Re: Questions on Polipo capabilities and potential capabilities

Thank you David and Juliusz.

(1) The problem with using cron to kill the polipo instance on the Linux
server is that it is too crude.  I need a more graceful way of telling the
user that the proxy is no longer functioning.  Ideally the user should be
taken to a URL in this case, perhaps one defined in the config file or on
the startup command line.  Could you give me some pointers on where a "kill
point in time" could be checked and used to do this?

(2) The more I think about this, the more I believe we do need a
leaky-bucket algorithm, which would effectively function similar to the
"kill at time x" but in place of it, as a sort of "kill at traffic volume
x".  Again, could you give me a pointer on where we would have to do the
measuring of the bytes of traffic being served?

(3) We cannot rely on the user to disable Javascript.  We are working on
hosting polipo and Tor together for users who do not, or cannot, deal with
this themselves.  Privoxy is a no-go for us, because of it's user interface,
and we are hoping to use polipo instead of it, so we can offer caching as an
option as well.  Not to sound like a record, but can you point us to where
the "zap" logic resides?

(4) We need this too - and a way to manipulate others headers besides
User-Agent :)

(5) Stunnel might work - we're going to put it through some tests.  OpenVPN
looks good in many ways, but we cannot get the redirect gateway and iptables
functionality to work together as it is supposed to - it might be an issue
with our Windows client router.  On the other hand, being able to control
which ports and apps use stunnel might give us a granularity that I cannot
see can be done with OpenVPN.  Stunnel would hopefully provide our users
with security from the client to our server.

As for http://www.privacy-ecosystem.com/ we are self-funded, and have been
since we started up showmyip.com about 4-5 years ago.  Yes, we do need to
get our privacy policy posted on privacy-ecosystem.com and thank you for
reminding me - it is posted on showmyip.com and ippages.com already.

Any chance of paying you, or someone, to do any of the above enhancements if
all else looks good once we have finished our testing?

. . . . .
Wesley Kenzie
WebMaster
http://www.privacy-ecosystem.com/



-----Original Message-----
From: polipo-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:polipo-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Juliusz
Chroboczek
Sent: December 17, 2006 10:10 AM
To: privacy-ecosystem.com WebMaster
Cc: polipo-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Polipo-users] FW: Questions on Polipo capabilities and
potential capabilities


> (1) How would you suggest we have polipo automatically shut down after
> 60 or x minutes?  Could support be added to allow having it shutdown
> automatically x minutes after it started up?
>
> (2) In a similar vein, could polipo be made to support the kind of
> "accounting" functionality that exists in Tor?  [...] Have it
> automatically start up at the same time each day?

Assuming you're on Unix, I agree with David that these are best done using
Cron.  (Check the config variable pidFile for safely killing Polipo.)

> Have it automatically start up and shut down after x MB/GB of traffic
> has flowed through it each day?

It would indeed be nice to have this, and to have an ability to rate control
Polipo using some leaky-bucket algorithm.  Unfortunately, that'd be a rather
large job, so don't hold your breath.

> (3) Can polipo recognize and "zap" any Javascript scripts? 
> Alternatively, can it be made to call out to an external script like
> it does with adzapper to process/scrub any Javascript scripts?

I believe this is better done at the user agent level.  I use the QuickJava
extension for FireFox, but some people seem to prefer NoScript.

> (4) Can user-agent be set to some config file value, or set by a
> command line argument, rather than flowing through the user's actual
> user-agent?

Not yet.  I agree it would be a useful option.

Right now, all you can do is disable serving of the User-Agent althegither
by setting censoredHeaders.

> (5) Have you any experience with OpenVPN?  I am trying to get a local
> OpenVPN client configuration to send all internet protocols/traffic
> through to the OpenVPN server process, which then routes http, https
> and ftp through polipo.  No luck at this point...

Sorry, no experience at all -- I strongly favour ssh tunnels (described in
the manual).  If you find out, please let me know so I can add a chapter to
the manual.

> http://www.privacy-ecosystem.com/

Cool.  But before we can trust you, you need to publish a privacy policy,
and disclose fully who is funding you.

                                        Juliusz



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