We've been put in the unenviable position of having to change system proxy
in the near future across our system. Whole sale migration during the school
year.
We have a way to change proxy settings in Macs (ARD unix commands), and
Windows - (AD distributed job, we're not a NetWare shop.)
I thought folks using Macs might benefit from our investigations.
Here's the info on managing Apple proxy settings. The ARD command is a unix
command "networksetup" which has many switches one can use. It's available
by terminal on ARD Admin machines (not target machines.) So for example if
you needed to change the proxy bypasses.... ARD the following unix commands:
networksetup -listallnetworkservices
networksetup -getproxybypassdomains "Built-in Ethernet" # to see what's set
networksetup -setproxybypassdomains "Built-in Ethernet" <servername>
<servername2> #etc
You must know the name of the network port you are using. So for example
"AirPort" is a common alternative.
The main problem we had was that Firefox doesn't use system settings and
that means taking over profiles wholesale and most likely people loose
bookmarks. This is the main common complaint on feedback lists I've seen.
There is an implementation on Linux but simply repeating the same entries on
Macs doesn't work and often it doesn't work on Linux either (I'm given to
understand.) There are rumors Firefox 3 will have some feature for all Oses
along these lines but I'm sure that's a challenging thing to accomplish and
it's not ready.
However we've found an alternative but therein is potential problem - this
is where it comes from
http://blog.curthread.org/projects/systemproxy
The advantage of the extension choice is that it breaks the process into two
stages - first we unite the Firefox and system ( and therefore Safari,
Entourage, any proxy aware programs set to use the system Proxy -
EarthBrowser?...) then we change the system entries as needed. The way the
installer works is it adds a section to the Firefox Pref pane that
configures proxies and bypasses. It defaults with a check box to "use the
system settings." It also allows a user to uncheck and manage the proxy
settings themselves. A consideration for this extension is that it comes
very off mainstream software distribution - it was made by a programmer who
just offers it on their blog. So there is no formal community of users
formally giving feedback. It could be malware. However the piece of
software and all subparts have been scanned against virustotal.com by me -
it will scan a file against 32 AV softwares including big names like FRISK
Software (F-Prot), Grisoft (AVG), Kaspersky Lab (AVP), McAfee (VirusScan),
Sophos (SAV), and Symantec (Norton Antivirus) (when they aren't too busy.)
There are no mentions on the web of people having problems using the
extension - but then there are hardly any mentions of anyone using it. The
few mentions that do exist are all thankful and positive except one though
there was no feedback on what didn't work. I have found that the extension
doesn't work (it does run but doesn't pick up the proxy settings) if the
machine is running Panther. The extension can be installed so that it works
for all user accounts on a machine (typically extensions are loaded only in
user profiles but there is a supported way to install it into the program
so that everyone gets it without cluttering up the user profile more.)
Here's the command line to install an extension into Firefox (line wrapped,
sorry):
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -install-global-extension
"<path to>/<name of ext>.xpi" #keep the quotes
See
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/extensions/commandlineoptions.html
And
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Installing_extensions
for partial information
Notice no spaces in the "-install-global-extension" part, and spaces before
and after.
Once installed one can ARD it (or the whole of Firefox) to the same relative
location.
I have tested the extension in Tiger and Leopard and it "just works" within
the options of things I've tried. I'd also suggest including it on images.
Mind the Apple system proxy settings can be change either manually or via
ARD with terminal commands and Firefox would just pick them up. No restart
necessary - in fact the browser can be still running and the next page load
will use the new proxy settings. The extension can be deleted at any time
and on next launch of Firefox it's gone. Sorry there's no version for
Windows - there are extensions, very high profile extensions that have been
in the community of software developers for some time, that let you switch
settings from one set to another but none I've seen that slave the entries
to the system ones in Windows.
The advantages of the script choice is that it lets us set other settings
(like turning off password saving, web form field fill-ins, as well as
setting things like home pages) while leaving things we don't want to touch
alone. This is particularly a problem in some of the Elementary schools
where we still have some schools on Panther where the alternative will be
taking over the whole profile and people will loose bookmarks they've added.
And since one of our own has made it we have the ability to amend how the
program works and which settings it sets. We'd have to decide what settings
we want set. The problem in the short term is it's just in the alpha stage.
For example we don't know when the new prefs kick in - does the browser have
to quit and relaunch in order for the settings to take? We'll have that
answer soon. We also have the ability to potentially set Firefox settings so
they always start with our defaults even if a user changes them - and we can
implement our choices in how we do this whether we use a script to
distribute the information or more manually via ARD (though again bookmarks
can be lost at some stages of implement this if we don't use the script at
all.) The script may be adaptable to Windows but there's no way to
distribute it yet.
For interest people may want to read http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file
About these "default" settings.
For Panther the main options are:
1) Take over the whole profile and set the settings (whether by user.js or
regular.) This is my main suggestion though it's more complicated to do but
bookmarks are vulnerable and may be required to be replaced.
2) Wait for the developer of systemproxy.xpi to respond for info on getting
10.3.9 compatibility. If this came through it would be very nice.
3) Use Camino instead of Firefox - it's basically Firefox with a Safari skin
- and it uses the system proxy settings. It's current on Firefox rendering
engine and it's security but is officially another browser. But I think it
would just cause mass confusion to have another name in the mix.
--
' ' ' ' ' ' ''"""""""""""'' ' ' ' ' '
Steven Kolins
Alamance-Burlington Schools, NC USA
LanTech/Mac Systems Tech
336-516-4082
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