Re: Proxy seetings and other desktop issues

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2000 at 08:49:03PM +0500 or thereabouts, Hassan Aurag wrote:
[slightly reformatted]
> The trouble is that we have a firewall that I DON'T want to defeat with
> something like http tunneling. I want to work with it normally.
> Netscape/helix update are just about the only apps that can work with
> it, it seems. Not even helix installer can get through it.
> The other problem is that you have to set those proxy settings all over
> the place assuming they work. This means in theory:
> gnome weather, gftp, ncftp, slash applet, gnorpm
> 
>  Can some kind soul code (because I wouldn't even know where to start)
> some kind of tcp wrapper for gnome apps, so that I'd set proxy settings
> under Control Center and be done with it once and for all. Mozilla and
> helix update work well with those which means the code to do it must be
> there somewhere. Btw, gftp and ncftp fail miserably or maybe I am just
> dumb. Plain old ftp works like a marvel but you have to do it manually.
> 
> All one has to do is to be able to catch all network calls (wrapping?)
> and handle them like Mozilla/helix-update do.

Did anyone follow-up on this? I too would love to see a way to say
"here's my proxies for everything unless I specify differently", 
having just had to adjust lynx, mozilla, netscape, and so far not
having got around to gnorpm, ncftp(get), wget, and so on. I don't
even know whether some of those need them.

The only thing I wonder: I came across a mention of the "environment
variables http_proxy and ftp_proxy" recently. Um. In a bug report, of 
all things :) http://bugs.gnome.org/db/75/7503.html mentions them. I 
have never met them. I cannot find them in 'man bash'. I don't know 
what introduced them. Lynx has something like them in the lynx.cfg file, 
but I thought they must be Lynx-specific. But are they in fact something 
you can expect to find on all platforms, and if so, would this do?

Telsa