[squid-users] Go direct if parent dies

Hi, folks...

We want to use a proxy chain consisting of Squid and another proxy
server on the same host. The user asks squid:3128 and the request is
being forwarded to the only configured parent proxy:

cache_peer localhost parent 9090 0 no-query

My [always|never]_direct settings are:

always_direct allow url.lan
always_direct deny all

This works great when my parent proxy server (which filters URLs for
pornography and other topics btw) is up and running. But sometimes it
has to be restarted and the port 9090 is temporarily not available.
Guess what - Squid treats the second proxy as a "dead parent" and
refuses to contact it. The user get's an error message.

What I would like Squid to do is: use the parent when it is available.
If the parent can't be reached then try to contact the destination
server directly. I could only make the Squid either going always directly
or failing on a dead parent (which annoys users).

What would be the right way to configure this? I have browsed through
groups.google.com for hours but did not find anything useful. I doubt
that my setup it that weird.

 Christoph

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