[Proposal pending] Make Internet Aware Application Support Network Proxy

[bigbrovar]

I currently own the Nokia N810 and found out that beside the Browser, Feed reader, and the Internet Radio app. No other Internet aware applications on diablo supports network proxy. Even the default IM application only works if you are using a direct Internet connection and will not work if you are working behind a network proxy. The OS its self allows for the user to setup a system wide proxy as part of setting up a connection profile. But most Internet aware 3rd party applications dont use it (or have embedded proxy support)

The situation is very different on my Nokia E71 every applications (including 3rd party) work using the system wide proxy settings.

It would be really cool if 3rd party application are developed to use the system wide proxy or embedded their own proxy support

[qgil]

Please use http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/ to formulate your proposals and potential solutions to implement them. Thanks!

[sjgadsby]

Thread moved to Brainstorm forum.

[allnameswereout]

Example workaround: use IPT with POSTROUTING to redirect traffic to any port 80 to 127.0.0.1 port 8080 where your proxy server runs.

[Jaffa]

Why is this a suitable solution for Brainstorm? Surely it's a bug in any application which doesn't support the proxy - certainly the built in ones, and probably third party ones!

Setting the proxy for a connection should expose http_proxy correctly, this should be used by the standard Linux libraries in the absence of a better system configuration API for proxies.

[TA-t3]

Any application using libcurl, and many do, will automatically honour the http_proxy environment variable (which is what is set by that option). And this is common for other libraries and applications too, including the 'wget' command line tool, the Konqueror browser and other browsers (mozilla-derivates). So yes, I'm with Jaffa on this one.

(Of course, there are also internet-aware applications that are not talking a protocol that could be proxy'ed this way. You can't proxy Skype through the kind of proxy that you can specify with http_proxy or ftp_proxy, for example. You may redirect them through a VPN though.)

[lma]

Originally Posted by Jaffa

Setting the proxy for a connection should expose http_proxy correctly, this should be used by the standard Linux libraries in the absence of a better system configuration API for proxies.

GConf is the right way to do it IMHO (although almost nothing seems to get it right, see bug 3783 and its dependencies). Environment variables can't be changed externally during an app's execution lifetime, so the apps can't notice proxy changes when a different network connection is activated for example.

[TA-t3]

Good point. It could be handled by using a transparent proxy instead, i.e. that the device runs IPTABLES and (http, ftp..) traffic is redirected to a proxy. iptables could then presumably be manipulated via GConf+helper app.

[lma]

A transparent proxy would be a very limited solution, as it would only work for HTTP to port 80. People serve web pages, RSS feeds, media streams etc on all sort of ports, and transparently proxying HTTPS is of course out of the question.

[TA-t3]

No, it's not limited to port 80. It's equally easy to have iptables forwarding any port. But it may not be the optimal solution still. Of course, updating any and every application to handle a change of proxy is possible, but that sounds like a lot of work and there'll always be leftovers. That's why I'm thinking along lines where you fiddle with the network itself instead (for example, starting a VPN is a way of transparently direct traffic elsewhere, although not involving a (filtering/caching) proxy).