Squid cache directory not been initialized

[Silenti-Ambulo]

Dear Ubuntu Support and fellow users,

I'm trying to set up a proxy using Squid3 on a remote Server.
I've been trying whole day to get Squid to work.
Late this afternoon I found a post saying it was easier to configure with Webmin.
So completely removed Squid3 and all programs associated.

After I installed Webmin and Squid3 from console, I setup the config file from squid3.

/etc/webmin/squid/config

squidclient=squidclient
cache_dir=/var/spool/squid3
log_dir=/var/log/squid3
pid_file=/var/run/squid3.pid
squid_path=squid3
squid_conf=/etc/squid3/squid.conf
cachemgr_path=/usr/lib/cgi-bin/cachemgr3.cgi
squid_restart=squid3 -k reconfigure
squid_start=service squid3 start
squid_stop=service squid3 stop

Then I tried to start it up inside Webmin, it didn't want to create a cach directory under Root (I know I'm a n00b) so I created an new user for it. I pressed it and it ran without an error.
So I went back to the squit main page and I keep getting this error.

Your Squid cache directory /var/spool/squid3 has not been initialized.This must be done before Squid can be run.

When I say it should start squid3 from console it says it started.
When I look at the proceslist it just states [ ? ]

I have no clue weather it's running or not.

Anybody got any idea?

Thanks in advanced.

[SeijiSensei]

Try running "sudo squid -z". That should create the initial cache directories. Then run "sudo service squid3 restart".

[elico]

it's so simple to manage squid using only conf file.
also latest squid webmin config was out of sync to the syntax of the file.
try the squid -z first.
and what version of squid + ubuntu are you using?

[Silenti-Ambulo]

I'm using Squid3 and ubuntu 12.04

I started over from scratch this morning.
I installed webmin and Squid3.

When I tried "Sudo Squid3 -z" it told me squid3 was running.
So I stopped the service and did the command again.
And restarted squid3 service afterwards.

I'm still getting the error in Webmin:

Your Squid cache directory /var/spool/squid3 has not been initialized.This must be done before Squid can be run.

Also initialize Cache as Unix User.

Last time I used Root, but got an error saying it shouldn't be run as Root.
Any advice?

[SeijiSensei]

I just installed squid3 from the Precise repositories. The initial setup created /var/spool/squid3 and set its ownership to proxy:proxy. Do you have that directory with those permissions? Did you install from the repositories?

[ashleydrees]

i too have now been through this, it seems in squid3 you need to un-comment the cache line in the config file...

# Uncomment and adjust the following to add a disk cache directory.
# cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid3 100 16 256

to

# Uncomment and adjust the following to add a disk cache directory.
cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid3 100 16 256

i did all sorts of stuff before i found that... which thankfully, i took notes of so could undo all the workarounds...

[EmmEight]

@ashleydrees

Good work!

Worked like a charm!

Also good to mention it can be found on line 2245... the squid.conf isn't very small

[DieEier]

Thanks everyone for sharing. Had the same problem. This helped solve it.