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Documentation for this article will be maintained at
https://quotaguard.github.io/qg-docs/quickstart-ruby
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the most recent and updated documentation.
SOCKS5 is a very flexible TCP level tunneling protocol which works on a per host basis and is compatible with all programming environments.
If you're not sure whether to use the SOCKS proxy, then please check out our HTTP vs SOCKS article.
Please note : This product includes software developed by Inferno Nettverk A/S, Norway. For more information on their software Dante, please see https://www.inet.no/dante/
QuotaGuard Static provides three ways to setup SOCKS5 proxy integration within your app:
- QuotaGuard Tunnel, process-based tunneling program (recommended)
- QuotaGuard Socksify script, routing-based tunneling program
- Framework specific support for SOCKS5
QGTunnel is an extremely versatile wrapper script for your process. It allows you to map one or more local ports to route through the QuotaGuard proxy servers. It supports a DNS override mode for protocols that require the hostname stay the same (ie: HTTPS) or to minimize the impact on the code. QGTunnel also supports end-to-end encryption of your tunnel data for protocols that are not encrypted (ie: redis).
We recommend QGTunnel unless you need to route all traffic within the app through the SOCKS5 proxy.
QGSocksify is a routing-based tunneling program. It allows for all or some of the outgoing traffic to be routed through the proxy server based on the destination IP or IP range.
Additionally, many languages support SOCKS5 proxies natively or via a add-on package.
Please note: The wrapper is not compatible with OSX or Windows. We recommend using a Virtual Machine running Ubuntu for development testing if your main development environment does not run Linux.
To Get Started with the SOCKS5 Proxy Utilizing
QGTunnel, Please Follow These Steps
1. Download QGTunnel
Download and extract the qgtunnel package in the root directory of your app:
$ curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/quotaguard/qgtunnel-latest.tar.gz | tar xz
2. Setup the Tunnel
Login to our Admin Dashboard and begin to setup the tunnel.
At the top right, click Settings, then Setup. On the left, click Tunnel, then Create Tunnel. You should reach this screen below.
For example, the example here assumes a MySQL server.
Remote Destination: tcp://hostname.for.your.server.com:3306 Local Port: 3306 Transparent: true Encrypted: false
This setup assumes that your server is located at “hostname.for.your.server.com” and is listening on port 3306 (the default MySQL port).
Use the same port for the local port, unless you are using that port or it is below 1024, then you will have to change this to some other port (say 3307).
Transparent mode allows QuotaGuard to override the DNS for hostname.for.your.server.com to 127.0.0.1, which redirects traffic to the QGTunnel software. This means you can connect to either hostname.for.your.server.com or 127.0.0.1 to connect through the QGTunnel. More information is available on transparent mode as you follow along in these instructions
Encrypted mode can be used to encrypt data end-to-end, but if your protocol is already encrypted then you don’t need to spend time setting it up. We have more details on end-to-end encryption as you follow along in these instructions.
Creating the tunnels in the dashboard is for convenience. Please see the last step (Harden your setup) for how to remove a dependency from your system.
3. Change your code (maybe)
You may have to change your code to connect through QGTunnel.
With transparent mode, and when using the same local and remote port, you should not have to change your code.
Without transparent mode, you will want to connect to 127.0.0.1:3306 (in this example). If you changed the local port, then you will need to change the port number to match.
4. Change your Procfile
Heroku Users: You have a procfile even if it’s not explicitly in your code base. To find it, log into the Heroku dashboard, click on the Resources tab, and you will see a list of your dyno processes. The text you see (like web npm start) next to each one acts as your Procfile if you do not have one explicitly in your code base.
Modify your app Procfile to prepend the QGTunnel application to your standard commands:
Before:
web: bundle exec unicorn -p $PORT -c ./config/unicorn.rb
After:
web: bin/qgtunnel bundle exec unicorn -p $PORT -c ./config/unicorn.rb
5. Deploy
Commit and deploy your changes. Be sure to add bin/qgtunnel. If you are using transparent mode, be sure vendor/nss_wrapper/libnss_wrapper.so is also committed.
6. (Optional) If problems arise...
By default all fatal errors encountered by the qgtunnel will be logged to your logs.
If this information is not enough you can enable verbose output mode by setting QGTUNNEL_DEBUG environment variable to true and restart the application while watching the logs.
Send any information in the logs (please redact any credentials, including your QuotaGuard connection URL) to our Support so we can help figure out the problem.
7. IMPORTANT: Harden your setup.
This step is highly recommended as we do not have any SLA on our website, which can be out due to maintenance at any time.
By default qgtunnel will try to fetch configuration from the QuotaGuard API, but it also supports local configuration.
You can download a configuration file from the Dashboard by pressing Download configuration on the Tunnel page.
Place the downloaded file into the root directory of your project under the .qgtunnel filename, commit and deploy.
With this file your application will not depend on the availability of our website during application startup.
Getting Help
The SOCKS wrapper is not straight forward to set up, or debug, so if you have any issues just get in contact with our Support and we'll help you out.