>> Yup, this is what is needed. However, one thing that makes >> me wonder is how to deal with sites that fit into more than one >> category. > >> For example, let's assume that we use categories like Rick mentioned >> above. Let's say that we have a porn site. Most porn sites would fit > into >> several or all of the above categories. So, do we list it in all of >> them, > >> or just in the Pornography category? For the sake of completeness, >> you > > This is a thorny problem (pardon the almost-pun!) The only safe way I > can see you can do this is if there's some strict hierarchy of > categories, e.g. porn trumps coarse language etc. That way you can > "bubble up" the site until it hits the upper bound. > > There's presumably a performance hit (although hopefully not a major > one) from redundancy among categories, but are there other problems? I > guess you could have clashes if you pass one group but block another. > > Actually, thinking about it, perhaps the weeding out could be automated > provided it knows about your ordering of categories in squidguard.conf? > > Nick Barron, Group IT Security Officer > Pennant Software Services Ltd -- Registered in England No. 3772667 PGP: > A94C 4190 026E 3E02 6D50 C8FA 8620 3091 FF34 533D
Although this is probably not the answer wanted by some, coz it means much more effort, it is clearly necessary to list each site in all categories it matches. If this is not done, then the categories themselves are somewhat useless to use - say you want to block a, b, & c for group1 and a, b & d for group2 - if a site falls into both c & d but is not listed in both lists c & d then that site will get through either group1 or group2 where it shouldn't get through either i.e. you can't use the categories to do partial filtering unless sites are included in all site lists that they are relevant to. You would want the duplicates to stay in each list even on your own machine to ensure that you could apply a sub-set of lists to each group you define. If you want to filter everything - then cat all the files through 'sort -u' :-) I'm not going to try a real world example - just simple logic shows it is incorrect (and I'm sure someone could come up with a real world example) If you have multiple levels per category - then of course a site should only be at one level, in the most extreeme level it matches. -- -Cheers -Andrew MS ... if only he hadn't been hang gliding!
