How to Set Up SOCKS5 Proxy on Ubuntu and Linux

Linux gives you choices — sometimes too many. When it comes to routing traffic through a SOCKS5 proxy, you have three fundamentally different approaches. I've used all three in production, and each has its place.

Method 1: Environment Variables (Quickest)

The simplest approach. Set these in your terminal:

export ALL_PROXY=socks5://username:password@gw.snowpad.io:9999
export http_proxy=socks5://username:password@gw.snowpad.io:9999
export https_proxy=socks5://username:password@gw.snowpad.io:9999

What respects these: curl, wget, git, npm, pip, apt, and most CLI tools that implement proxy support.

What ignores them: GUI apps, browsers (most use system settings), and any tool that implements its own networking.

To make it permanent, add the exports to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

Method 2: proxychains4 (Per-App Routing)

proxychains4 is my go-to for scraping. It uses LD_PRELOAD to hook into an application's network calls and redirect them through your proxy. No environment variables needed.

Install:

sudo apt install proxychains4

Configure /etc/proxychains4.conf:

strict_chain
proxy_dns
tcp_read_time_out 15000
tcp_connect_time_out 8000

[ProxyList]
socks5  gw.snowpad.io  9999  username  password

Usage:

proxychains4 curl http://httpbin.org/ip
proxychains4 python3 scraper.py
proxychains4 firefox

The beauty of proxychains is that it works with any binary. You don't need the app to support proxies — proxychains forces it.

Method 3: redsocks + iptables (System-Wide Transparent Proxy)

This is the nuclear option. It creates a transparent proxy that intercepts all TCP traffic at the kernel level and routes it through SOCKS5.

Install redsocks:

sudo apt install redsocks

Configure /etc/redsocks.conf:

redsocks {
    local_ip = 127.0.0.1;
    local_port = 12345;
    ip = gw.snowpad.io;
    port = 9999;
    type = socks5;
    login = "username";
    password = "password";
}

iptables rules:

# Redirect all outgoing TCP through redsocks
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 12345
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 12345

This routes every TCP connection on your machine through Snowpad's SOCKS5 proxy. Use with caution — exclude local traffic to avoid routing loops.

Testing

curl --socks5 gw.snowpad.io:9999 -U username:password http://httpbin.org/ip

For a primer on what a proxy server actually does, read What Is a Proxy Server?.