[Only replying to dextrose-list, so that OLPC and Sugar upstream guys may provide an independent feedback] <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Sridhar Dhanapalan <<a href="mailto:sridhar@laptop.org.au" target="_blank">sridhar@laptop.org.au</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">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.</blockquote><div> Sridhar, that was pointed out by Ruben already before; the ticket <a href="https://sugardextrose.org/issues/2644">https://sugardextrose.org/issues/2644</a> now persists the settings to both gconf and dconf now. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> 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. </blockquote><div> 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 :-\ </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> 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? </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> _______________________________________________ Dextrose mailing list <a href="mailto:Dextrose@lists.sugarlabs.org">Dextrose@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose</a> </blockquote></div> Regards, Ajay Garg Dextrose Developer Activity Central: <a href="http://activitycentral.com/" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" target="_blank">http://activitycentral.com</a>