Adding a Cache Dir

by Chris Robertson

Adding a new drive to Squids cache directory set is a useful thing to know. And simple as well.

Squid will handle the changes semi-automatically, but there are still a few operations that need to be kicked off manually.

Assuming your disk is attached, your OS recognizes it and the disk is formatted:

1. Ensure the cache_effective_user has write capability on the mount point

2. Add a cache_dir directive to squid.conf referencing the new mount point

3. Stop squid

4. Run squid -z (as root or as the cache_effective_user)

5. Start squid

Downtime reduction hack

by AmosJeffries and HenrikNordstrom

NP: this does not apply to large caches as there is no touching of the existing cache_dir anyway.

1. Ensure the cache_effective_user has write capability on the mount point

2. Temporarily change squid.conf to use another pid_filename. squid -z will abort early if it discovers another running squid instance

3. Add a cache_dir directive to squid.conf referencing the new mount point

4. Temporarily: comment out the existing cache_dir entries

5. Run squid -z -f ./squid.conf (as root or as the cache_effective_user)

6. Undo the temporary changes to pid_filename and pre-existing cache_dir

7. Reconfigure the running squid with squid -k reconfigure

   While the -z with existing ufs/aufs/diskd is harmless it's a destructive operation with for example coss cache_dirs so commenting them out is important.

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