Simon Andrews <simon.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Kulbir Saini wrote: > > Hi list, > > Whenever I try a new version of Fedora, the first problem I face > > is setting the proxy. It seems for almost every application, I have > > to specify proxy at a different place. We have this "System -> > > Preferences -> Internet and Network -> Network Proxy" app to specify > > proxy settings. But I wonder if there is some application which > > obeys these settings. > > This has come up before and it's a messy subject. I can throw into > the debate the problem of NetworkManager and proxies - since I have to > use a proxy at work, but not at home, and unsetting all the various > places you can put a proxy is a royal pain. > > The big problems are: > > 1) There is no common place to set a proxy variable. Some programs > (eg wget) look for the http_proxy environment variable. Many Gnome > programs look for the gconf setting, some programs (firefox) have > their own internal setting. > > 2) Many programs won't update proxy settings on the fly so there's no > way to transparently change a proxy without closing down and reopening > the program. Nodz! > One suggestion to get around this would be to run a proxy on localhost > and make all proxy aware applications use that in their default > install. This wouldn't actually have to do any caching - just act as a > common point at which behaviour could actually be changed without the > cooperation of the programs. Icky. > We could then put hooks into NetworkManager to change the behaviour of > the local proxy so that it either sends its requests directly to the > internet, or routes them via a secondary proxy. > > This all feels a bit icky to me - but I can't think of a nicer way of > doing this which doesn't require the cooperation of the authors of > every proxy-aware application. This is papering over the (very real) bugs in the applications (Yes, I do consider not getting and resetting proxy and other network settings transparently a bug), at a very real cost for all users. -- Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 2654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 2654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile 2340000 Fax: +56 32 2797513 -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
