All Squid configuration files are kept in the directory /usr/local/squid/etc. Though there is more than one file in this directory, only one file is important to most administrators, the squid.conf file. Though there are (as of this writing) one hundred and twenty five option tags in this file, you should only need to change eight options to get Squid up and running. The other one hundred and seventeen options give you amazing flexibility, but you can learn about them once you have Squid running, by playing with the options or by reading the descriptions in chapter 10.
Squid assumes that you wish to use the default value if there is no occurrence of a tag in the squid.conf file. Theoretically, you could even run Squid with a zero length configuration file.
The remainder of this chapter works through the options that you may need to change to get Squid to run. Most people will not need to change all of these settings. You will need to change at least one part of the configuration file though: the default squid.conf denies access to all browsers. If you don't change this, Squid will not be very useful!