Features/Automatic Proxy Settings

Summary

Allow the user to setup transparent Proxy service.

Owner

Ariel Calzada

Current status

• Targeted release: 0.98
• Last updated: 2013-01-07
• Percentage of completion: 80%

Detailed Description

Sugar deployments and users need to be able to set a proxy to access some network services.

In this entry you can learn a way of configuring automatic proxy server (PAC and WPAD) for testing purposes.

For testing a proxy in XO you can go to: Features/Proxy Settings

Benefit to Sugar

See Detailed Description.

Scope

It's not directly related to XO, it's just a part for building an environment for automatic proxy testing in XO

PAC - Proxy Auto Config

PAC method for proxy is very simple. You have to create a web-accessible file with special syntax in which you include proxy server data. This example works with Apache server. You can take a look to Bibliograpy for more info about PAC file configuration and installation in other webservers.

Steps:

• Install httpd web server:

  yum install httpd

• Enable configuration override with htaccess

  vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

   <Directory "/var/www/html">
                      
   #                  
   # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",
   # or any combination of:
   #   Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews
   #                  
   # Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All"
   # doesn't give it to you.
   #                  
   # The Options directive is both complicated and important.  Please see
   # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options
   # for more information.
   #                  
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
                      
   #                  
   # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
   # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
   #   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
   #                  
   AllowOverride None                                                         
                      
   #                  
   # Controls who can get stuff from this server.
   #                  
   Order allow,deny   
   Allow from all     
                      
   </Directory>       

   Change AllowOverride None ==> AllowOverride All

• Create .htaccess file:

  AddType application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig .pac

• Create PAC file and add the following content:

  function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
      return "PROXY PROXY_SERVER_IP_OR_HOSTNAME:PORT";
  }

• Upload both file to the same location:

 mv proxy.pac /var/www/proxy.pac
 mv .htaccess /var/www/.htaccess

• Restart apache /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

WPAD - Web Proxy Autodiscovery

Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol, or WPAD, is a technology which aids a web browser in automatically detecting the location of a PAC file using DNS or DHCP.

A browser that supports both DHCP and DNS will first attempt to locate a PAC file using DHCP, and should a DHCP configuration not exist fail-over to DNS WPAD will occur. If neither are configured, a browser will fail open. Source

Bibliography

• Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol
• FindProxyForURL
• Proxy Auto Config