I know this is probably a common question and i've searched the forums to read up on the subject. I have found a few articles mentioning squid and ssh tunnels. Before I go a bit further with tinkering with those, I wanted to get advice so that I am off in the right direction before I blow a lot of time. I want to set my home server up as a proxy to connect from work and browse in privacy. What's the best solution?

Browse from home. If you're worried that your company may be watching
where you're going you're probably in breach of best practice and/or
code of conduct in the first place.



Cheers,
Tink

hmmm. You need to get another job. Otherwise you would be focusing on work when at work and saving the other stuff until you were at home.

Are you using a linux environment at home? At work? One approach would be to set up x11 tunneling through ssh and run an x browser at home. You have to configure the sshd.conf at home to allow x11 tunneling and you have to provide the command line options to ssh when you open your connection.

I've done this to run geological mapping software on a Solaris server and send the display back to my Mac desktop. You have to run an x11 environment on your desktop computer and ssh from that. For example, on my Mac, I launch x11, open xterm and ssh from within xterm (adding on the appropriate command line options). If I do that from the standard Mac OS X terminal application, it does not work. Others in my department have done the same from windows desktops using an x environment called hummingbird (commercial app) or from linux.

One thing to note if you start looking into x11: the terminology for server and client is backwards from what most people would think. Your desktop, running an x11 environment, is the x server, and your "server" or home machine, running the application that generates the display is the x client. It wants some place to send its display, and you are providing the place. So, from the x display perspective, you are the server.

So,that's one option, but you'll really have to tell us more about your home and work environments to get more explicit guidance.

my work env is a windows xp box, and the home env is linux. The linux machine doesnt have x windows or any gui env. all command line.

And the reason for the sneakiness is .... ?



Cheers,
Tink

no reason really. I just want my privacy. I don't surf pages other than slashdot and lifehacker. doubt that's going to get me in trouble. I just don't like the idea of someone watching my habits.

And the companies policy on web-usage is .... ? I mean, it's not
just their band-width or potentially unacceptable content, it's
also the time they pay you for;
for me in my current position, using security advisories, freshmeat
and slashdot is pretty much part of my job description :} ... usage
of LQ (within limits) is permitted since it touches on my field of
work. But if my manager found me spending 4 hours a day on the web
I may get a stern talking to.

And all that said: we have a policy of not supporting activities
that breach legislation or contractual obligations. And what you're
asking for to me really smacks of it.



Cheers,
Tink

And now I'll close this with the words that I hope his company
blocks anything but web-traffic and does packet inspection on it.



Cheers,
Tink