Free Computer Lab Web Filter Part -1
|
|
How to build a commercial quality web content filter with Dan's Guardian. A step by step tutorial.
This tutorial will show you how to build a commercial quality web content filter using Dan's Guardian to block inappropriate content and images in search engines, such as porn, bad words, illegal drugs, and more.
The filter can force Google and Yahoo "strict safe search". It is also highly effective in the Bing search engine as well as others. We will be using DansGuardian "an award winning Open Source web content filter....It filters the actual content of pages based on many methods including phrase matching, PICS filtering and URL filtering. It does not purely filter based on a banned list of sites like lesser totally commercial filters."
Example of Site Blocked by Dan's Guardian:
DansGuardian runs on Linux and several other non-Windows operating systems, but this tutorial will show you how to run DansGuardian on Windows using a FREE Vmware virtual server with a very affordable ($7.99) pre-built Ubuntu linux / DansGuardian SquidAppliance.
You will need:
Windows Computer - Preferably a server, but will work on others.
VmWare Server (Free) (download)
SquidAppliance 3.0 (download)
This tutorial assumes you have a Windows computer available and connected to a network that serves your lab or school.
What you are going to do:
- Install Vmware server on the Windows machine.
- Install the SquidAppliance 3.0 on the VMware server.
- Upgrade the DansGuardian version on the SquidAppliance 3.0
- Upgrade the WebMin control panel for the new DansGuardian version.
- Configure the DansGuardian filter settings.
- Configure your users browsers to use your new filter.
This is not a "transparent proxy". Those don't require any changes to your user's browsers, but they can require additional configurations and / or routers with Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP). This tutorial will not cover those subjects. We will focus on simple, quick, effective and free.
Start installing the software:
Download and install the Vmware Server on the Windows machine.
Download and unzip the SquidAppliance.
Copy the unzipped Squid folder to the VirtualMachines folder.
Login to the VMware Server using the same user and password as an administrator account on your computer.
Start the SquidAppliance virtual machine.
Click on the console tab and then the black portion of the screen to open the Squid Vmware remote console.
Login and set network configurations.
User login = user
Pass = pass2cng
Type: sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
This gives you root / admin priveleges to edit and configure your SquidAppliance network settings. Change the line with "dhcp" to static and type in your network settings. These are example network addresses. Put in the appropriate addresses for your network.
iface eth0 inet static
Address = 192.168.1.30
Netmask = 255.255.255.0
Network = 192.168.1.0
Broadcast = 192.168.1.255
Gateway = 192.168.1.1
When you are done press "Esc" and type :wq to finish.
This will write your changes and quit.
Now restart the network to apply your new settings: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Open SquidAppliance's control panel called "WebMin" https://192.168.1.30:10000
This goes to the address you configured above and port 10000 where Webmin is listening.
User = user
Pass = pass2cng
Take a quick look at the "servers" link and click DansGuardian; take note of the current control panel options. They will change when we upgrade DansGuardian and it's WebMin module.
Next >> Free Computer Lab Web Filter - Part 2