EZproxy allows you to extend access to your databases to remote users. However, your licensing agreement with database vendors may not authorize you to provide remote access. As an implementer of remote access, it is your responsibility to verify licensing agreements and only permit remote access as authorized.
EZproxy is a completely stand-alone application. It does not require nor use any existing web server that is already installed on your server.
If you are already running a web server on the system where EZproxy is running, do not attempt to install EZproxy within directories that are used by that web server.
If you are running IIS, do not install EZproxy within the inetpub directory, and do not try to configure a web server for EZproxy within IIS Manager.
Before getting started
EZproxy 7.3 requires users to obtain a WSKey to run the software. Before downloading EZproxy, please request your WSKey. To request and obtain a Key, please see Request a WSKey.
cmd
into the Open box, click OK to open the Command prompt window.c:
md \ezproxy
cd \ezproxy
certutil –hashfile ezproxy-windows.exe sha256
Compare the output of certutil and hashed summary in the ezproxy-windows-sha256.sum file to make sure that hashed summaries are the same.
rename ezproxy-windows.exe ezproxy.exe
ezproxy -m
. The -m
stands for "missing file replacement," and this command can be used at any time to reconstruct any missing files without overwriting existing files that you have changedezproxy -cThis command will make your server connect to an OCLC server. Your server will provide its name and IP address, and the OCLC server will attempt to verify this information. Your server will then display various messages to let you know what changes may be required for EZproxy to function properly.
Note: If you do not like the idea of your server connecting to an OCLC server, you may omit this step.
Note: If your network requires the use of a standard proxy server to connect out to the Internet, this test will fail. In this case, you will need to configure EZproxy to use your outgoing proxy server using the Proxy directive, and then you can complete the network connectivity test by finishing the installation of EZproxy and using a browser installed either on the same server or within your network to log in to the EZproxy Administration page, where you can use the Test network connectivity option. This performs a more thorough network test, including offering the option to incorporate your outgoing proxy server in the test.
Use a text editor to edit the file config.txt. If suggested from the previous step, manually specify your hostname in this file. The file also contains suggestions for other changes.
someuser:somepass:admin
ezproxy -k 123456789101112
Note: In the Windows Command prompt, the keyboard shortcut ctrl-V will not paste copied text into the command line. You must right-click to open a list of options and click paste to enter the copied text.
Start the server with the command: ezproxy
.
Using your web browser, connect to your server on port 2048. If your EZproxy server was named ezproxy.yourlib.org, you would use this URL: http://ezproxy.yourlib.org:2048/admin
Enter the username and password that you created when you edited the user.txt file. This should bring you to the main server administration page. If, instead of the menu page, you end up at a page indicating that the EZproxy cookie was blocked, see EZproxy Cookie Blocked for information on why this happened and how to address it.
Note: The options presented and how effectively they work will depend on how well you customized config.txt. As you make additional changes to config.txt, you will need to stop and restart EZproxy to make the changes take effect.
After you have completed your installation and are able to log in to the administration page, you can find the database stanzas necessary to configure resources on the Database stanzas page and information about different authentication methods on the Authenticate users page.
The configuration steps required to install EZproxy as a service so it starts up when the system is booted are available at Configure EZproxy to run as a Windows service.
When installing EZproxy as a service under Windows, you may receive error 1067 when you try to start the service. This is a general error message that indicates that EZproxy failed to start successfully.
When this occurs, try the following steps.
Host name "ezproxy" does not include domain, please manually specify name in config.txt
If you see the name error, you need to manually specify the complete name of the EZproxy server. See Name for information on how to do this.
If EZproxy still will not start, continue on to step 2.
ezproxy -sd
EZproxy will either start, or it will display an error message. If it displays an error message, this problem must be corrected before it will be possible to run EZproxy. Once this command can start EZproxy, try restarting the EZproxy service. If it starts, you are done. If not, proceed to step 3.
EZproxy runs on Microsoft supported platforms: Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 2016, Windows 2019, and Windows 10.
The minimum recommended configuration for an EZproxy for Windows server:
For a list of end of support dates for Microsoft platforms, see Windows lifecycle fact sheet and End of support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
This program can be executed from a non-privileged account, so please consider running it from a non-administrative account.
If your site employs a proxy server for all outgoing conditions to the Internet, you will need to enter the host and port information for this proxy server into the config.txt file using the Proxy directive.
If your site is protected by a firewall, external users may be unable to connect to EZproxy unless your firewall administrator allows incoming traffic to ports 2048 and above.
EZproxy provides a variety of methods for authenticating users. For more information on these options, see Authenticate users.
EZproxy uses a number of files that are automatically created during the installation process. For a list of those files and their purpose, see EZproxy system elements.
When installing EZproxy for Linux, you will download ezproxy-windows.exe. This binary file is the download version of the EZproxy program for Linux. It must be renamed to ezproxy.
Additional technical information can be found in EZproxy technical details.
The following are additional commands that can be used with EZproxy for Windows.
If you want to reset all of the files to their original distributed contents, you can use the command:
ezproxy -r
If you want to restore just one or two of the original files, rename or delete the existing file that you want to be replaced, then issue the command:
ezproxy -m