Proxy Autoconfig - Help wanted

Hi all,

I'm currently in the process of replacing Netscape Proxy with squid at a
resonably widely distributed site. I really need to be able to put squid
in without having to either go around to everyone and change configs on
their browsers or to ask them to change their browser settings. I
currently have everything in place to do this with one exception - their
current settings for the pac files point at the cache server machine and
the cache server port and Netscape is automagically redirecting that to
the correct pac file. To add to the problem, there are a (largish)
number of people who are not using the pac file, but instead have manually
typed in the cache settings in their browsers. This whole mess dates
back to before I started at this shop, and I have to live with it.

How do I
    1 - put my squid server in the same place as the Netscape one -
        cache:8080
and
    2 - allow people to still use http://cache:8080/ to fetch their .pac
        file?

I have set up redirection using squidGuard to rewrite http://cache:8080/
as http://cache:80/ where I have an apache server set up and I have added
the correct mime type to the apache server. When I type
http://cache:8080/ into my browser's location box, it correctly goes and
fetches the pac file from the apache server and informs me that it has
received an autoconfig file, but when I try to set up the autoconfig on
the browser, I get the "Invalid URL" message from squid. This is not too
surprising, seeing that the URL being given to squid at this stage is /
(yes, just a "/" all by itself, and no I don't know why).

So I set up a rewrite rule in squidGuard to rewrite the "/" as
http://cache:8080/ but this just gives the same error. It seems to me as
if squid is validating the URL for correctness before it hands it off to
the redirector.

Is there any way I can get around this? Is there anyone who has tried
something similar and gotten around it another way?

Cheers! (Relax...have a homebrew)

Neil
Received on Wed Dec 08 1999 - 03:24:29 MST