Friday, November 11, 2011

System Proxy Problem in Ubuntu 11.10

Recently I installed Ubuntu 11.10 in a computer in our lab. Since we have to go through a proxy server in our university to access Internet, I set the system proxy for it.















But when I try to update the system or even try to install new software, it seemed the Internet connection was not working properly. After trying different things, I realized that the system proxy settings that I apply system wide is not worked properly. However when I set proxy settings in the Firefox web browser, it could go Internet. All the other things of the system that goes through the proxy settings didn't work.

After searching over the web I realized that this is a bug in Ubuntu 11.10 version that the system proxy is not applying system wide. The only option is to set the proxy manually without using the GUI. I found this from a forum in the web.

This is how to set proxy manually.

First open a command line and type this,

sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02proxy

In the gedit editor enter the following lines,

1:  Acquire::http::Proxy "http://192.248.16.90:3128/";  
2:  Acquire::ftp::Proxy "ftp://http://192.248.16.90:3128/";   

You have to replace the "address" field and "port" field with the actual IP address and port number of the proxy server. Then save and close the editor. Now you should be able to update the system and install software from the software center.