[Adium-devl] Global proxy settings?

[Andrew Harvey]

As someone who has spent a couple of years tunneling out of  
unfriendly networks, Adium's Proxy support could be improved  
somewhat, but it will work well enough. Personally, I found it  
easiest to somehow get an SSH connection out (I used various  
combinations of HTTP proxies, SOCKS proxies, death rays and brute  
force) and then simply use good old SSH -D to create a SOCKS proxy,  
and then set that as the proxy in system preferences, while  
specifying a different HTTP proxy. It worked for me, but I can see  
how it might not work for many others.

What would be fantastic would be (DUN DUN DUN!) AppleScript support,  
through which proxy settings could easily be set, allowing me to use  
startup items, Quicksilver or some sort of black magic to trigger  
various scripts for various configurations. I know, I'm just  
dreaming, but it would be really cool. Of course, I'm more than happy  
to replace AS with a real scripting language like python, ruby or  
lua, but I get that the feeling that's dreaming to a greater extent.

Andrew

On 01/03/2007, at 5:20 PM, Viksit Gaur wrote:

>
>
> On 2/28/07, Chris Forsythe <chris at adiumx.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 28, 2007, at 11:38 PM, Viksit Gaur wrote:
>
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > Thanks for the prompt responses.
> >
> > @Evan - Right, I know that Mac OS X has a number of network
> > "Locations" which can be changed at will, and can have proxy
> > settings associated with it. But, consider a scenario where you've
> > connected to a VPN. Now, I go to locations -> My VPN Location, and
> > can select a system wide proxy, perhaps an HTTP at port 80. But,
> > this proxy might be unfriendly to IM connections, this being of
> > course, dependent on the whims and fancies of people who run this
> > particular proxy - perhaps even blocking connections to known IM
> > servers.
> >
>
> In my experience you can usually get around unfriendly networks like
> this with multiple solutions which are a lot simpler. My previous
> email about an stunnel works well in some situations, or even just an
> evdo card to get around the mess entirely.
>
> Stunnel is an option, yes. but evdo cards - I'm assuming you mean  
> something by Sprint et al? - how would that help? If you're on a  
> VPN, local LAN access is blocked anyway (for instance, the Cisco  
> VPN Client or other IPSec based systems)
>
>
> > Another issue is of using different proxies for different
> > resources. I'm not too familiar with the internals of advanced
> > proxies in use today, but I've come across a couple of cases where
> > I need one proxy for a web browser to access public web resources/
> > Library access, and another for IM/IRC, for reasons I'm not really
> > aware of. Also, some places provide auto configuration files which
> > can differ across networks/resources. This makes using a global
> > proxy (systemwide) cumbersome, because of the need to manually keep
> > editing stuff. Oh, and what if you're on a network where you don't
> > need a proxy for IM, but do for other stuff? (A hypothetical
> > situation)
>
> I have a hard time believing that more than a very small subset of
> our users are running into this problem. Is there any reason why this
> could not be put into a third party plugin?
>
> Thats an idea. Sure, if everyone feels that this isn't really  
> needed in the main Adium package, a plugin would be a good option  
> as well. AFAIK, most major IM clients - gaim for instance, have  
> some option for global proxies across accounts.
>
> >
> > With the solution I'm proposing, you can have separate profiles for
> > Adium, that may or may not utilize the system wide settings - the
> > choice is up to the user, of course.
> >
> > Another important factor is that there is no interface to set a
> > common proxy for ALL accounts  on an Adium instance. So, if you've
> > got 6 accounts, and you want to flip back and forth between "System
> > wide proxy settings" and "No Proxy", you need to either manually go
> > and flip the check box on each account, or disable proxies from the
> > System wide network settings.
>
> The usage you describe here could also be taken care of with seven os
> x locations, with one being "no proxy".
>
> Ah,  clarification about accounts. By account, I mean an account on  
> Adium - Yahoo, MSN, et al, not network locations et al. So 6  
> different accounts, each editable. Not sure how 7 different os x  
> locations would help - there is still the problem of setting up a  
> proxy in each account setting. Of course, each could be set to  
> configure itself from the systemwide settings, and you could have  
> the proxy/no proxy set there.. But there's still a dependence on  
> global settings. I would think that having an option on Adium to  
> break out if need be would be nice.
>
> > IMHO, it would be a more elegant solution to have some flexibility
> > for this on the Adium level.
> >
>
> I'm not seeing how this is "more elegant". Could you explain how this
> would be "more elegant"?
>
> Well, in that you would have greater control over  proxy settings  
> specifically for multiple Adium accounts. And have it separate from  
> Systemwide settings offered by os X. Not sure if elegant is the  
> right word, but either way :)
>
> Cheers,
> Viksit
>
> Chris
>
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>
>
> -- 
> Viksit Gaur
> http://viksit.com
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