www/chromium ignores proxy settings [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Tom Evans]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Jeremy Chadwick
<freebsd at jdc.parodius.com> wrote:
> Correct.  You need to reference a PAC file for the browser to
> read/parse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config
>
> I can show you an example .pac file if you want; I use one to define
> what domain names my browser visits should be siphoned through a proxy
> (SSH tunnel to work) or directly via the Internet.

Interesting; I'm trying to give up using firefox (which for me leaks
memory like a sieve; I have approximately 30 tabs open, RES is > 1 GB
:/), but was having difficulties finding something to replace
FoxyProxy, which allows me to route different sites to different
proxies. This looks like it would be suitable.

>
> If what you're looking for is an HTTP or HTTPS-based proxy, you should
> be using --proxy-server, specifying the FQDN or local hostname of the
> server and what TCP port the proxy daemon is configured to accept
> requests from (e.g. port 80, or port 3128 in most cases, ex. squid).
>
>>       printenv | grep -i proxy
>>               http_proxy=http://gate.js.berklix.net:80
>>               all_proxy=http://gate.js.berklix.net
>> My proxy env vars are not being imported properly,
>> & setting on command line is ugly, but no time for more now,
>> possibly a bug/feature in chrome ? I never tried chrome before.
>
> There is a very bad assumption being made here (so far by two people).
>
> There is absolutely nothing that requires or guarantees a piece of
> software will import or make use of *_proxy environment variables.  The
> software has to explicitly state it honours and respects these, and
> provide documentation stating what it expects the syntax to be.

I think you are assuming that people are making that assumption. I
certainly wasn't, I was simply showing my proxy environment settings
to give a clear indication of how my proxies are configured for other
software.

On the other hand, though Chrome professes that it *will* infer proxy
settings from the environment:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxProxyConfig

It's documentation is lacking, and doesn't mention what environment
variables it uses.

Secondly, once you have chrome running (and have not specified
--proxy-* on the command line), chrome has a configurable dialog which
allows you to set proxy settings. Anything you place in this is
ignored, utterly and completely.

>
> The only two pieces of software I've encountered which honours these is
> perl's LWP::UserAgent (and friends), and curl.

+ Firefox, libfetch, google-cli, skype, wine, py-httplib2 ...

TBH I'm more surprised when software doesn't these days.

>
> I imagine lynx and some other software honours them as well, but again,
> assuming software honours them (or properly parses them for that matter)
> isn't reasonable.
>
> Is there any confirmed documentation that Google Chrome honours and
> makes use of *_proxy environment variables?  I see some random Linux
> user forum posts claiming it does, but there's caveats to their use
> apparently (see post from "disciple"; X users will probably want to read
> this post):
>
> http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=50196
>
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
>
>