First question hope I hit the right section of the forum.
I am wondering if there is a simple soloution to what I am looking for.
I need a way to test socks proxys I have checked all the resources I can and have found nothing as of yet.
Thank you in advance.

I need a way to test socks proxys
You mean check IP's for unrestricted proxy access?

Do you mean do I mean check for unrestricted access via access testing ?

Uh, yeah. Spose that's what I mean you mean.

LOL I was just making an example of answering a question with a question as being fairly futile. Hope you enjoyed it
So what I am after is I am a retired windows user and decided to get serious about using a computer and I am very happy I have Linux is Great and I think this forum is equally great.
Ok for anonymous surfing I would like to utilize socks proxys from a site I have a subscription to. These are with the owners consent I have to assume due to it being a rather large and legit site.
If I may make a reference to a couple of windows programs that I used in the past AA tools would be on the top of the list this allowed me to check the viability and quality of http proxys and the up status of Socks proxys.
I assume with all the tools that are available out of the box that pinging a list of hosts would not be a very difficult script to implement and execute, alas that is if you have scripting skills and I seem to have left them in my other brain in the car
I am wondering if there is a quick and dirty way to do this with some open source programs and I do not have learn how to script this myself.
I apologize for the sarcasm in my return post but I just could not resist.

LOL I was just making an example of answering a question with a question as being fairly futile. Hope you enjoyed it
I sure did. Usually ppl want no-frills answers right now and no questions asked and if you do they get nasty, LOL.

I apologize for the sarcasm in my return post but I just could not resist
No need to, I didn't perceive it as sarcasm. I'm prolly sarcasm-impaired :-]

OK, now you indicated it's about determining anon proxy status allow me to digress for a moment: "These are with the owners consent I have to assume due to it being a rather large and legit site" is IMHO a statement based on false grounds, because you do not have the explicit owners consent to use that specific proxy (unless it is your ISP in which case you have a contract). Even if you're talking about a subscription to a site that lists proxies, the owners of that site don't have explicit consent to list, use or grant usage of specific proxies. Picture this: your network facing router runs Squid on a nice, fat pipe and you didn't ACL it properly. I'll abuse it like there's no tomorow, eating up your bandwidth and resources. You of course can't be happy with me leeching what you have to pay for, innit? I'm not trying to force idea's on you, but like I said in warez threads: admit you're wrong and be done with it. That deserves respect IMO.


...all that said
I am wondering if there is a quick and dirty way to do this with some open source programs and I do not have learn how to script this myself.
Quite easy but if you want a simple C app you may find it even easier to use Proxycheck, if you don't mind perl then go for Anti-censorship Tools (proxytools), else maybe PHP check out ProxyScore. If you're going for Proxycheck make sure you check the source and agree with using DSBL. If I'd use it I'd prolly scrub the source.
ProxyScore (PHP): http://clan.cyaccess.com/?menups&proxyscore
Proxycheck (C): http://www.corpit.ru/mjt/proxycheck.html
Anti-censorship Tools aka proxytools (Perl): http://freshmeat.net/projects/proxytools/


And since you're familiar with using AA Tools I don't have to remind you about precautions and misconceptions wrt proxy usage, right?