RE: [squid-users] Squid2.4 & /etc/hosts

Hi All,

I have resolved this issue I posted about last week by simply rebuilding the
RedHat src RPM with --disable-internal-dns.

I have now added the internal IP address of the web server to the proxy
servers /etc/hosts file and all is well. The proxy connects to the internal
address of the proxy and not the outside real world address as provided by a
regular DNS lookup.

The webserver is also listening on port 443 for a webmail connection. When a
user requests https://webmail.company.com the DNS server returns the outside
world IP address. Again squid needs to point to the internal IP address of
this server for these requests.

I tried adding webmail.company.com to /etc/hosts but this only resolves when
you enter http://webmail.company.com but it sends the request to port 80 and
thus the standard webserver returns the results not the webmail listening on
443. When entering https://webmail.company.com it continues to use the
address provided by the DNS server.

Is there a way I can get this to work as required.

Adding the webmail address to the company internal DNS server has been ruled
out by the company's tech staff.

Thanks
Jay

-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Turner [mailto:jturner@bsis.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 29 January 2003 11:58 AM
To: squid-users@squid-cache.org
Subject: [squid-users] Squid2.4 & /etc/hosts

Hi All,

I am after some clarification regarding Squid-2.4.STABLE6-6.7.3 and the use
of /etc/hosts.

One of our proxies needs to access a webserver via it's internal address
rather than its world DNS address.
I have added the required information to /etc/hosts, confirmed nsswitch.conf
is checking files before DNS and restarted squid but it does not seem to be
taking.

I have a Squid 2.5 box that uses the host_file attribute in squid.conf and
it works no worries and I am able to see the listing via cachemgr under FQDN
Cache Statistics.

This information is not present in the 2.4STABLE6 version.

Trawling the archives I found this post from Henrik:

"Squid-2.3 defaults to use an internal DNS client implementation, talking
directly to your DNS server.

Squid-2.4 too defaults to using an internal DNS client, but reads
/etc/hosts on startup (I think, or maybe this is only in Squid-2.5?).

--
Henrik Nordstrom"
Is this actually the case? It appears not in my testing. Is there a way I
can add something to the Internal DNS that squid 2.4 uses?
I realise that I can recompile Squid2.4 with --disable-internal-dns, but
this is a production machine so re-compiling and upgrading to 2.5 are not an
option at this point. The network configuration in which the server sits
uses an unusual setup whereby adding an entry to the local DNS server in the
network is not an option. I really require a solution that can be
implemented on the Squid server.
All advice appreciated
Regards
Jay