how i can test if my squid server is working correctly before connecting it to my lan....i dont have two network card in my pc .....and i'm still in the learning stage.

You don't neccessarily need to network cards for squid before putting it onto your lan. If you have it up + running, you can point a machine at it connecting to the port you assign and make sure you can browse the net. Check the Squid access + cache logs to make sure it's actually recording data. There is a command line Squid helper that imitates a browser but I can't remember it's name - check out the Squid FAQ's, it's in there somewhere.

"you can point a machine at it connecting to the port you assign and make sure you can browse the net"?????

could you please be more clear.becuase im new to linux system......thanx for reply

oh.....i cant get answer

First of all, this book is invaluable:

Squid The Definitive Guide
0596001622

Two places I would suggest purchasing it from include Amazon.com or Half.com as they both (usually) have good prices for used books.

Second, I'll ask the obvious questions:

What distro are you using?
What release of Squid?
Have you tweaked the default squid.conf config file?

Firstly, please be a bit more patient - people on these forums aren't paid to help you, so try giving a bit more than 6 hours first thing on a Sunday morning for people to reply.

Anyways, to try from another machine, within the proxy settings on your browser, enter the IP address of your Linux machine running Squid and the port number your specified in the squid.conf file. Try browsing the Internet. If you have Squid configured correctly, you will be able to load sites on your other computer. If not, you'll get a nice message from Squid telling you what's going on. Back on your Squid box, check /usr/local/squid/var/log/access.log and cache.log to make sure Squid is logging + caching these requests properly.

But I'd second the idea of a decent book on Squid, or at least thoroughly reading through http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/FAQ/FAQ.html

I could offer more help for you if you want to, just pm me.

still i didnt get a clear answer.........fouldsy could you please give me a clear steps ........thanks

If u have single network card then u may add IP alias:

# ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.0.1 up

if u have configured squid correctly to run on the machine for example who's IP address is 192.168.0.1 and port 3128 then,

1) start your squid daemon by giving command:

2) Now that u sitting in front of your machine 192.168.0.1 then on this very machine itself open your browser say for example "Mozilla firefox" or that damn "Internet Explorer" and configure your proxy settings. If u are very noob then type "firefox proxy settings" or "Internet Explorer proxy settings" in google

Enter Http Proxy as 192.168.0.1 and port 3128

Now type any web url to test. If pages open then it will work on your other machines in network until and unless there is no firewall issue

If u don't know howto configure Squid then for noob here is good walkthrough

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/linux-adv/squid.htm