Crawl and Index > Proxy Servers

Use the Crawl and Index > Proxy Servers page to configure a proxy server to crawl outside your internal network and include the crawled data in your index.

This is required for web servers likely to deny crawl permission to the appliance .

Before Starting this Task

Before configuring a proxy server, complete the tasks shown in the following table.

Configuring a Proxy Server

To configure a proxy server:

1. Under Proxy Servers, specify a URL pattern that you want the search appliance to crawl through a proxy server in the For URLs Matching Pattern text box.
2. Specify the IP address or fully-qualified domain name for the proxy server to use for crawling URLs in the Use This Proxy Server text boxes.
3. Specify the proxy port in the On Port text boxes.
4. If you need more rows for additional URL patterns or proxy servers, click the Add More Rows button.
5. Click the Save Crawler Proxies Configuration button.

Authenticating to a Proxy Server

When the search appliance is crawling content, it can authenticate to a proxy server that supports Basic authentication. To enable authenticating to a proxy server, add a Proxy-Authorization header for the crawler in the Additional HTTP Headers for Crawler box on the Crawl and Index > HTTP Headers page.

Because Additional HTTP Headers for Crawler headers are sent to all servers, the Proxy-Authorization header will also be sent to servers/proxies that it is not meant for.

A Proxy-Authorization header uses the following format:

Proxy-Authorization:credentials

For example, suppose that you want the search appliance to authenticate to a proxy server using base64 encoding with username=username and password=password. In this instance, add the following Proxy-Authorization header:

Proxy-Authorization: Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQK

Where the encoded string is "username:password" base64 encoded.

To encode the username and password in base64 on Linux or Unix, enter the following commands:

$ echo username:password > /tmp/foo
$ uuencode -m /tmp/foo /tmp/bar
begin-base64 666 /tmp/bar
dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQK
$ rm /tmp/foo

For More Information

For more information about URL patterns used for crawling, see:

• "Rules for Valid URL Patterns" in "Constructing URL Patterns," which is linked to the Google Search Appliance help center
• Crawl and Index > Host Load Schedule