Comments on: Caching iOS updates on a Squid proxy server

By: tec

tec — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 21:26:51 +0000

hello, please can you help me? i can’t send whatsapp msg with iphone across squid (android works well)

By: none

none — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 10:10:08 +0000

+1 Also interested:
Is this possible on a pfSense (2.3.x) firewall with squid installed?

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 11:52:14 +0000

In reply to Jason. I've just done some updated testing on this. Results below. In short, iOS apps can't be cached by Squid, but macOS apps can be (directives in reply below).

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 11:46:51 +0000

In reply to John. I haven't looked into Android app caching, but can confirm this doesn't work with iOS apps -- they are retrieved with a unique authorisation key in the query string each time, which makes them uncacheable (unless you're running a macOS Server with Caching enabled). macOS apps can be cached with a line like this, however:

refresh_pattern -i osxapps\.itunes\.apple\.com 129600 100% 129600 ignore-reload ignore-no-store override-expire override-lastmod ignore-must-revalidate ignore-private

By: Markus

Markus — Fri, 12 May 2017 02:59:08 +0000

Is this possible on a pfSense (2.3.x) firewall with squid installed?

By: John

John — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 18:41:52 +0000

I am looking to Cache IOS and Android Apps as well. Any help is greatly appreciated.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 11:36:30 +0000

Hi Luke,

Thanks for the information it has been an absolute godsend.

Just wondering if there have been any changes to this configuration and are you caching apps as well?

Thanks in advance!

By: Happy IT Admin

Happy IT Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 04:30:04 +0000

Thank you. confirmed working with IOS 9.2.1 (squid 3.5.13-2, centos6.7)

By: john

john — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 17:02:52 +0000

In reply to Luke. No worries. Thanks!

By: Luke

Luke — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 04:59:57 +0000

In reply to john. You'll have to experiment with this yourself, sorry. I have no need for this myself.

By: john

john — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 01:28:47 +0000

In reply to Luke. Thanks! Do you know of a way to cache OS X updates with just Squid ? Trying to figure out if possible without buying a OS X server.

By: Luke

Luke — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 07:32:07 +0000

In reply to john. It should work with transparent proxies, but I haven't tested it in this scenario. OS X updates are easiest to cache with OS X Server. Enable "Software Update" for operating system updates, and "Caching" for apps (includes both iOS and OS X).

By: john

john — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 06:01:33 +0000

Does this work for a transparent squid proxy as well ? Also have you tried something similar for OS X, although OS X software updates may be https ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202943 ) ? I am glad iOS software update is not https

By: Luke

Luke — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 04:38:14 +0000

In reply to Hamlesh. I don't think it works with App Store downloads because of their URL structure. But OS X Server does cache apps (if you enable this feature).

By: Hamlesh

Hamlesh — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 16:50:16 +0000

Thanks for this :)

Do you know if this can be used to cache app downloads from the App Store?

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 23:27:34 +0000

In reply to Panagiotis Karamalis.

This has probably already been resolved by the person but in case it’s helpful, I noticed the following:

It appears your regex had “ibooks” instead of “ibook” which you indicated in the URL provided.

By: Andrew Zimmerman

Andrew Zimmerman — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:09:48 +0000

Looks like you need Intune for this then. Which of course I won’t be able to use, since it costs money! Thanks anyway.

By: Andrew Zimmerman

Andrew Zimmerman — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 21:25:06 +0000

This is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen.

By: Francis

Francis — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 01:16:01 +0000

2014/03/03 01:12:57| parse_refreshpattern: Unknown option ‘appldnld\.apple\.com’: ignore-no-store

Is anyone getting this with the Windows version of 2.7STABLE8

By: Panagiotis Karamalis

Panagiotis Karamalis — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 16:28:20 +0000

Excellent tutorial. I am a school IT Manager also. I have managed to cache apple store updates using your advice.

However, our main bandwidth nightmare is that our school distributes our teacher’s notes (in ibook and pdf format via iTunesU) and 150+ iPads have to download the same book in a period of few hours. Therefore, I have added another refresh_pattern:

refresh_pattern -i ([^.]+.|)(phobos).(apple.|)com/.*\.(pdf|ibooks|ipa) 10080 100% 10080 ignore-reload ignore-no-store override-expire override-lastmod ignore-must-revalidate;

However, books are not cached (TCP_MISS/200, as the URL contains a dynamic part (something like http://xxx.phobos.apple.com/…/…/test.ibook?downloadKey=1384882721_3e35e8cd987509c269f6a14089f81a00 )

I have tried to turn squid3 dynamic content on and off. I have tried to add the dynamic refresh_pattern (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0;

Have you tried anything similar?

Best regards.

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:26:21 +0000

In reply to Robbie. Interesting ... no-cache headers are client-initiated, so maybe the on-device updater is trying harder to fetch an uncached file now. Thanks for sharing!

By: Robbie

Robbie — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 22:41:47 +0000

For some reason this was not working on Debian 7.1 with squid 3.1.20
I added `ignore no-cache` and made it explicit for zip files.
refresh_pattern -i appldnld\.apple\.com.*\.(zip) 43200 100% 43200 ignore-reload ignore-no-store override-expire override-lastmod ignore-must-revalidate ignore-no-cache

By: Johan

Johan — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 12:11:56 +0000

Having only 2.5 mbps for 400 users, with Apple’s devices being the most popular ones, this trick has helped us to regain control of our internet connection. We had blocked iTunes completely because we couldn’t get the darn files to stay in cache…

By: Greg Moore

Greg Moore — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 21:17:59 +0000

Excellent! Thank you so much for posting this!

I’m going to modify the config on my Cachebox (based on squid 2.7, http://www.appliansys.com) this very afternoon. Hopefully I can improve my daily caching ratio a bit…