2.2 Use the Source, Luke

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So why can't you just copy a precompiled binary to your system and expect it to work perfectly ? The primary reason is that the code needs to know about certain operating system parameters. In particular, the most important parameter is the maximum number of open file descriptors. Squid's ./configure script (see Section 3.4) probes for these values before compiling. If you take a Squid binary built for one value and run it on a system with a different value, you may encounter problems.

Another reason is that many of Squid's features must be enabled at compile time. If you take a binary that somebody else compiled, and it doesn't include the code for the features that you want, you'll need to compile your own version anyway.

Finally, note that shared libraries sometimes make it difficult to share executable files between systems. Shared libraries are loaded at runtime. This is also known as dynamic linking . Squid's ./configure script probes your system to find out certain things about your C library functions (if they are present, if they work, etc.). Although library functions don't usually change, it is possible that two different systems have slightly different shared C libraries. This may become a problem for Squid if the two systems are different enough.

Getting the Squid source code is really quite easy. To get it, visit the Squid home page, http://www.squid-cache.org/. The home page has links to the current stable and development releases. If you aren't located in the United States, you can select one of the many mirror sites. The mirror sites are usually named "www N . CC .squid-cache.org," where N is a number and CC is a two-letter country code. For example, www1.au.squid-cache.org is an Australian mirror site. The home page has links to the current mirror sites.

Each Squid release branch (e.g., Squid-2.5) has its own HTML page. This page has links to the source code releases and " diffs " between releases. If you are upgrading from one release to the next , you may want to download the diff file and apply the patch as described in Section 3.7. The release pages describe the new features and important changes in each version, and also have links to bugs that have been fixed.

When web access isn't an option, you can get the source release from the ftp://ftp.squid-cache.org FTP server or one of the FTP mirror sites. For the current versions, look in the pub/squid-2/ DEVEL or pub/squid-2/STABLE directories. The Squid FTP site is mirrored at many locations as well. You can use the same country-code trick to guess some mirror sites, such as ftp1.uk.squid-cache.org .

The current Squid release distributions are about 1 MB in size . After downloading the compressed tar file, you can proceed to Chapter 3.

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Squid
Squid: The Definitive Guide
ISBN: 0596001622
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 401
Authors: Duane Wessels

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