Ubuntu – Does xfce4 support automatic proxy configuration

I do not know if APT is able to use a PAC file directly but you can (with quite a bit of work/understanding) extract the relevant proxy information from the PAC file itself and use this information to configure APT to use a HTTP proxy.

The PAC file essentially consists of a JavaScript function. The return statement (one or more) of the function returns the proxy server address and port, for example:

return "PROXY proxy.some.site:8080; DIRECT";

Just look at your PAC file by entering its address in a browser. With this information you can create an APT configuration file:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/proxy

You should modify the file so that it contains the following information:

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://proxy.some.site:8080";

Save the file and the next apt-get run should use the configured proxy setting.

It would be nice if APT could work with PAC files because we also use them in our company. Perhaps somebody else knows if/how it works...

The Ubuntu Wiki Page for AptGet also has some hints how to configure a proxy for APT.

See also https://superuser.com/questions/323488/ubuntu-system-wide-proxy-auto-configuration-pac-script

Here a several ways to do this.

Network based configurations

DHCP

If you are using DHCP, you can set here an option configuring your clients. For this specify in your dhcpd configuration:

option wpad-url  code 252 = text;
option wpad-url  "http://mywebserver/myconf.pac" ;

DNS

An alternate possibility is to use the DNS to specify the pac file.

See e.g. wikipedia

Before fetching its first page, a web browser implementing this method sends the local DHCP server a DHCPINFORM query, and uses the URL from the WPAD option in the server's reply. If the DHCP server does not provide the desired information, DNS is used. If, for example, the network name of the user's computer is pc.department.branch.example.com, the browser will try the following URLs in turn until it finds a proxy configuration file within the domain of the client:

http://wpad.department.branch.example.com/wpad.dat
http://wpad.branch.example.com/wpad.dat
http://wpad.example.com/wpad.dat
http://wpad.com/wpad.dat (in incorrect implementations, see note in Security below)

(Note: These are examples and may not be live URLs.)

Notes:

• The wpad.dat file may be an symbolic link to the file used in the DHCP configuration.
• The DNS based resolution has normally a lower priority as the DHCP based resolution.

System / user based configurations

system (or user) based configuration via environment variable

To use the pac file for curl and other programs you can set the environment variable auto_proxy. E.g.:

 auto_proxy=http://myserver/myconf.pac

user based configuration for applications using gconf

For adding the autoconfig url to your gconf settings you can use the following command:

gconftool-2 --set /system/proxy/autoconfig_url \
    --type string  ${auto_proxy}

lxproxy Utility for Lubuntu

Please see the community wiki. Here is the ppa for lxproxy referenced. Lxproxy claims to be a smlall gui to set a proxy server.

Application specific configuration

chromium

You may enforce that all chromium browser instances on a machine use the autoconfig url. Place a file (e.g. proxyConfig) below /etc/chromium-browser/policies/managed/ with the following content

      {
          "ProxyMode": "pac_script",
          "ProxyPacUrl": "http://myserver/myconfig.pac",
     }

Note: Placing this file below /etc/chromium-browser/policies/recommended will make this setting a default. The user is able to change this setting afterwards in his own chromium configuration.

firefox

Edit the file /etc/firefox/syspref.js and add the following lines

 lockPref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://myserver/myconfig.pac");
 lockPref("network.proxy.type", 2);

Alternate way: Set this values as user preferences via about:config.

thunderbird

Edit the file /etc/thunderbird/syspref.js and add the following lines

 pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://myserver/myconfig.pac");
 pref("network.proxy.type", 2);

Note: Due to bug #1081015 you can't lock down this setting. So it is here only possible to set a default. Ensure that this values are note overwritten by prefs.js in your active profile.