Bah, silly me, I clicked send before I could provide these links which may help with setting Apache as a (forward or outbound) proxy server:-

http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Administration/Using-Apache-As-A-Proxy-Server/

and from the Apache docs:-

Forward and Reverse Proxies

Apache can be configured in both a forward and reverse proxy mode.

An ordinary forward proxy is an intermediate server that sits between the client and the origin server. In order to get content from the origin server, the client sends a request to the proxy naming the origin server as the target and the proxy then requests the content from the origin server and returns it to the client. The client must be specially configured to use the forward proxy to access other sites.

A typical usage of a forward proxy is to provide Internet access to internal clients that are otherwise restricted by a firewall. The forward proxy can also use caching (as provided by mod_cache) to reduce network usage.

The forward proxy is activated using the ProxyRequests directive. Because forward proxys allow clients to access arbitrary sites through your server and to hide their true origin, it is essential that you secure your server so that only authorized clients can access the proxy before activating a forward proxy.

[snip]

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_proxy.html

I hope these help, personally I use Smoothwall (www.smoothwall.org) for outbound proxy and inbound port-forwarding.

From: Richard Peacock [mailto:richard.peacock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 26 August 2009 16:11
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: creating a proxy

I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to do … “to connect to my server through putty with ssh tunnel” and then later on you try to browse “a web site”. Are you tying to set up apache as a proxy server (for outbound requests) and port-forwarding for inbound requests?

From: Etienne [mailto:etienne@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 26 August 2009 15:49
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: creating a proxy

hi all,

I would like to enable a proxy on my server with port forwarding.
The idea is to connect to my server through putty with ssh tunnel forwarding localhost:80 to myproxyserver.com:80
I have enabled proxy module with a2enmod proxy command and setup a virtualhost
my virtualhost (/etc/apache2/sites-available/myproxyserver) has been enabled and is as follow

NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        ServerName myproxyserver.com
        ProxyRequests On
        ProxyVia On

        <Proxy *>
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
Allow from localhost

        </Proxy>
</VirtualHost>

when I set up proxy to 127.0.0.1 on firefox and try to access to a web site, I get the following

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

how can I fix that ?

thanks

etienne

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