Tinyproxy is a HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....

 proxy server

Proxy server

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...

 daemon

Daemon (computer software)

In Unix and other multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user...

 for POSIX

POSIX

POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

 operating systems. Designed to be fast and small, it is useful when an HTTP/HTTPS proxy is required, but the system resources for a larger proxy are unavailable. Because of this reason, it has been put to uses such as a tether on the iPhone, and on the OpenWrt.

Tinyproxy is primarily designed to run on Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 systems. Released under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, Tinyproxy is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 and has been developed for a number of years. It is currently being maintained at Banu as a publicly accessible project. Ohloh

Ohloh

Ohloh is a website which provides a web services suite and online community platform that aims to map the landscape of open source software development. It was founded by former Microsoft managers Jason Allen and Scott Collison in 2004 and joined by the developer Robin Luckey...

 analyses it to be a project with "mature, well-established codebase and increasing year-over-year development activity."

Features

• Anonymous mode: Allows specification of individual HTTP headers that should be allowed through, and which should be blocked.
• HTTPS support: Tinyproxy allows forwarding of HTTPS connections without modifying traffic in any way.
• Remote monitoring: Tinyproxy can be monitored remotely to view logs and access details.
• Load average monitoring: Tinyproxy can be configured to refuse connections after the server load reaches a certain point.
• Access control: Tinyproxy can be configured to only allow connections from certain subnets or IP addresses.
• Secure: With some configuration, Tinyproxy can be made to run without any special privileges, thus minimizing the chance of system compromise. Furthermore, it was designed with an eye towards preventing buffer overflows.
• Small footprint: Tinyproxy requires very little in the way of system resources - the memory footprint tends to be around 2MB with glibc, and the CPU load increases linearly with the number of simultaneous connections (depending on the speed of the connection). Therefore, Tinyproxy can be run on a spare, older machine without any impact on performance.
• URL based filtering: Tinyproxy allows domain and URL-based black- and whitelisting.
• Transparent proxying: Tinyproxy supports being configured as a transparent proxy, so that a proxy can be used without requiring any client-side configuration.
• Proxy chaining: Tinyproxy can use an upstream proxy server for outbound connections, instead of direct connections to the target server, creating a so-called proxy chain.

Availability in OS distributions

Tinyproxy is available in various operating systems such as
Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

,
Fedora

Fedora (operating system)

Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...

,
FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

,
Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...

,
OpenBSD

OpenBSD

OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...

 and
Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

,

See also

Overview & Discussions

• Web accelerator
  Web accelerator
  A web accelerator is a proxy server that reduces web site access times. They can be a self-contained hardware appliance or installable software....
  
   which discusses host-based HTTP acceleration
• Proxy server
  Proxy server
  In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
  
   which discusses client-side proxies
• Reverse proxy
  Reverse proxy
  In computer networks, a reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers. These resources are then returned to the client as though it originated from the reverse proxy itself...
  
   which discusses origin-side proxies

Proxy-Servers

• Apache HTTP Server
  Apache HTTP Server
  The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
  
  
• lighttpd
  Lighttpd
  lighttpd is an open-source web server more optimized for speed-critical environments than common products while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible...
  
   - open-source web server, optimized for speed-critical environments
• Nginx
  Nginx
  nginx is a Web server and a reverse proxy server for HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP protocols, with a strong focus on high concurrency, performance and low memory usage. It is licensed under a BSD-like license and it runs on Unix, Linux, BSD variants, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows.- Overview...
  
   - lightweight, high-performance web server, reverse proxy and e-mail proxy (IMAP/POP3)
• Polipo
  Polipo
  Polipo is a fast and lightweight, forwarding and caching proxy server and computer software daemon.By virtue of being a compliant HTTP 1.1 proxy, Polipo has all the uses of traditional Web proxies. It features HTTP 1.1, IPv4 & IPv6, traffic filtering and privacy-enhancement. Polipo supports HTTP...
  
   - lightweight pipelining, multiplexing proxy server and daemon for a small number of users
• Pound reverse proxy
  Pound (networking)
  Pound is a lightweight open source reverse proxy program and application firewall suitable to be used as a web server load balancing solution. Developed by an IT security company, it has a strong emphasis on security. The original intent on developing Pound was to allow distributing the load among...
  
  
• Privoxy
  Privoxy
  Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers before the page is rendered by the browser. Privoxy is a "privacy enhancing proxy", filtering Web pages and removing advertisements...
  
   - privacy enhancing proxy
• Squid cache
  Squid cache
  Squid is a proxy server and web cache daemon. It has a wide variety of uses, from speeding up a web server by caching repeated requests; to caching web, DNS and other computer network lookups for a group of people sharing network resources; to aiding security by filtering traffic...
  
   - a proxy server and web cache daemon
• Varnish - a performance-focused open source reverse proxy
• Ziproxy
  Ziproxy
  Ziproxy is a forwarding, non-caching, HTTP proxy targeted for traffic optimization.The ziproxy software is regarded as lightweight in terms of memory and processing power consumption....
  
  - lightweight forwarding, non-caching, HTTP proxy for traffic optimization