3.10.2 SOCKS parent proxies

The variable socksParentProxy specifies the hostname and port number of a SOCKS parent proxy; it should have the form ‘host:port’. The variant of the SOCKS protocol being used is defined by socksProxyType, which can be either ‘socks4a’ or ‘socks5’; the latter value specifies “SOCKS5 with hostnames”, and is the default.

The user name passed to the SOCKS4a proxy is defined by the variable socksUserName. This value is currently ignored with a SOCKS5 proxy.

The main application of the SOCKS support is to use Tor to evade overly restrictive or misconfigured firewalls. Assuming you have a Tor client running on the local host listening on the default port (9050), the following uses Tor for all outgoing HTTP traffic:

$ polipo socksParentProxy=localhost:9050