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I just updated from Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.10

In 12.04, I used to set up my http_proxy variable in .bashrc and then use apt-get as follows

sudo -E apt-get update

The -E option in sudo used to make the user environment variables available to sudo and apt-get would pick up the http_proxy variable.

For some reason, this method is not working in 13.10. I am repeatedly getting 407 Proxy authentication Required.

Does anybody know the reason why? How do I solve this?

Note:
I know that the other way to enable proxy for apt-get is to change settings in apt.conf. I don't want to do this as this will create a system wide setting. Also, when I am using the system at home (where there is no proxy), I will again have to go and change apt.conf.
In the above solution, I would just have to drop the "-E" option in sudo and apt-get will just attempt to directly connect to the internet.

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    The 407 error indicates apt-get is using the proxy but the username and password required are not provided or are invalid. Are you sure you added the proxy this way: export http_proxy='username:password@host:port;? And if yes, are you sure you have escaped special characters like @ and :, if you have them in your password?
    – jobin
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:30
  • Yes, I have an @ in my password and I have escaped it with %40. The same proxy is working in firefox. So, I don't think the problem is because of authentication. There is something going wrong when apt-get is getting the proxy variables
    – Hashken
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:39
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    The better way of escaping characters is using a \`, though I am not sure what %40` is. Try using \` before the @` in your password.
    – jobin
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:41
  • If you want to test, try wgeting something and see if it works.
    – Braiam
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:43
  • %40 is the HTML encoding for @. This used to work in 12.04. wget works with this too. Anyways, I tried esaping with \. Wierdly even wget does not work with this.
    – Hashken
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:49

1 Answer 1

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You should provide your proxy with the authentication parameters in your /home/$USER/.bashrc file as export http_proxy=http://username:password@host:password/.

If you have special characters(non-alphanumeric characters) like ", ', @, : etc. in your password, you should use the HTML codes for the characters instead.

For example, if you password is p@ssw0rd, you should type the password as p%40ssw0rd in the /home/$USER/.bashrc file and then export these variables to the current session as source /home/$USER/.bashrc. (%40 is the HTML code for @.)

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  • Yes, I have done that and I am able to use wget perfectly with it. The only problem is with apt-get, may be because it is being run with sudo. Sudo needs to pass on the environment variables to apt-get and this is what -E was doing. But now it doesn't seem to work
    – Hashken
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:53
  • What do you get when you do a sudo -E echo $http_proxy?
    – jobin
    Nov 11, 2013 at 5:56
  • When I do sudo -E echo $http_proxy, I get the proper value of the proxy that I had assigned. The weird part is that even sudo echo $http_proxy (without -E) produces the same result. My understanding is that it shouldn't.
    – Hashken
    Nov 11, 2013 at 6:01
  • Sincerely, no idea what's happening :(
    – jobin
    Nov 11, 2013 at 6:09
  • For some weird reason there was a wrong acquire proxy setting in my apt.conf. This was causing all the problems. Now, apt is working as expected. Thanks for your effort.
    – Hashken
    Nov 11, 2013 at 6:39

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