Ubuntu proxies – Grant your server access through the firewall

Once again I bumped into a proxy issue, but now I’m inside a *nix environment.

I recently installed an Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS server inside a virtual box, primarily to be used as a web server for my GitLab repo management. I was following this installation guide when suddenly in step 2, I encountered an error, something like this:

curl: (7) couldn't connect to host

Curl couldn’t seem to connect and download the ruby-2.0.0-p247.tar.gz file. Well since I thought this is just an isolated case, I opted to manually download the file and untar it. This is all fine with me until I encountered the next error:

ERROR:  Could not find a valid gem 'bundler' (>=0), here is why:
          Unable to download data from https://rubygems.org/ - Errno::ETIMEDOUT::
 Connect timed out - connect(2) (https://rubygems.org/latest_specs.4.8.gz)

This is just annoying because I know very much that this is a proxy issue. I’ve encountered this in the windows environment and I managed to fix it, as elaborated in this post. But inside ubuntu, much more a server, without any GUI (definitely not my cup of tea), I braced myself for a daunting task. Good thing, through hours of research, these valuable info popped out and saved me from spending precious time troubleshooting stuff.

• http://askubuntu.com/questions/175172/how-do-i-configure-proxies-in-ubuntu-server-or-minimal-cli-ubuntu
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/158557/setting-proxy-from-terminal

Below is the gist of the links above (credits to Baltusaj, geirha, Julian Knight, izx and the others involved in the discussion).

 

WAYS TO IMPLEMENT THE PROXY

 

>> ONE-AND-DONE USAGE

If you need to access the internet but you don’t want your proxy getting saved on a configuration file, you can do this:

sudo env http_proxy=http://<user>:<password>@<server>:<port> apt-get update

The magic command is the env http_proxy because this will carry your credentials to be able to pass through the wall.

 

>> THROUGH CONFIGURATION FILES

If you think you’d need to go back and forth through the firewall, typing the commands mentioned in the previous point would be a hassle. Below are the options:

:: Through the environment configuration file

This is the setup that worked for me.

1. Open /etc/environment file
2. Add the ff. variable-value pairs (enter both upper and lower case variables since applications only look for one or the other:

   1. http_proxy="http://<server>:<port>"

   2. HTTP_PROXY="http://<server>:<port>"

   3. https_proxy="http://<server>:<port>"

   4. HTTPS_PROXY="http://<server>:<port>"

   5. ftp_proxy="http://<server>:<port>"

   6. FTP_PROXY="http://<server>:<port>"

   7. no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com"

   8. NO_PROXY="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com"

3. Save it and you’re done

 

:: Through the 95proxies configuration file

According to izx of askubuntu.com, In some cases, apt-get, aptitude, etc. will not obey the environment variables when used normally with sudo. Configure them separately inside this file.

1. Open /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ directory
2. If the 95proxies file does not exist, make one
3. Add the ff. variable-value pairs:

   1. Acquire::http::proxy "http://<server>:<port>";

   2. Acquire::https::proxy "https://<server>:<port>";

   3. Acquire::ftp::proxy "ftp://<server>:<port>";

4. Save it and you’re done

 

DON’T FORGET TO RESTART YOUR SERVER.

 

Enjoy!

Could not fetch specs from https://rubygems.org/: Ruby Gems behind the corporate firewall

This error might be a case of running bundle, or gem install behind a (corporate) firewall. To be able to get through, you have to specify the HTTP_PROXY environment for your session.

Type the following on your current session:

set HTTP_PROXY=http://your_username:your_passoword@server:port

Also, I haven’t checked if the character case of the HTTP_PROXY matters. So to be sure, type the variable name using UPPERCASES.

To check if the variable was set, just type:

set HTTP_PROXY

If it was properly set in the previous step, then the variable-value pair will show up.

For more info, you may visit the ff. sites:

• The source of the solution above:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4418/how-do-i-update-ruby-gems-from-behind-a-proxy-isa-ntlm

• Parameter –http-proxy from inside the gem.bat (an alternative so you won’t need to set environment variable HTTP_PROXY over and over again, but I haven’t tested it):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1903005/installing-gems-from-behind-a-corporate-firewall

• If you feel like giving up and chose to do a manual work-around (this works, and this is the long-cut):

http://help.rubygems.org/kb/rubygems/installing-gems-with-no-network