RAMM Proxy v1.0
 

By Daniele Raffo & Matteo Magnani
 
 
 
 

Instruction Manual

Introduction
 
RAMM Proxy is a HTTP filtering proxy software, fully 1.1 compliant, configurable for your needs.
It has been developed in Java 1.3 under SO Linux.
It offers many features:
RAMM Proxy is ISO certified Open Source Software and under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2. See at the end of the document for details.
Copyright (C) 2001 Daniele Raffo and Matteo Magnani. All rights reserved.
RAMM Proxy has been developed for the course of "Architecture Réseaux et Java", by Gilles Roussel, Université de Marne-la-Vallée, France.

Installation of the RAMM Proxy

 
To install the proxy, just copy all the files into the directory of your choice. Then compile all the Java sources by the command javac *.java. You may need (and want) to configure some files.
 
Configuration of the RAMM Proxy

Main configuration

The configuration of the proxy is described in a ASCII file named proxy.cfg. If this file is unreadable, default values will be used.
Each line of this file contains a field, followed by a value; we will describe here the meaning of all fields.

The first four fields specify some thread values. This proxy allows to fully configure these values, in order to exactly define the work load of the machine on which the proxy is running.
A thread is what is serving a connection, or a part of it; for instance, while you're loading via the Internet a page (.html file) which contains some images (.jpg and .png files), one thread will be busy for the downloading of the HTML page and, for each image file, a thread will be busy for the downloading of the corresponding ressource. When the ressource has been completely downloaded, the thread will be free again. If all threads are busy, new threads will be created, unless the number of threads has reached the maximum allowed; in this case, no new threads are created and new connections are refused.

min-threads:
The minimum number of threads allowed at any time.

max-threads:
The maximum number of threads allowed at any time. Threads use memory and hence the memory utilised on the computer is proportional to the number of threads; so specifying a too high number of threads will improve your machine's performance.

min-spare-threads:
As the creation of new threads is a heavy process, whenever the number of free threads falls below this specified value (min-spare-threads), a new thread is created.

max-spare-threads:
The limit of the number of free threads always present in memory. Once this value has been reached, any next thread that is freed is immediately killed.

The other fields of the file concern the generic configuration system:
port:
The port on which the proxy is running. Clients need to know this value to connect to the proxy.
Warning: on UNIX boxes, the usage of ports from 0 to 1024 is reserved to the system and then forbidden to the user. If you try to specify an illegal port or if that port is already utilised, the proxy will automatically run on the next available port.

enable-logging:
log-filename:
If enable-logging is true, all connections will be logged to log-filename.

update-controlpanel-every-nsecs:
The interval of time, in seconds, for the proxy to refresh the Control Panel with the updated data.

Setting filtering options

The filtering options are described in two ASCII files: in.cfg is relative to clients from which you want to control connections, and out.cfg is relative to servers from which the clients may ask to download resources.

The files will contain a set of directives, one for every line. Every directive is formed by a command deny or allow followed by the name of the host concerned. The host's name may contain the following metacharacters:

the *, meaning "any number of characters, even zero"
the ?, meaning "any character"
*'s may be used at begin of the host's name, at its end, or in both positions. *'s and ?'s cannot be used together in the same directive.
The directives will be processed from first to last; when the tested hostname matches a directive, this one is applied without considering the directives which follows. You must then write them in order, from most precise to less.
The behaviour of the proxy when an hostname does not match any of the directives in the list is different whether you are in the in.cfg or the out.cfg. Any client which is not in the in.cfg list will be denied to connect; any server which is not in the out.cfg list will be considered acceptable to download resources from.
For instance, if the out.cfg file contains the following entries:

deny interdit.univ-mlv.fr
allow *.univ-mlv.fr
allow *.linux.*
deny *.??

the proxy will then accept that clients download resources from any server of domain univ-mlv.fr, except the machine whose name is interdit. He also will accept resources from www.linux.it, but not from www.xenix.it (directive #4). He will accept also from any server which does not match with any directive, as for instance www.java.sun.com.
Whenever a client tries to connect to the proxy without having the rights, or a client already connected ask the proxy for a ressource from a forbidden server,
he is given a HTML page that informs him about the ban.

