Re: Polipo web proxy

[Juliusz Chroboczek <Juliusz.Chroboczek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger Dingledine:

> 1) In the config.sample, it suggests
> socksParentProxy = "localhost:9050"
> You should either change this to 127.0.0.1:9050, or enable the
> dnsUseGethostbyname config option -- otherwise polipo asks your name
> servers where "localhost" is, with possibly disastrous implications.

I guess I'll simply special-case ``localhost'' in the async resolver.

> 2) Polipo doesn't do as much application-level scrubbing as Privoxy
> tries to do.

Yes.  In particular, Polipo will never modify an instance's body, only
the headers.  That would be very difficult to change.

As Fabian notes (see below), you can use Polipo together with Privoxy
if you really must.

> 3) I've seen some funny behavior from its caching. But Privoxy also
> gives funny behavior.

Please report any such issues on polipo-users (I don't check or-talk
regularly).  But first check whether setting dontCacheCookies and
dontCacheRedirects fixes your issues -- if it does, the website's
broken.

> 4) It crashes (albeit rarely). The developer knows and is looking for
> more clues.

... and has been stuck for months.  Sigh.

A workaround is to use runit to monitor Polipo.

> 5) I've never tried it on Windows. I don't think its developer has either.

The Cygwin build is believed to be fully functional.  There's an
experimental native build, but it's very new.

> 6) Polipo writes your hostname in every request. Either define proxyName
> to something else, or set [d]isableVia = true in your config file.

This cannot be stressed enough.  Unfortunately, use of Via is a MUST
according to RFC 2616 (it's not completely useless -- Polipo uses it
to detect proxy loops).

Hmm, I guess I could have Polipo choose a random name on each startup
-- that would satisfy both RFC 2616 and the privacy-conscious.

                                        Juliusz