking many
> features and also lagging behind quite far.

Yeah, management is almost always the weakest point in open source
projects. Especially when it's a package that isn't shipped as an
entire system. Really don't know what to do about that. I know some
PHP, but just enough to alter/fix things, not write them from scratch.

Atamido
Received on Sun Mar 16 2008 - 22:52:08 MDT