HELPER-MUX(8)

💅 HELPER-MUX(8) — like, the whole vibe

okay bestie, so this one's from the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of the world, and it's genuinely one of those "small tool, big slay" situations. Let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

helper-mux — a concurrency protocol multiplexer for Squid helpers. yes that's a mouthful, no we're not changing it 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

helper-mux helper-path [helper-options ...]

that's it. that's the whole invocation. iconic behavior honestly ✨

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so here's the tea ☕ — helper-mux's whole purpose in life is to relieve some of the burden squid has when dealing with slow helpers. it does this by being the middleman between squid and the actual helpers. think of it as the friend who translates between two group chats 🫶

the deets:

• it talks to squid via the multiplexed variant of the helper protocol
• it talks to the helpers via the non-multiplexed variant

and ngl, the scaling is kind of a moment: helpers are started on demand, and in theory the muxer can handle up to 1k helpers per instance 😭🔥 but — and this is important bestie — it is up to squid to decide how many helpers to start. not the muxer's call. not yours. squid's. periodt.

💀 controlling it with signals 💀

the helper can be controlled using various signals:

• SIGHUP — dump the state of all helpers to STDERR 👀 (yes, to STDERR, not stdout, don't @ me)

⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

look at us, having options. here they are, all of them, nothing skipped 💅

• helper-path — path to the helper being multiplexed. literally where the helper lives on disk 🗺️
• helper-options — command line options for the helper being multiplexed. anything after the path gets handed off 🌸

🙈 KNOWN ISSUES 🙈

being real with you, this is the "we're so honest" section:

• helper-mux knows nothing about the actual messages being passed around, and as such cannot yet compensate for broken helpers 😬 like, it's a muxer, not a therapist.
• It is not yet able to manage dying helpers. 💀 so if a helper starts spiraling, that's not something it can handle yet. no cap.

heads up: both of these are real documented limitations, not me being dramatic. plan accordingly bestie 🫶

👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

okay, legal moment, but make it cute. here's the whole thing, verbatim, because you do not paraphrase a license:

 * Copyright (C) 1996-2026 The Squid Software Foundation and contributors
 *
 * Squid software is distributed under GPLv2+ license and includes
 * contributions from numerous individuals and organizations.
 * Please see the COPYING and CONTRIBUTORS files for details.

  Copyright (C) Francesco Chemolli <kinkie@squid-cache.org>

  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  GNU General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.

---

and that's the page bestie 💖 this little gem is running on perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-08-25 — go forth, multiplex responsibly, and remember: the muxer is just the middleman 🧚‍♀️