Quick n' Dirty Guide to Charon - Free, Good Proxy Checker

apekillape

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Charon is (as always, in my opinion) the best overall proxy checker you can get your hands on. It's free, it does the job better than pretty much any other tool except arguably AAtools (which you have to pay for), and it runs cleanly without any extra hassle. Just go over your settings, paste in your list, and it's off and running. It does both HTTP and Socks, Internal or External Judging, and has a great filtering system. And this is how you run it:

Download: http://www.project2025.com/Charon.zip

You don't have to install it, just unzip the folder and get to work. Click the cartoon bull and you'll see this:



This is the main screen. On the first run, you just want to go down the list and configure all your settings at once. After this you really don't have to go in there very often if at all, except to change the Filters or check the Judges from time to time.



Nothing much to see here, the settings should (from what I recall) be fine as default. If you have something different, reference this picture and fix it. Skipping scan options (we're just using the check function), we get:



Note: Rhino, the creator of the program (so you can assume he knows what he's talking about), says
My personal opinion is that you should use the internal judge. You can guarantee then that it won't suddenly become overloaded and start giving out cached results, or won't go down mid-test ... plus a few other potential benefits.


This bit was in the original post before I edited in Rhino's position on the matter. It's either/or, don;t try to do both, haha.
This is flavour country. Your own IP address should be at the top, and you'll want to select "External Judge". This lets you use a judge script outside your own box, which prevents all manner of problems and ensures a more accurate test. For threads and time-out you'll want somewhere between 15-30 generally, until you get more comfortable with what we're doing here and your own system's preferable setup. Threads is the amount of connections the checker can open at once while running through the list, and timeout is the amount of time it waits until it decides an IP is no good and the response is never coming. Retry is of course how many chances it gives an IP before it gives up and declares it Dead.

Depending on if you're running a check at that moment for HTTP, Socks, or just a hodgepodge list of both, you can deselect "Check proxies for HTTP" or "Check proxies for Socks" so as to ensure the checker won't waste any time when you already know what type the IPs you have are. Also, provided your system can run proxies on nonstandard ports (anything besides 1080 for Socks) there's no sense in not unchecking the "Limit proxies to ports" button.

For check against, you just want a site that will always be up. I prefer google.



The filter options are a list of IPs and wilcards that will pre-remove IPs you don't want from your list. The ones that come with Charon are solid, though there've been two solid improvements made recently that you should include:

http://www.dcsproxy.com/proxy-tools/2294-planetlab-codeen-filter-exclusion-list.html
This is an updated Planetlab filter, just copy the text and overwrite it with what's in your file.

http://www.dcsproxy.com/proxy-tools/11244-more-proxies-exclude.html
This is a list of UniqueInternetServices (makers of Proxyfirewall) IPs which may show up on your lists but will not be usable by you. To add this you must create a new filter file. Just open notepad, copy all the IPs in the above post, and paste them into the notepad file. Save it as "UniqueInternetServices.ini" and place it into the filterfiles folder in your charon folder and you're good to go. Don't forget to restart Charon and select it.



This is what was mentioned previously, about "External Judges". The Judges in question are all external scripts hosted on other people's servers, they check your IP and see if you're being properly masked by it or not. The list that comes with Charon is rather old by now, go to this wonderful post and select all of the judges labeled "AZ Environment variables 1.04". Read the post as well, it'll help.

After copying the judges, right-click the Proxy Judges window in Charon and select "Paste judges from clipboard. When that's sorted, click "Remove Duplicates" and then "Test Judges". You want to use the single most reliable and low-pinging azenv1.04 judge on the list, so find whichever one that is for you right-click it from the bottom list to the top. Just one, and Azenv1.04, remember.



Well about now you're pretty much done. Go to the left menu, click "Check anonymity of all proxies" and go make yourself a sandwich, your part is over. When the checker is done running through the IP list you'll have your very own list of personalized, guaranteed-up proxies.

N
 
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great post. . .I just started using charon after reading this, however I am finding a problem with it often shutting down on me during mid scan. I loose everything . . any suggestions on what might be doing this?
 
Never heard of that happening before. There's no error, it just kills itself?

What operating system are you running? Do you have decent ram?

N
 
XP ram is low. . . the computer is a bit old . .. I'll try it on a 6 mos. old computer that is stacked to the hilt and see that solves the problem.
 
Ya, it could definitely be the ram, or for some oddball reason your connection settings. Try it on a machine with better ram, and if all else fails lower the amount of threads to cut down on the workload.

N
 
if your on xp window you need to patch
the port to leech more proxy:D
 
Depends on how big the list was to start with, now doesn't it?

N
 
Hey. Thanks for this info. I wish I had found this section first when I joined BHW. Would have saved me $80 that I spent on proxy software and a dozen "FUCK YOU VISTA!" screaming fits. Its a shame that its not in the sidebar for the forum. This subforum is crucial reading for all noobs and for me personally its been the most useful thing in the whole forum to date. I say this because lack of quality proxies, and knowledge of how they work, etc has kept me from effectively applying so many other good methods shared here. Big thanks again.

BTW: I read on the dcs forum for about an hour too. Lorissa scares the Sh$%t out of me.
 
Hahaha, she's really nice too, she just doesn't take any shit or waste time with dumbness . Kind of an acquired taste.

N
 
Really appreciate the time and effort you have put into setting this out step by step friggin awesum.

Followed your guide but hit the wall at the second last step so now im hangin in nowhere land need help.

After copying the judges, right-click the Proxy Judges window in Charon and select "Paste judges from clipboard. When that's sorted, click "Remove Duplicates" and then "Test Judges". You want to use the single most reliable and low-pinging azenv1.04 judge on the list, so find whichever one that is for you right-click it from the bottom list to the top. Just one, and Azenv1.04, remember.

heres what i did and the results that i got.

copied judges to judge not unused judges in options clicked "Remove Duplicates" and then "Test Judges" removed bads

selected the judge with the lowest azenv1.04 and moved others to unused judges closed options

selected check proxies - check anonymity - displayed selected judge but no test results - Anon:0 Non:0 Sock:0 Other:0 unlike your image=09checkeh7.png which shows tests Anon:0 Non:0 Sock:0 Other:2376 so where have I f**ked up ?

Now I have the ProxyFirewall set up but no proxys.

All help/suggestions welcome


Thanx
 
I had a similar problem. Give the docs a good read when you are awake and not disctracted. The docs are good, but just easy to miss a step. A couple of things that confused me was "proxy firewall spits out 4s and questionable 5s" should be interpeted as proxyfirewall uses sock5. First time I read it I thought it uses 4s. The other confusing thing I read was "there's no sense in not unchecking the "Limit proxies to ports" button." so I think it means don't check the box!
 
So after you check all the proxies they seem to only last about 24 hours, but my question is do they come back after some time? Would it be wise to just compile a large list and just check the same list over and over, do they die and resurrect a few days later?
 
what should we use for youtube? (I read somewhere that we have to look only for HTTP and not for SOCKS - is that the only limitation?)
 
That is a great post. Im about to start working with youtube and need to compile lists of proxies for increasing views.

Im bookmarking this one - Thanks again.
 
This is awesome. I'm going to try this with CL. Thanks!
 
i'm having a small or big problem depending on what it takes to fix it. my judges dont save on to the list of judges. i pasted them in there and checked them also but when i close the window and re-open it. the judges that i've added are no-longer listed. i only see the default judges again why is this? i reset the application no luck please help.
 
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