Manpages

NAME

middleman − Advanced proxy server designed to increase privacy and remove unwanted content

SYNOPSIS

middleman -c configfile -s sectionfile [-l logfile] [-p pidfile] [-u username] [-g groupname] [-d level] [-h]

DESCRIPTION

middleman is a robust proxy server with many features designed to remove unwanted content, increase privacy, and to simply make surfing the Web a more pleasant experience. Some of the highlights include banner and popup blocking, HTTP and FTP content caching, NTLM and Basic authentication when forwarding through another proxy server, regular expression substitution in downloaded files and HTTP headers, regular expression substitution on requested URLs, many URL commands to temporarily change the proxy settings or to view information about a requested file, complete support for HTTP/1.1 including persistent connections and gzip encoding, and an intutive Web interface for configuring the proxy.

OPTIONS

The options are as follows:
−c configfile

location of config file (required)

−c sectionfile

location of section file (required)

−l logfile

file to log activity to

−p pidfile

PID file

−u username

run as alternate user

−g groupname

run in alternate group

−d level

set log level

LOG LEVEL

The log level are as follows:
1 = requests
2 = network
4 = url filtering
8 = header filtering
16 = mime filtering
32 = cookie filtering
64 = redirections
128 = templates
256 = keyword filtering
512 = rewriting
1024 = limits
2048 = caching
4096 = prefetching
8192 = ICP
16384 = forwarding
32768 = security
65536 = warnings
131072 = errors
262144 = debug

You can select log levels by adding them. For example:

19 = 16 + 2 + 1 = mime filtering + network + requests

CONFIGURATION

Once you have specified in your browser proxy configuration how to connect to the middleman proxy, middleman can be configured with a web interface by browsing this URL: http://mman.

When you install the Debian package, a login and a password is asked to authenticate with this web interface. Please note that THE PASSWORD IS WRITTEN IN CLEAR TEXT in /etc/middleman.xml, and can be read by the user ’proxy’, and by any user from the system group ’proxy’. By default, the proxy can only be accessed from the localhost IP (127.0.0.1).

FILES

/usr/share/middleman/section.xml

XML section file used by the web interface.

The following files are used by middleman when it is managed by the Debian maintainer init script /etc/init.d/middleman. In this case, middleman runs as a systemwide daemon:
/etc/init.d/middleman

Debian init scripts for middleman.

/etc/default/middleman

Default options read by /etc/init.d/middleman.

/etc/middleman.xml

Configuration file for the systemwide service.

/var/run/middleman/middleman.pid

Contains the PID number of the middleman process.

/var/log/middleman/middleman.log*

Contains middleman log messages.

/var/cache/middleman/journal, /var/cache/middleman/*/*

middleman web cache files repository.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

EXAMPLES

Any system user can run its own middleman proxy and use it. Some base configuration files are available into /usr/share/doc/middleman/examples directory. Type:

/usr/sbin/middleman −c ~/middleman.xml −s /usr/share/middleman/section.xml

AUTHORS

middleman was written by Jason Mclaughlin <jasonmc [AT] sympatico.ca>. This man page was originally written by Ned Ludd <solar [AT] gentoo.org>. Cedric Delfosse <cedric [AT] debian.org> added some informations related to the Debian package.

SEE ALSO

/usr/share/doc/middleman/html/book.html