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How do you configure proxy settings in the Ubuntu Server or Minimal (CLI) versions using the terminal?

Braiam
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Asad
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3 Answers3

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System-wide proxies in CLI Ubuntu/Server must be set as environment variables.

  • Open the /etc/environment file with vi (or your favorite editor). This file stores the system-wide variables initialized upon boot.

  • Add the following lines, modifying appropriately. You must duplicate in both upper-case and lower-case because (unfortunately) some programs only look for one or the other:

    http_proxy="http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"
https_proxy="http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"
ftp_proxy="http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"
no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com"
HTTP_PROXY="http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"
HTTPS_PROXY="http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"
FTP_PROXY="http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"
NO_PROXY="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com"

  • apt-get, aptitude, etc. will not obey the environment variables when used normally with sudo. So separately configure them; create a file called 95proxies in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/, and include the following:

    Acquire::http::proxy "http://myproxy.server.com:8080/";
Acquire::ftp::proxy "ftp://myproxy.server.com:8080/";
Acquire::https::proxy "https://myproxy.server.com:8080/";

Finally, logout and reboot to make sure the changes take effect.

Sources: 1, 2. See 1 in particular for additional help, including a script to quickly turn on/off the proxies.

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ish
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    I need help on this. I've been trying this on a virtual Ubuntu Server 12.04 for a while now and it's not working. I have it working with a virtual Ubuntu 12.04 (non server). But I used the GUI to apply global settings. I've tried with quotes as the lower link suggests, and it didn't help. If I'm entering an IP address instead of a domain.com name does the formatting change? I've tried several combinations of things. – Frantumn Jun 14 '13 at 18:32
  • are you sure https_proxy="http ? – BBK Dec 24 '13 at 15:31
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    Well, this isn't a great answer in my view because the (incorrect) proxy info I gave at install time is not located in /etc/environment. – James T Snell Mar 21 '14 at 02:52
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    In my case, Ubuntu 12.04, it was not necessary to logout and reboot to make sure the changes take effect. I execute: sudo service network-manager restart – Daniel Mora Apr 03 '14 at 15:53
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    @BBK even when using https, you may still have to connect to the proxy via http, which basically enables the proxy server to eavesdrop on your presumably safe connection. – s3lph Jan 29 '15 at 15:04
  • @Doc It's almost definitely in /etc/apt/apt.conf – jfa Jul 09 '15 at 19:37
  • Note that you have are using an https url in the Acquire line for https. Don't you mean to use http://myproxy.server.com:8080/? – Dave Moten Nov 24 '15 at 00:50
  • Note that I had some problems with quoting the paths. I removed the quotes and everything worked fine! – boast Jan 22 '16 at 14:15
  • also watch out for /etc/profile.d. These settings could be in that folder as well. – boatcoder Feb 04 '16 at 21:30
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    This does work on archlinux ,even msys2(Windows). But not work on ubuntu, I keep getting Proxy request sent, awaiting response... No data received . – Mithril Jul 19 '17 at 01:50
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    do we still need to configure url in the browser to access internet through proxy ?? ( eq. inside firefox settings > Configure proxies to access internet ) – pkm Aug 05 '17 at 10:34
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If you have an authenticating proxy, then the URLs will be different. Instead of:

"http://myproxy.server.com:8080/"

You'll have:

"http://user_name:password@myproxy.server.com:8080/"

Note that these are still URLs, so passwords (and possibly usernames) will have to be URL encoded.

For example, a username of muru and a password of )qv3TB3LBm7EkP} would look like:

"http://muru:)qv3TB3LBm7EkP%7D@myproxy.server.com:8080/"

This can be done in various ways:

  1. There several websites for encoding:
  2. Programmatic:

In a pinch, you can use man url to see which characters need to be encoded:

An escaped octet is encoded as a character triplet, 
consisting of the percent character "%" followed by 
the two hexadecimal digits representing the octet code...

And the octet codes are available on man ascii.

Community
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muru
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0
                                 Proxy Environment Variables:

http_proxy: Proxy server for HTTP Traffic
https_proxy: Proxy server for HTTPS traffic
ftp_proxy: Proxy server for FTP traffic
no_proxy: Patterns for IP addresses or domain names that shouldn’t use the proxy

The value for every proxy setting, except for no_proxy, uses the same template. proxy_http=username:password@proxy-host:port

Temporary setting proxy: export HTTP_PROXY=user:pass@my.proxy.server:8080

Persistent Proxy Settings: use vim ~/.bash_profile to open bash setup file, then put following lines inside it

export http_proxy=username:password@proxyhost.com:8080
export https_proxy=username:password@proxyhost.com:8081
export no_proxy=localhost, 127.0.0.1, *.my.lan

use source ~/.bash_profile to apply the changes

Yossarian42
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