Squid: The Definitive Guide

Preface

About This Book

I started the Squid project eight years ago while working at the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research and the University of California. Back then I certainly enjoyed writing code and fixing bugs but always felt bad about the lack of decent documentation. This book is my attempt to rectify that situation. It’s been a long time coming and almost didn’t happen. Like they say, “better late than never!”

This book is written for those who are tasked with setting up and maintaining one or more Squid caches. If you’re new to Squid, I’ll show you how to download, compile, and install the code. Those of you who have been using Squid for a while will be more interested in the later chapters, where I talk about disk cache performance, modifying requests, surrogate mode, caching hierarchies, monitoring Squid, and more.

In order to use this book, you should have a basic knowledge of Unix systems. Many of the book’s examples are based on free operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. I also have some tips for Solaris users. If you’re more comfortable with Windows systems, you can use Squid under a Unix emulator or give the native NT port a try.

Here’s an overview of the book’s contents:

Chapter 1, Introduction

This chapter introduces you to Squid and web caching. I give a brief history of the project, and a few notes on our future work. I explain how you can find additional support and information, including a FAQ, on the Squid web site.

Chapter ...