How to use and setup proxychains - a minimalist guide

When executing some command in Linux operating system, they will curl something or git clone somewhere that is blocked by the GFW time to time. This is a common situation where some commands need to go through a proxy while others don't when you are developing something in manland China.

Proxychains is a tool that can help achieve this requirement:

# Command without proxy
curl www.google.com

# Command with proxy
proxychains curl www.google.com

# Terminal session with all commands going through proxy
proxychains bash
curl www.google.com

Installing Proxychains

sudo apt install proxychains

Installing Proxychains

After installation, Proxychains' default configuration file is located at "/etc/proxychains.conf". You can view the configuration file using vi:

# View proxychains configuration file
sudo vi /etc/proxychains.conf

For basic usage, you only need to modify the last section of the configuration file under "ProxyList" (press pagedown all the way to the end):

[ProxyList]
# add proxy here ...
# meanwile
# defaults set to "tor"
socks5  127.0.0.1 1080  ## Modify this to your proxy address

# For example, to use Clash proxy installed on another host in your LAN, 
# you can set HTTP proxy like this:
# http other_host_IP 7890

Basic Usage of Proxychains

# Add proxychains before any command that needs to use proxy
proxychains sudo apt update

proxychains curl www.google.com

proxychains bash

And that's it. The tool is particularly useful when you need to selectively route commands through a proxy while keeping other commands using direct connections.