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Table of Contents
Installing Squid with VuFind in 10 minutes
Due to Syndetics network/service issues, Western Michigan University implemented a reverse proxy cache for particular third party venders. Squid http://www.squid-cache.org/ is an open source reverse proxy cache. It can cache and store third party content locally, thus improving response times.
In our case, we use a separate server to increase performance. Squid can either be installed on the VuFind server or separately. However, due to its system load, it is recommended that Squid be installed on a secondary machine (we used an Intel Xeon 3.0ghz 800mhz bus, 2 Gig DDR2, 1 terabyte non raid disk). In these instructions, the base operating system is RedHat 5.2/CentOS http://www.centos.org/.
Install the Operating System
- Large Partitions
- Swap should be 2x or more of RAM
Update System
- [root@Squidbox] yum update -y
Reboot into new Kernel
- [root@Squidbox] reboot
Open Squid Port 3128
- [root@Squidbox] setup
- Follow GUI
Install Squid
- [root@Squidbox] yum install squid -y
Configure Squid
- replace this with the /etc/squid/squid.conf
Note 1: 165.254.62.247 is the IP of syndetics.com Note 2: 3128 is the default port
#Squid Conf http_port 3128 defaultsite=syndetics.com cache_peer 165.254.62.247 parent 80 0 no-query originserver acl our_sites dstdomain syndetics.com http_access allow our_sites #disk swap cache_swap_high 95 cache_swap_low 90 #ram ram ram cache_mem 32 MB #End Squid Conf
Add Squid as a Service
[root@Squidbox]/sbin/chkconfig –add squid
Start Squid
[root@Squidbox]/sbin/service squid start
Configure VuFind
Adjust VuFind to access your Squid box's IP address instead of the normal URLs. Depending on the service you are using, you may be able to adjust config.ini; otherwise, you will have to edit code.
For our VuFind 1.0RC1 instance, we had to go through and hand edit bookcovers.php, Record/Review.php, and Record/Excerpt.php and replace http://syndetics.com with yoursquidboxip.