Yum and proxy

[Daniel Bittar]

Hi there people!

I've read several threads about this matter and also searched Google but the options presented did not work. The problem is that I need to use you through a proxy server. However, the proxy is authenticated and the username is an e-mail. For instance:

Proxy Server: 123 . 555 . 123 . 555
Proxy Port: 80
Username: me . again @ address . com
Password: 123a456b

Well, I tried setting the variable http_proxy like this:

export http_proxy=http : // me.again @a ddress.com : 123a456b @ 123 . 555 . 123 . 555 : 80

Obviously it didn't work as yum complained about not recognizing it since there is two @ in it. So, following some threads I altered it like this:

export http_proxy=http : // address.com \ me.again : 123a456b @ 123 . 555 . 123 . 555 : 80

* Spaces included as per forum rules.

Well, this didn't work either. However, setting the proxy by system settings in Gnome do work for the browser but not for yum. However in the browser I have to type my authentication details in a page requested by the proxy. But yum doesn't ask for authentication and the system settings doesn't have this option.

I have to mention, however, that this problem is not isolated to Fedora. I'm asking here mainly because I'm trying Fedora 17 and need your support. But the problem also happens in the recent versions of Ubuntu, but not int the latest openSUSE nor CentOS 6.2.

In openSUSE I just use Yast to set the proxy and it's authentication details and never again need to worry about it. It works for zypper, browser and so on. In CentOS 6.2 The in system settings where I can set the proxy there are fields for username and password and yum works with and so does the browser. I just set it and forget about it.

In Ubuntu there is another story. In previous version I couldn't set the password and username directly and apt_get would not work. However, using Gconftool-2 used to do the trick with the following settings.

gconftool-2 -t string -s /system/http_proxy/host 123.555.123.555
gconftool-2 -t int -s /system/http_proxy/port 80
gconftool-2 -t bool -s /system/http_proxy/use_http_proxy true
gconftool-2 -t bool -s /system/http_proxy/use_authentication true
gconftool-2 -t string -s /system/http_proxy/authentication_user me.again@address.com
gconftool-2 -t string -s /system/http_proxy/authentication_password 123a456b
gconftool-2 -t bool -s /system/http_proxy/use_same_proxy true
gconftool-2 -t string -s /system/proxy/mode manual

This, however, doesn't work anymore but at least I can use Synaptic and set the password directly in it. But I can't do anything similar in Fedora.

Does anyone have any suggestions as how to fix it? Remembering my username is an e-mail address?

Best regards,
Daniel Bittar

[PabloTwo]

You configure a proxy server for yum in the /etc/yum.conf file.
To see what entries to add to that file for a proxy server, read the manual:

man yum.conf

[Daniel Bittar]

Well, I just forgot to mention that I did try to set yum.conf. But it also didn't work. It seems that setting separated proxy, proxy_username and proxy_password causes yum to try to access internet without authentication, which doesn't work since the proxy server return an HTML page asking for the password and this makes yum fail with an error.

It would be required to have a variable like require_authentication, which isn't available, that could make yum authenticate in the first attempt.

Any other suggestion?

Thanks a lot,
Daniel Bittar.

[george_toolan]

Have you tried to escape that @ sign in your username like

Username: me . again \@ address . com

or

Username: "me . again @ address . com"

Maybe monitor the connection with wireshark to find out what exactly yum is sending to the server?

[Daniel Bittar]

Well, thank you very much. I checked and figured out that somehow the repos were configured to use https instead of http. When I changed it it worked.

Thanks you very much!
Daniel Bittar.