Re: system wide proxy settings

[Michael Vogt <mvo ubuntu com>]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 09:26:57AM -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 2:08 AM, Michael Vogt <mvo ubuntu com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would like to add support to gnome-network-preferences to be able to
> > set the proxy systemwide (for e.g. legacy applications).
> >
> > In order to do that, I plan to have a python dbus backend on the
> > systembus that uses policykit for the authorization. If the user
> > selects in the UI that he wants to make make the setting a system
> > default, the proxy settings would be passed to this dbus service and
> > writes /etc/environment (and /etc/apt/apt.conf on ubuntu/debian
> > systems).
> >
> > Is this something that could get accepted upstream (assuming the
> > implementation is ok)?
> >
> 
> A few things frmo discussing this briefly in the office:
> 
> 1) the legacy support won't be very useful, since most proxy settings
> nowadays use the .pac autoconfiguration - which the environment
> variable probably doesn't support.
>  Or does it ?

To my knowledge there is no support for this from environment
variables. 

The use cases I have in mind (and did not explain in my initial mail,
sorry for that) for the system wide proxy settings is something like:

- stuff that does not use gconf (like kde apps) should still be able
  to pick up the proxy automatically
- the user needs to drop into recovery mode and is behind a proxy, the
  package manager on the shell should still work and talk to the 
  proxy

> 2) What _is_ useful and should be supported, imo, is to  set the
> systemwide default for the
> /system/proxy gconf settings. For that, you really want to use the
> gconf-defaults mechanism that I've added to gconf a while ago. It is
> already used by gnome-power-manager and by a patch of mine to set the
> system-wide desktop background, which
> unfortunately hasn't had a warm reception...

Thanks, that is a useful tip, I will look into that.

Thanks,
 Michael