Here's what I had to do to setup basic auth on Ubuntu 14.04 (didn't find a guide anywhere else)
Basic squid conf
/etc/squid3/squid.conf instead of the super bloated default config file
auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid3/basic_ncsa_auth /etc/squid3/passwords
auth_param basic realm proxy
acl authenticated proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow authenticated
# Choose the port you want. Below we set it to default 3128.
http_port 3128
Please note the basic_ncsa_auth program instead of the old ncsa_auth
squid 2.x
For squid 2.x you need to edit /etc/squid/squid.conf file and place:
auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid/digest_pw_auth /etc/squid/passwords
auth_param basic realm proxy
acl authenticated proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow authenticated
Setting up a user
sudo htpasswd -c /etc/squid3/passwords username_you_like
and enter a password twice for the chosen username then
sudo service squid3 restart
squid 2.x
sudo htpasswd -c /etc/squid/passwords username_you_like
and enter a password twice for the chosen username then
sudo service squid restart
htdigest vs htpasswd
For the many people that asked me: the 2 tools produce different file formats:
htdigest stores the password in plain text.htpasswd stores the password hashed (various hashing algos are available)
Despite this difference in format basic_ncsa_auth will still be able to parse a password file generated with htdigest. Hence you can alternatively use:
sudo htdigest -c /etc/squid3/passwords realm_you_like username_you_like
Beware that this approach is empirical, undocumented and may not be supported by future versions of Squid.
On Ubuntu 14.04 htdigest and htpasswd are both available in the [apache2-utils][1] package.
MacOS
Similar as above applies, but file paths are different.
Install squid
brew install squid
Start squid service
brew services start squid
Squid config file is stored at /usr/local/etc/squid.conf.
Comment or remove following line:
http_access allow localnet
Then similar to linux config (but with updated paths) add this:
auth_param basic program /usr/local/Cellar/squid/4.8/libexec/basic_ncsa_auth /usr/local/etc/squid_passwords
auth_param basic realm proxy
acl authenticated proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow authenticated
Note that path to basic_ncsa_auth may be different since it depends on installed version when using brew, you can verify this with ls /usr/local/Cellar/squid/. Also note that you should add the above just bellow the following section:
#
# INSERT YOUR OWN RULE(S) HERE TO ALLOW ACCESS FROM YOUR CLIENTS
#
Now generate yourself a user:password basic auth credential (note: htpasswd and htdigest are also both available on MacOS)
htpasswd -c /usr/local/etc/squid_passwords username_you_like
Restart the squid service
brew services restart squid
