Personal proxy to replace browser cache, caching SSL etc.

Hello everybody,



I recently came to Polipo while searching for a replacement for my local 
Firefox cache. I was using Squid in the past for small networks but was 
looking for something more compact. These topics about why a project such as 
Polipo is important and required have been already discussed by Donovan 
Baarda, "What is Polipo's future?", on February 16, 2012...

In order to save traffic and make use of large local storage space I was 
looking for something to have more control about the cache. Also sharing the 
cache for different browsers is useful.

I was annoyed by some caching deficiencies of FF like these:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=895308
- Cache lost when changing size

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105843
- Cache lost if Mozilla crashes

...throwing *GBs of cache away.




Now having Polipo as replacement for the Firefox cache I think about 
disabling parts of that or even completely:

* browser.cache.disk.enable
* browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled
* browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl
This actually adds SSL content if browser.cache.disk.enable is enabled. So 
fare there is no setting to enable SSL caching separately. I'll come back on 
this later ("No ability to cache SSL...").

* browser.cache.memory.enable
Polipo itself also has a memory cache. With a common desktop machine today 
with 4GB physical memory I already set chunkHighMark = 104857600. It may 
have the disadvantage that connection to that is through http/pipelining 
etc. That means the memory cache of the browser itself could be faster. So 
keeping at least some small space for memory caching inside the browser 
could have some benefit.




So far the only disadvantages of Polipo are:

* No ability to have a hard limit or threshold for the used local disc cache 
size. I know there is the quota method but it would be nice to have some 
advanced purging and discarding like it is done when reaching chunkHighMark.
So fare the only way to control the cache size in some relative manner are
  diskCacheUnlinkTime and
  diskCacheTruncateTime.

* No ability to cache SSL.
Ok, this is the nature of a proxy. The only location where SSL can be cached 
is inside the browser.
So there is a need for setting the browser to only cache SSL and disable the 
plain cache in favour for the outside caching proxy. I filed a Feature 
Request and found some already existing old request for that. You may vote 
for it but I guess browser developers there don't see any reason for such a 
feature.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217871#c7
- RFE: cache only SSL content


So...
* Make Polipo a SSL inspecting proxy:
This could be a solution, not the best. It would mean accepting polipo cert 
and thrusting polipo. This would be acceptable for a personal proxy. However 
the user would miss the ability to check certificates of sites from the 
browser making all security warnings unfunctional there. This would also 
mean to implement some Accept/Deny interface and/or certificate viewer 
inside the proxy which would be far behind the simple caching functionality 
and I guess Juliusz saying this is not part of a simple proxy.
This is more like existing (commercial) webfilter implementations around 
squid.


I would appreciate if someone would take over maintenance for Polipo, for 
what is there and already working well.


So far.
Best regards,
Massimo


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