[aprssig] Xastir and a proxy?

[Curt, WE7U]

On Tue, 7 Dec 2004, Rick Green wrote:

>  WHat protocol does it use when downloading the online maps?  I thought
> it was http.

My boo-boo.


> Or does it link to an external program (wget) to do the
> routine stuff (why re-invent the wheel?).

libcurl or wget.


> So the question might become
> "Does wget respect the HTTP_PROXY environment variable?"  Or, "Does xastir
> properly pass on the environment variable(s) when invoking other external
> programs?"

It shouldn't change it.  We just invoke a system call for wget.
Looking at the wget man page it appears to have proxy support on by
default if the "appropriate" environment variable is defined.  I
also see "--proxy-user", "--proxy-passwd", "--http-user",
"--http-passwd" flags that can be passed to wget.  If we need to add
support for these to the GUI, we can I suppose.

Then again it says that using the command-line flags with the
user/password make them visible via "ps" (of course), and that the
recommended method is to put them in a ".wgetrc" or ".netrc" file
and set the permissions for those files so that only you can read
them.  Makes sense.

Libcurl has no mention of proxy servers in its man-page, so perhaps
the solution might be to de-install libcurl (or make it temporarily
hard-to-find for Xastir's compile), then compile Xastir with wget
support only?

So... It looks like you would set up the ".wgetrc" file and the
HTTP_PROXY environment variable, then disable libcurl for Xastir's
compile, then you should be all set.  Perhaps someone could try this
and report back, hopefully with a write-up for the docs that other
people could easily follow.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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