Lightsquid : Monitoring SQUID users

Recently I was trying to use pfesence which would more easy to configure and does support transparent squid proxy. I had tried to setup different time slot to different group with different categories to set some policy to access internet. But I got fewer luck and seems that the access list we set earlier was override the previous one. So we can’t use multiple ACL list using Pfsence

Pfsense issues are.
a. I can’t set multiple ACL list with time based restriction. Certain rules are overlapping the existing one even though “Squid guard” does not shows any error while on creation time.
b. Only one user can connect a remote VPN over PPTP connection through the pfsense.

So I decided to drop Pfsence and found that it has some interesting features like bandwidthd,ntop and lightsquid. I like lightsquid much and would like it to be installed on my 512Mb cheap software router runs on CentOS.

How do I install and configure lightsquid on Squid server

1. Download the lightsquid from “http://lightsquid.sourceforge.net/”
2. Install apache and start it
3. Copy the lightsquid folder to any web location like ” /var/www/html/”
4. Add an entry like as below in httpd.conf

Configuring lightsquid
A. Switch to lightsquid directory and check necessary perl libraries are present.

Pls note you may need to install perl “CGI” and “GD” library. GD is an optional to enable graph support. Sometime you may get error as follows,
Can’t locate CGI.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl
Solution is

B. Set the scheduler to parse the squid log file.

a. Open the “lighsquid.cfg ” file and verify the squid log path is correctly set. You may also change the certain values as you wish like to get best graph size change the value to “$graphmaxall=3.50*(1024*1024*1024);” etc.

b. Set the cronjob as follows

You may also create groups by editing group.cfg. Add the entry like this

That’s it. Try to run the parser to get first report.

/usr/bin/perl /var/www/html/lightsquid/lightparser.pl

Now it’s your turn to keep eye on user’s activity. Access the lightsquid over the ip ie http://squidserver ip/lightsquid

Here are the few useful reports

1. Daily usage report

2. User wise usage listing

3. Big files downloaded by the user

4. Daily Usage Graph

5. Listing time based access