Hello everybody,
I recently came to Polipo while searching for a replacement for my local Firefox cache. I was using Squid in the past for small networks but was looking for something more compact. These topics about why a project such as Polipo is important and required have been already discussed by Donovan Baarda, "What is Polipo's future?", on February 16, 2012... In order to save traffic and make use of large local storage space I was looking for something to have more control about the cache. Also sharing the cache for different browsers is useful. I was annoyed by some caching deficiencies of FF like these: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=895308 - Cache lost when changing size https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105843 - Cache lost if Mozilla crashes ...throwing *GBs of cache away. Now having Polipo as replacement for the Firefox cache I think about disabling parts of that or even completely: * browser.cache.disk.enable * browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled * browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl This actually adds SSL content if browser.cache.disk.enable is enabled. So fare there is no setting to enable SSL caching separately. I'll come back on this later ("No ability to cache SSL..."). * browser.cache.memory.enable Polipo itself also has a memory cache. With a common desktop machine today with 4GB physical memory I already set chunkHighMark = 104857600. It may have the disadvantage that connection to that is through http/pipelining etc. That means the memory cache of the browser itself could be faster. So keeping at least some small space for memory caching inside the browser could have some benefit. So far the only disadvantages of Polipo are: * No ability to have a hard limit or threshold for the used local disc cache size. I know there is the quota method but it would be nice to have some advanced purging and discarding like it is done when reaching chunkHighMark. So fare the only way to control the cache size in some relative manner are diskCacheUnlinkTime and diskCacheTruncateTime. * No ability to cache SSL. Ok, this is the nature of a proxy. The only location where SSL can be cached is inside the browser. So there is a need for setting the browser to only cache SSL and disable the plain cache in favour for the outside caching proxy. I filed a Feature Request and found some already existing old request for that. You may vote for it but I guess browser developers there don't see any reason for such a feature. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217871#c7 - RFE: cache only SSL content So... * Make Polipo a SSL inspecting proxy: This could be a solution, not the best. It would mean accepting polipo cert and thrusting polipo. This would be acceptable for a personal proxy. However the user would miss the ability to check certificates of sites from the browser making all security warnings unfunctional there. This would also mean to implement some Accept/Deny interface and/or certificate viewer inside the proxy which would be far behind the simple caching functionality and I guess Juliusz saying this is not part of a simple proxy. This is more like existing (commercial) webfilter implementations around squid. I would appreciate if someone would take over maintenance for Polipo, for what is there and already working well. So far. Best regards, Massimo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shape the Mobile Experience: Free Subscription Software experts and developers: Be at the forefront of tech innovation. Intel(R) Software Adrenaline delivers strategic insight and game-changing conversations that shape the rapidly evolving mobile landscape. Sign up now. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=63431311&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Polipo-users mailing list Polipo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/polipo-users
