[Cache-Now!] Configuring Unix/X based WWW browsers for caching

Drop me a line if you have info on any other Unix/X window based browsers

The Unix, Mac and PC incarnations of Netscape all use the same mechanism

The following browsers are all based on the World-Wide Web common library:

They can be told to use a cache server by setting a handful of environmental variables, e.g. in sh, bash, ksh or zsh:

  http_proxy="http://wwwcache.lnf.infn.it:8080/"
  ftp_proxy="http://wwwcache.lnf.infn.it:8080/"
  gopher_proxy="http://wwwcache.lnf.infn.it:8080/"

  export http_proxy ftp_proxy gopher_proxy
In csh or tcsh:

  setenv http_proxy "http://wwwcache.lnf.infn.it:8080/"
  setenv ftp_proxy "http://wwwcache.lnf.infn.it:8080/"
  setenv gopher_proxy "http://wwwcache.lnf.infn.it:8080/"
Chimera isn't based on the common library, but honours the same environmental variable convention. TkWWW, Lynx, Chimera and Arena support the no_proxy feature, which can be used to disable proxying for specified domain names, e.g.

  setenv no_proxy "lnf.infn.it"
no_proxy support seems to have become a standard feature of the World-Wide Web common library. Unfortunately some browsers use modified (i.e. seriously hacked over!) versions of this - notably X Mosaic

The X Mosaic change history can be confusing:


Massimo Carboni / Massimo.Carboni@lnf.infn.it. Last updated: $Date: 1997/02/18 09:33:00 $