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Internet content filtering for UNIX/LINUX

Discussion in 'Computers & Technology Forum' started by superdave, Sep 18, 2004.

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  1. superdave

    superdave New Member

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    I am working on getting my Sun Ultra 5 running Solaris 8 2/02 set up on my network.

    My kids use it almost every day, and I want to protect the browser from accessing undesirable sites, plus its not a bad idea for everybody, not just the kids. I use a VPN for my work, so most of my browsing is filtered anyway through a proxy, but when that is not running, I want to set up my system to filter urls, and also do content filtering on the actual sites.

    I was wondering if anyone had set up content filtering for their browser in Solaris or Linux and what software, freeware, etc you used in doing so.

    I will give a couple that I have found, and am in the midst of compiling right now. (and ultra 5 aint the fastest CPU Sun has built, the make command can take a couple hours)

    so far I am working on getting squid, squidGuard, and dansguardian running, this has required the installation of several application development tools and some other supporting software such as Berkeley DB and a couple others.

    Has anyone else done this yet? any suggestions or recommendations for software? No one really sells or builds binaries for Solaris to do content filtering, it is mostly open source, or the products are designed for enterprise use, with a proxy server, etc.
     
    #1 superdave, Sep 18, 2004
  2. GeneMBridges

    GeneMBridges New Member

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    Squid really is your best bet for total functionality, but it can be a bit eccentric. At one time squid worked "out of the box," on RedHat distributions, (which is my familiarity with the product) but lately I've seen it get quirky.

    You can also use Apache to configure your private network as a proxy server and then connect it to the internet. Direct all workstations to your proxy server and from there to the internet (thus the term). If you use Apache, you can use the ProxyBlock directive to block access to a named host or a domain. You can also block sites that have specific words. For example, the line ProxyBlock yahoo.com, blocks users from accessing the yahoo.com domain. The line ProxyBlock porn blocks all sites with the word "porn" in them. The drawback here is that you have to block by domain name or words or word groups, and the commands are not adaptive to users' syntax.
     
    #2 GeneMBridges, Sep 19, 2004
  3. superdave

    superdave New Member

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    That is the limitation of Squid, which did compile correctly out of the box, and I am having problems getting squid guard to work on Solaris out of the box. I am getting Library errors when it tries to build on the Berkeley db program it uses to track the blocked sites. That is what Dansguardian is supposed to block, since it actually filters the incoming content and does not block urls. It attempts to block material that is on sites that otherwise do not get blocked.

    The only problem with setting up a proxy is that I use VPN as well, with proxies defined by the Secured network, so I have to have something that will work with those proxies set.
     
    #3 superdave, Sep 19, 2004
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