Squid stops working..-->clear rebuild cache

ALInux · 07-07-2006, 03:10 AM

Hi
Ive installed squid on a debian system using webmin to administrate it...It serves 30 computers and it has been doing fine for the first 5 days ..on the sixth day it stopped working and any request on port 80 would only result in the typical IE page.."The page you requested...404"...NOT the squid error page...so I cleared and rebuilt the cache and everything worked allright..what must I do to prevent this from happening again .

P.S.. the syslogs did not reveal anything about the issue

win32sux · 07-07-2006, 06:30 AM

could it be that you had accidentally deleted the cache?? granted, i'm not sure if that would actually produce those kinda effects (IE's error page instead of Squid's), but maybe you can try and see if it does...

also, did you try doing other things before you rebuilt the cache?? maybe a reboot, restarting squid, or something like that?? i'm just wondering whether restarting squid (without rebuilding the cache) would have brought it back online...

prozac · 07-07-2006, 06:37 AM

AFAIK, if squid doesnot finds the cache directory it will complain and fail to start. you have to create the dir manually and see to it that squid has proper permission to write to it.

ALInux · 07-07-2006, 06:46 AM

I surely did not erase the cache..because the problem happened out of a sudden without me touching the whole system for a couple of days..and I tried the usual stuff reboot squid..etc..and even a system reboot "The result of a power outage

--Typical in Lebanon--

win32sux · 07-07-2006, 06:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prozac

AFAIK, if squid doesnot finds the cache directory it will complain and fail to start. you have to create the dir manually and see to it that squid has proper permission to write to it.

okay, then this adds weight to the idea that the cache was deleted/altered on day 6... IIRC a "squid -z" won't fix permissions, so if it was permissions then the cache wouldn't have been able to be rebuilt - unless the webmin front-end takes care of permissions also when rebuilding...

win32sux · 07-07-2006, 06:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ALInux

I surely did not erase the cache..because the problem happened out of a sudden without me touching the whole system for a couple of days..and I tried the usual stuff reboot squid..etc..and even a system reboot "The result of a power outage

--Typical in Lebanon--

wait, this started to happen right after a power outage??

prozac · 07-07-2006, 10:11 AM

you should check if the cache dir exists and has proper permissions.

win32sux · 07-07-2006, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prozac

you should check if the cache dir exists and has proper permissions.

i don't think he would have been able to rebuild the cache if the cache_dir didn't exist and/or didn't have acceptable permissions:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ALInux

so I cleared and rebuilt the cache and everything worked allright..

win32sux · 07-07-2006, 10:27 AM

actually, i take that back... i just tried it and it seems "squid -z" will create the cache dir (with proper permissions) if it doesn't exist... yet, it will (of course) terminate if the cache dir doesn't have the right permissions... examples:

Code:

bash-3.00# whoami
root
bash-3.00# ls -l /var/lib/squid/
total 5
-rwxr-xr-x  1 squid squid 650 2006-06-07 13:15 redirector.pl
drwxr-x---  2 squid squid  80 2006-06-05 06:23 logs
bash-3.00# squid -z
2006/07/07 10:25:31| Creating Swap Directories
bash-3.00# ls -l /var/lib/squid/
total 6
drwxr-xr-x  34 squid squid 816 2006-07-07 10:25 cache
-rwxr-xr-x   1 squid squid 650 2006-06-07 13:15 redirector.pl
drwxr-x---   2 squid squid  80 2006-06-05 06:23 logs

Code:

bash-3.00# whoami
root
bash-3.00# ls -l /var/lib/squid/
total 5
-rwxr-xr-x  1 squid squid 650 2006-06-07 13:15 redirector.pl
drwxr-x---  2 squid squid  80 2006-06-05 06:23 logs
bash-3.00# mkdir /var/lib/squid/cache
bash-3.00# ls -l /var/lib/squid/
total 5
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  root   48 2006-07-07 10:26 cache
-rwxr-xr-x  1 squid squid 650 2006-06-07 13:15 redirector.pl
drwxr-x---  2 squid squid  80 2006-06-05 06:23 logs
bash-3.00# squid -z
2006/07/07 10:26:43| Creating Swap Directories
FATAL: Failed to make swap directory /var/lib/squid/cache/00: (13) Permission denied
Squid Cache (Version 2.5.STABLE14): Terminated abnormally.
CPU Usage: 0.010 seconds = 0.000 user + 0.010 sys
Maximum Resident Size: 0 KB
Page faults with physical i/o: 8
bash-3.00# chown squid:squid /var/lib/squid/cache 
bash-3.00# squid -z
2006/07/07 10:27:06| Creating Swap Directories

FWIW, i actually have the cache dir set to 770, so users don't snoop around in there:

Code:

chmod 770 /var/lib/squid/cache