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3.10.2 SOCKS parent proxies

The variable socksParentProxy specifies the hostname and port number of a SOCKS parent proxy; it should have the form ‘host:port’. The variant of the SOCKS protocol being used is defined by socksProxyType, which can be either ‘socks4a’ or ‘socks5’; the latter value specifies “SOCKS5 with hostnames”, and is the default.

The variable socksAuthCredentials can be used if your SOCKS proxy requires authentication. For SOCKS4 and 4a, it is just a username; for SOCKS5 it is of the form ‘username:password’.

The main application of the SOCKS support is to use Tor to evade overly restrictive or misconfigured firewalls. Assuming you have a Tor client running on the local host listening on the default port (9050), the following uses Tor for all outgoing HTTP traffic:

$ polipo socksParentProxy=localhost:9050