[Dextrose] Harmonising network proxy settings

[Ajay Garg]

[Only replying to dextrose-list, so that OLPC and Sugar upstream guys may
provide an independent feedback]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
<sridhar at laptop.org.au>wrote:

> We've got at least three places in the system where network proxies
> can be configured:
>
>   * http_proxy environment variable
>   * gconf
>   * dconf
>
> The latter two support manual and automatic proxies.
>
> A problem is that different activities (e.g. Browse, Get Books) or
> parts of Sugar (e.g. Software Update) want to get their proxy settings
> from different sources. Also, automatic proxies don't really work in
> anything but Browse (as they are JavaScript files).
>
> All of these permutations are creating difficulties for users. Sugar
> has a Proxy applet in the Control Panel, which AFAICS only updates
> gconf.


Sridhar, that was pointed out by Ruben already before;
the ticket https://sugardextrose.org/issues/2644 now persists the settings
to both gconf and dconf now.





> We've modified this behaviour in our builds to write the Manual
> proxy setting to the http_proxy environment variable so that software
> like yum (which we rely upon for OS updates), Software Update and Get
> Books can function.
>
> In our schools it is common to require proxy authentication to get
> online, often with a PAC/WPAD file that prompts the user for
> credentials when they try and access a Web page. In these schools,
> they must specify the proxy twice - the Manual one first and then the
> Automatic.
>

You mean both "Manual" and "Automatic" modes are working at once? As far as
I know, that's impossible.

I am sure I am not understanding this correctly :-\




>
> We commonly come across situations where teachers understandably think
> they have full Internet access because Browse is able to load Web
> pages. What they don't realise is that the rest of the system does not
> have Internet access, meaning that (amongst other things) they cannot
> update the OS or activities.
>
> What I'm wondering is whether we can devise a means to simplify this
> confusion for developers and users alike. For example, can we
> standardise around one library or API call for Sugar and all
> activities?

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Regards,

Ajay Garg
Dextrose Developer
Activity Central: http://activitycentral.com
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