Bug#612109: netcfg: Please auto-detect the need for an HTTP proxy
reassign 612109 choose-mirror-bin
thanks
netcfg has nothing whatsoever to do with choosing a mirror. Just sayin'.
On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 03:39:37PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> The question asking for an HTTP proxy could instead auto-detect the need
> for a proxy by trying to fetch a fixed URI (networkcheck.debian.org?)
> and only asking for a proxy if that fails to return the expected content
> of that URI. cjwatson suggested that due to the need for timeouts (in
> case of firewalls that drop packets rathe than rejecting them), the
> detection might need to start asynchronously earlier in the installer,
> but even doing it synchronously (and telling the user they can cancel if
> they know they need a proxy) seems like an improvement.
Could you provide some rationale for using a fixed and different URI rather
than just attempting to get the Release file without a proxy and then going
back to (optionally) asking for a proxy if that fails? (I'm thinking a UI
*very* similar to netcfg's "try DHCP, if that fails ask to try again or
configure manually".
> Checking for the expected content of that URI would also allow detecting
> captive portals. At first this could just warn, but long-term the text
> installer could try launching a text-based browser like links2, and the
> graphical installer could perhaps embed gtk-webkit. :)
Again, I can't see how you couldn't do this by retrieving a Release file.
It should be possible to detect whether wget succeeded or failed, and then
scan for whether the "successful" download looks like a Release file or not.
- Matt
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