Basic Authorization

The proxy allows you to protect some ressources by a couple user/password via Basic Authorization.
This is done by using a file aut.cfg containing the URL of the ressource to protect, followed by the couple user/password coded in Base64. Both have to be included within the tags url: and :lru. An example is shown here:

url: www.voyez.com
ZHVyaXM6ZHVyaXM=
bWFnbmFuaTptYWduYW5p
cmFmZm86cmFmZm8=
:lru
url: www.microsoft.com
bWFnbmFuaTptYWduYW5p
cmFmZm86cmFmZm8=
ZHVyaXM6ZHVyaXM=
:lru

Running the RAMM Proxy

To start the proxy, make the JVM execute the bytecode in the usual way, by giving the command

java ProxyMain [TRACING OPTIONS]

where [TRACING OPTIONS] are optional flags that you may add in command line. The flags lets you know what the proxy is doing by printing messages on the standard output, ie the terminal from where you launched the proxy. They may be one or more of the following:

-l
Prints also on screen all writings on logfile.

-t
Prints all operations about threads (creation, killing...). (Not implemented yet.)

-f
Prints the results of filtering operations; clients and ressources accepted or denied.

-c
Prints all network connections. (Not implemented yet.)

-g
Prints messages about the change on-the-fly of the configuration. (Not implemented yet.)

-m
Prints the message header (eg. HTTP/1.1 200 OK, and so on) of any ressources downloaded from a server.

-M
Prints the message header and body of any ressources downloaded from a server. Be careful doing so: this may flood your stdout. In addition to that, ressources that are not mere text (.html, .txt) but binaries (.jpg, .gif, programs...), when printed on screen, may have some strange effect on your terminal (beeps, crashing...).

Logging

If the enable-logging: option in the configuration file is set to yes, the proxy will log every connection client-server into the file specified in the configuration file itself. Every log entry is a line containing: the IP address of the client, the date and time, the start line of the request and its result (accepted or denied). A log entry will then look like this:

[204.160.241.93] [Sun Apr 01 17:25:44] [GET http://www.java.sun.com/docs/index.html HTTP/1.1] [ACCEPTED]

If you specified the -l option when launching the proxy, these information will also be printed on screen.

Moreover, by clicking over the Log link on the Control Panel, a log page where entries are sorted by date will be created and shown. To sort the entries by different criterion, click on the corresponding header title.

Control Panel and Remote Configuration

The proxy generates automatically a control panel in HTML format, named control-panel.html. This panel will be updated with respect of the value of the update-controlpanel-every-nsecs field in the configuration file.

In the upper left side of the panel, you will see:
In the upper right side, there are links that allows you to visit the client filter file (in.cfg), the server client file (out.cfg), the authorization file (aut.cfg) and the log.
Moreover, two links allow you to see the proxy configuration file (proxy.cfg) from which the configuration was loaded at the boot of the proxy, and to change the runtime configuration. The latter will bring you to a form from where you can:
The new values will become immediately effective, once you click on the button Done. If these values are incoherent (eg. the minimum number of spare threads is greater than the minimum number of threads) they will be ignored, and the proxy will continue turning with the old values.
 
Clients

To use the proxy when you surf on the Internet, you need to specify it in the configuration of your favourite Web browser. Here are the guidelines to do so in Netscape/Mozilla: select from the menu the options Edit / Preferences / Advanced / Proxies, and choose Manual proxy configuration. Then click on the button View, and write in the line labeled HTTP: the name of the machine on which you've launched your proxy, and the port.

License

         The GNU General Public License (GPL)
         Version 2, June 1991

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Contacts

You may contact the authors of the proxy at the following addresses.

Daniele Raffo draffo@etudiant.univ-mlv.fr

Matteo Magnani ermagnan@etudiant.univ-mlv.fr
 

The Home Page of the RAMM Proxy is http://www.rip.ens-cachan.fr/~raffo/projets/rammproxy