Licq with socks5 support
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've spent lots of time trying to get Licq working with Linux machine,
which happens to be located behind a firewall/proxy running on a Windows machine
. I
won't spend any explaining this very backwards setup, but
that's the situation that exists. The JavaICQ, in case you have ever used
it, is really consuming in resources, has plenty of bugs. It also has not
been updated in a very long time. Now that AOL has purchased Mirabilis,
maybe this will change, but I'm not holding my breath. Fortunately, Linux
users who are tired of waiting for vaporware, will usually do something
about it. I think this is what makes Linux so great. So we have several ICQ
'clones'. These can all be checked out at the Linux ICQ Page,
http://www.portup.com/~gyandl/icq/ In my position, I have the choice of the Java
version, or Licq, these are the only ones I know of to work through SOCKS. The J
ava
one is very simple to run under SOCKS, just provide it with your SOCKS address a
nd
port. These are some tips forgetting Licq working. This document is assuming you
have a working SOCKS server already, and I make no guarantees this will work, or
even that it won't hose your system. But this is what I did, in this order,
and I had no real problems.
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

First of all, we have to make sure we have all the required
libraries/headers to get Licq compiled and working. The first thing is the
Qt user interface library from Troll Tech. They have source and several
binary packages available there. I personally used the RPM's provided. If
you're using the K Desktop Environment, you will most likely already have
this running.                 

Next, we need some header files in order to get Licq compiled with SOCKS5
support. I found the RPM of this at rufus.w3.org. There's also a source RPM
there as well. I'm hunting the source tar.gz down, if you know where to find
it, e-mail the link to me at pennywise01@my-dejanews.com

The next step is to get our SOCKS daemon running. Head over to
www.socks.nec.com. There's lots of info here you might want to read, but if
you're impatient, go ahead and download socks5 v1.0 release 8 - UNIX source.
This package will also let you set up your Linux box as a SOCKS server in
the case that your networked computers are not as backwards as mine. Read
the included documentation on getting this installed, the standard
configure, make, make install should suffice. Once this is installed, if you
look in /usr/local/bin you will notice a few new programs here, like
rtelnet, rftp, and a few others. These programs with their respective names
already use the SOCKS setup. Once this is installed, we need to set up the
socks configuration file, /etc/libsocks5.conf. If your setup is similar to
mine, maybe 2 or 3 people in the house where security is not really a
concern, it will probably look similar to this:

socks5 - - - - cr91204-a:1080

Where cr91204-a:1080 is the socks5 host and the port number. Regardless do a
man libsocks5.conf for exact configuration details.

There is now an alternative to using the NEC socks proxy, it is called Dante and
 is
available at: http://www.inet.no/dante/
Also available for it is an RPM version.
I haven't had the time to play with this one so I'm blind as to setting this up.


Next step is getting Licq running. Download the source if you haven't done
it already. Read all the docs with it, it contains some information you will
need to know for getting Licq compiled and running. The most important step
here is ./configure --enable-socks5. If it compiles successfully, then you
should be set ok, just follow the rest of the docs with Licq normally.

Comments or suggestions to pennywise01@my-dejanews.com
