CrunchBang Linux

canpolat

Member

Registered: 2012-09-25

Posts: 28

Proxy-aware cb-welcome

Hi,

This is a suggestion based on http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … oxy-issue/ I wanted to create a new thread to discuss the issue in general (as opposed to helping with a user's problem).

cb-welcome works great when there is a direct internet connection. But when the user is behind a proxy which may or may not require authentication, then there is a pitfall: cb scripts use apt to install the components, but the internet connection is checked either by ping (Statler) or by wget (Waldorf). So:

• In the case of Statler, the only way to handle this situation is short circuiting the script (comment out the internet check). So, I'll not discuss this case.

• In the case of Waldorf, if the proxy configuration is done for wget but not done in apt.conf, although the internet connection test passes, installation attempts will fail. And vice versa: even if the apt.conf is correct, the internet connection test may fail, so cb-welcome may not proceed.

I can think of two solutions:

1. If the internet connection test fails, ask a new question: "Are you behind a proxy?" If user answers "yes", then print a help text to guide the user through different proxy settings (both for wget and apt) needed for cb-* to proceed.

2. Replace the internet connection check with apt-get update. Is there a reason to not run this command without user interaction? This will eliminate the need to update proxy settings for both wget and apt. The drawback here is that update takes a long time --even to fail. So, if the settings are wrong, the user will potentially see lots of ugly failure messages (maybe this can be hidden?). So, before running this command user may be reminded of any proxy settings needed for the next step.

If there is a way to configure the proxy system-wide, perhaps this discussion is not that interesting (and please let me know so that I don't have to repeat the same steps everytime I install a system). Otherwise, the second option looks better to me. What do you say?

Last edited by canpolat (2012-10-03 17:31:21)

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"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. " ~Einstein

canpolat

Member

Registered: 2012-09-25

Posts: 28

Re: Proxy-aware cb-welcome

One other option I evaluated but didn't like was to apt-get install a tiny package just to check the internet connection, but if the package is already installed on the system (cb-welcome can be run long after the installation), then this may be misleading. And downloading a package that is not needed is not a good thing (perhaps it can be deleted right after the download?).

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"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. " ~Einstein