25th Anniversary Savings | 25% Off Dedicated Servers*Shop Now
25th Anniversary Savings | 25% Off VPS Hosting* †††Shop Now
Dedicated Hosting Deals | From $99/moShop Now
Earn hosting credits and a chance to win an Amazon gift card when you refer friends to Liquid Web!Read our promo rules

How to Install Squid (Caching / Proxy) on CentOS 7

Posted on by J. Mays
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Squid is a caching and forwarding web proxy. It is most often used in conjunction with a traditional LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), and can be used to filter traffic on HTTP, FTP, and HTTPS, and increase the speed (thus lower the response time) for a web server via caching.

Pre-Flight Check
  • These instructions are intended specifically for installing Squid on a single CentOS 7 node.
  • I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Core Managed CentOS 7 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.

Step #1 Install Squid

First, clean-up yum:

yum clean all

As a matter of best practice we’ll update our packages:

yum -y update

Installing Squid and related packages is now as simple as running just one command:

yum -y install squid

Step #2: Verify and Checking the Version of the Squid the Installation

Squid should start immediately after the installation. Use the following command to view information on the command:

squid -h

Use the following command to check the version number of Squid and the configuration options it was started with:

squid -v

Your results should appear similar to:

Squid Cache: Version 3.3.8
configure options: ‘–build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu’ ‘–host=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu’ ‘–program-prefix=’ ‘–prefix=/usr’ ‘–exec-prefix=/usr’ ‘–bindir=/usr/bin’ ‘–sbindir=/usr/sbin’ ‘–sysconfdir=/etc’ ‘–datadir=/usr/share’ ‘–includedir=/usr/include’ ‘–libdir=/usr/lib64’ ‘–libexecdir=/usr/libexec’ ‘–sharedstatedir=/var/lib’ ‘–mandir=/usr/share/man’ ‘–infodir=/usr/share/info’ ‘–disable-strict-error-checking’ ‘–exec_prefix=/usr’ ‘–libexecdir=/usr/lib64/squid’ ‘–localstatedir=/var’ ‘–datadir=/usr/share/squid’ ‘–sysconfdir=/etc/squid’ ‘–with-logdir=$(localstatedir)/log/squid’ ‘–with-pidfile=$(localstatedir)/run/squid.pid’ ‘–disable-dependency-tracking’ ‘–enable-eui’ ‘–enable-follow-x-forwarded-for’ ‘–enable-auth’ ‘–enable-auth-basic=DB,LDAP,MSNT,MSNT-multi-domain,NCSA,NIS,PAM,POP3,RADIUS,SASL,SMB,getpwnam’ ‘–enable-auth-ntlm=smb_lm,fake’ ‘–enable-auth-digest=file,LDAP,eDirectory’ ‘–enable-auth-negotiate=kerberos’ ‘–enable-external-acl-helpers=file_userip,LDAP_group,time_quota,session,unix_group,wbinfo_group’ ‘–enable-cache-digests’ ‘–enable-cachemgr-hostname=localhost’ ‘–enable-delay-pools’ ‘–enable-epoll’ ‘–enable-icap-client’ ‘–enable-ident-lookups’ ‘–enable-linux-netfilter’ ‘–enable-removal-policies=heap,lru’ ‘–enable-snmp’ ‘–enable-ssl’ ‘–enable-ssl-crtd’ ‘–enable-storeio=aufs,diskd,ufs’ ‘–enable-wccpv2’ ‘–enable-esi’ ‘–enable-ecap’ ‘–with-aio’ ‘–with-default-user=squid’ ‘–with-filedescriptors=16384’ ‘–with-dl’ ‘–with-openssl’ ‘–with-pthreads’ ‘build_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu’ ‘host_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu’ ‘CFLAGS=-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector-strong –param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -grecord-gcc-switches -m64 -mtune=generic -fpie’ ‘LDFLAGS=-Wl,-z,relro -pie -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,-z,now’ ‘CXXFLAGS=-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector-strong –param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -grecord-gcc-switches -m64 -mtune=generic -fpie’ ‘PKG_CONFIG_PATH=%{_PKG_CONFIG_PATH}:/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig’

Step 3: Configure Squid to Start on Boot

And then start Squid:

systemctl start squid

Be sure that Squid starts at boot:

systemctl enable squid

To check the status of Squid:

systemctl status squid

To stop Squid:

systemctl stop squid

Avatar for J. Mays

About the Author: J. Mays

As a previous contributor, JMays shares his insight with our Knowledge Base center. In our Knowledge Base, you'll be able to find how-to articles on Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora and much more!

Latest Articles

How to Install Adminer MySQL Database Management Tool on AlmaLinux

Read Article

What is CGI-Bin and What Does it Do?

Read Article

Top 10 Password Security Standards

Read Article

Top 10 Password Security Standards

Read Article

How to Use the WP Toolkit to Secure and Update WordPress

Read Article