Usage

Pactester is a command-line tool designed to test PAC/WPAD files quickly and easily. Below are some common usage examples and explanations of available options.

Basic usage using a local PAC file:

pactester -f wpad.dat example.com

This will use the default PAC file to determine the proxy for example.com.

Specifying a PAC file URL:

pactester -u http://example.com/wpad.dat example.com intranet.local

This downloads the PAC file from the given URL and tests the specified hostnames against it.

Using a local PAC file:

pactester -f ./wpad.dat example.com

This uses a local PAC file instead of downloading one.

Example with DNS check and verbose output:

pactester -u http://example.com/wpad.dat --check-dns -v example.com intranet.local

This downloads the PAC file, verifies DNS resolution for each hostname, and prints verbose logs.

Available options

  • -u, --pac-url Specify a URL to download the PAC/WPAD file from.

  • -f, --pac-file Use a local PAC file path instead of downloading.

  • --check-dns Check if each hostname can be resolved via DNS before testing the proxy.

  • --purge-cache Remove all cached PAC files and related data.

  • -c, --cache-dir Specify a custom directory for cache storage (default is usually a system cache folder).

  • -e, --cache-expires Set cache expiration time in seconds (e.g., 3600 for 1 hour).

  • -n, --no-cache Disable caching entirely; always fetch fresh PAC files.

  • -v, --verbose Increase output verbosity for more detailed logs.

  • -vvv, --debug Enable debug mode with very detailed logging for troubleshooting.

  • --version Display the current version of Pactester.

Note

-pac-url and --pac-file are mutually exclusive. You have to choose one of them only.

For a complete list of options and their descriptions, run:

pactester --help