3. External Programs

3.1 dnsserver

Because the standard gethostbyname(3) library call blocks, Squid must use external processes to actually make these calls. Typically there will be ten dnsserver processes spawned from Squid. Communication occurs via TCP sockets bound to the loopback interface. The functions in dns.c are primarily concerned with starting and stopping the dnsservers. Reading and writing to and from the dnsservers occurs in the IP and FQDN cache modules.

3.2 pinger

Although it would be possible for Squid to send and receive ICMP messages directly, we use an external process for two important reasons:

1. Because squid handles many filedescriptors simultaneously, we get much more accurate RTT measurements when ICMP is handled by a separate process.
2. Superuser privileges are required to send and receive ICMP. Rather than require Squid to be started as root, we prefer to have the smaller and simpler pinger program installed with setuid permissions.

3.3 unlinkd

The unlink(2) system call can cause a process to block for a significant amount of time. Therefore we do not want to make unlink() calls from Squid. Instead we pass them to this external process.

3.4 redirector

A redirector process reads URLs on stdin and writes (possibly changed) URLs on stdout. It is implemented as an external process to maximize flexibility.