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Don't install Squid - use Privoxy!
Authored by: Tony Arnold on Mar 02, '03 06:59:54AM

Uhhh, you really don't want to install Squid. It's a complete web proxy server, and uses your computer's resources accordingly. This is sorta the reason Privoxy was branched from Squid. It is specifically for proxying connections on a local machine, and in my experience is a lot faster (and easier to setup) than Squid.

Before you go installing squid, go take a look at http://www.privoxy.org/ - it is Squid, without the extras that you're not going to use.



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Correction...
Authored by: Tony Arnold on Mar 02, '03 07:02:12AM

Sorry, Privoxy was branched from Internet Junkbuster - Authoxy is based on Privoxy...

All this inbreeding is making me dizzy :)



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Correction...
Authored by: LightYear on Mar 02, '03 11:40:33PM
Authoxy is based on Privoxy

It is? As Authoxy's developer I must admit I'm not in total agreement. I'd say closer to 'inspired by' than 'based on' :-)
Before I began writing Authoxy, I used Privoxy. It was workable as an authentication solution (I didn't really use any of the privacy stuff), but hardly a perfect solution. So I wrote Authoxy from scratch. There is no shared code between Authoxy and Privoxy. I think I did steal the naming idea though, sorry for the confusion!
HTTPS support is coming in Authoxy folks! I have a couple of things to work on in the mean time (support for .pac files is next), but it is on the agenda. Do check out Privoxy or Squid for now though, if you are brave enough.
As an aside, I must admit it is rewarding to have worked on Authoxy until very late last night, and then find it mentioned on the first page of MacOSXHints (which I really try to frequent), along with VersionTracker and MacUpdate, this morning.

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My .sig is on .holiday

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Authoxy & iCal
Authored by: zakaria on Mar 04, '03 07:20:46AM

Could Authoxy be the solution to the iCal publis&subscribe problem ? iCal always tries to use port 80 during publish&subscribe. We have a proxy without authentication but with port 81. So couldn't authoxy redirect iCals request to the correct proxy ? I gave it a shot but so far it didn't work... Anybody an idea for the iCal-problem ?



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Authoxy & iCal
Authored by: LightYear on Mar 06, '03 12:48:51AM

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, iCal makes no attempt whatsoever to use the proxy settings in System Preferences. I'm confident, that if one could point iCal at Authoxy, subscribe and publish would work, but as it stands, iCal and Authoxy have no way of knowing about each other. Quite frustrating really, considering so many of Apple's other apps do what one would imagine is the right thing, and pay attention to the user Proxy settings.

If you (or anyone else) would like to discuss this further, please email me. I'll keep an eye on the situation, but there really is not a lot I can do from my end.

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My .sig is on .holiday



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How do you add the authentication info to Privoxy?
Authored by: houchin on Mar 02, '03 03:37:51PM

I can't tell from your correction is you're still suggesting to use Privoxy over Squid. If you are still making this suggestion, how do you add the username and password? From the privoxy docs, it doesn't appear that this is possible.



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How do you add the authentication info to Privoxy?
Authored by: LightYear on Mar 06, '03 12:59:16AM

It certainly is possible, at least for HTTP. I imagine for HTTPS also, I've just never had reason to find out. You are right though, it is not obvious from the Docs how one goes about it.

I wrote up a method for adding proxy authentication to Privoxy quite a while ago, and would be happy to try to dig it up for anyone who is interested. Just send me an email.

As far as I can remember, there was basically two steps. You first had to use the proxy forwarding (might be called tunneling, can't remember) feature to get privoxy to pass everything on to your proxy. That required editing a file, using a fairly descriptive example in the file.

The other thing to add was a +add-header or something, which would add your authentication string to each request. The tricky bit is getting that string. The easiest way I found was to use a packet sniffer like MacSniffer or Sniffles, and grab a packet going out of your browser to the proxy. The header should start with something like "GET http://www.something.com HTTP/1.0", and then a little further on, will be soemthing like:
Authentication: BASIC YFNXpasnfoFEOEPAee=
Thats the line you copy into Privoxy's configuration file as a header to be included.

Hope that helps.

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My .sig is on .holiday



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