How do I set a network proxy with Network Manager?

Question

I am a student and using Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 as dual boot.

In my college, we have a proxy server, so all I need to use the internet is set the proxy settings in Preferences -> Network Proxy and I am set to go.

At my home, I have a broadband connection that requires me to enter my username and password and then its all set on Windows. However, I have no idea how to get it right with Ubuntu.

Once I tried doing that by setting the PPPOE settings and then it worked on Ubuntu too, but when I came back to college, the internet stopped working.

All I remember is that I did some stuff with setting some Network Manager stuff to false or something like that, and it continued working with the proxy server too.

Please help me with this, so that I can easily use internet both at home and college too.

Answer 1

Make sure the interface you want to use to connect to the internet isn't configured in /etc/network/interfaces, since that will interfere with NetworkManager handling it.

You should probably also check whether the PPPoE connection you're using, if it's configured in NetworkManager, isn't set to Connect Automatically, since if it is... then it will connect automatically rather than connecting to a non-PPPoE connection profile.

If your PPPoE connection is configured in NetworkManager, you will find it by right-clicking on the NetworkManager icon in gnome-panel, and clicking "Manage Connections...", then going to the DSL tab.

If it doesn't show up there, make sure you don't have special settings for eth0 under /etc/network/interfaces; any line starting with iface eth0 should be removed from there for NetworkManager to take control of that device.