Re: [squid-users] question regarding squid proxy authentication prompt

From: Henrik Nordström <henrik_at_henriknordstrom.net>
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:34:47 +0100

tis 2010-03-09 klockan 10:47 -0500 skrev rascal:

> Here is my first question. I would like to present the user with a
> disclaimer prompt when they attempt to go to the internet. Currently
> they get the typical squid requires your username/password to proceed
> prompt and I would like to know if I can change that.

You can't change that much, but what you can do is that the first
request they make after successfully logging in gets redirected to a
disclaimer page. This is done most easily using the squid_session helper
distributed with Squid. Configuration examples included in it's
documentation.

> I have found
> references to using the redirect options but that doesn't seem like
> the proper solution to me. Any thoughts or should I stick with group
> policies to provide this (i.e. everytime someone opens their browser
> or they log into their computer they get the legal disclaimer)?

I have no opinion on which alternative you should use. Depends on your
environment and requirements.

> and read the news for 30 minutes that go to slashdot and read the news
> for 10 minutes. Is there a way or reporting tool that does that out
> of the box?

Depends what you are looking for.

HTTP does not allow tracking what the user actually does, just what
pages his browser fetches and when. From that data it's possible to
approximate viewing behavior such as how long the user stays on a given
site etc, but you can't really tell the difference between opening a
page and reading that page for 30 minutes and then viewing another page
via bookmark or similar, or opening a page and immediately closing the
browser, then opening the browser on another link/bookmark some time
later. You also can not track which window/tab the user is actively
reading, or if the user is actually reading anything at all.. (may well
be away from the keyboard for a coffee or similar)

> Seems to be this would be a hard one to track with
> multitab browsing and I don't know how accurate it would be (people
> leaving their browsers open) but nonetheless, I have found a few ways
> to do it (home brew scripts) but I wanted to know if there was
> something canned out there that could do this.

multitab browsing or browsing with multiple windows both have the same
challenges in tracking the results. But if you track based on Referer
header then it's easier to tell the sessions apart.

Unfortunately I have no concrete advice on tools for this as the times I
have done it it's been using custom made scripts for the desired
information.

Regards
Henrik
Received on Tue Mar 09 2010 - 20:34:52 MST

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