[Dextrose] [OLPC-AU] Harmonising network proxy settings

[Peter Robinson]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 5:34 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.

dconf should eventually completely replace gconf. It hasn't yet
because there just hasn't been the development time. GNOME is moving
to dconf for everything which means once we do we can share the
settings between both environments.

> 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).

I suspect (although could be completely wrong) the underlying
components of Browse are getting the settings from WebKit which is
likely using the gnome dconf settings.

> All of these permutations are creating difficulties for users. Sugar
> has a Proxy applet in the Control Panel, which AFAICS only updates
> gconf. 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.

Is there any reason why you can't use a transparent proxy on the
network edge which will mean its all configured and controlled from a
central location rather than through individual settings on each of
the laptops?

> 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.
>
> 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?

That is the plan but it's a matter of resources and development time
to make that happen and ensure that all Activities are updated for the
plan.

Peter