How do I set a system wide proxy with a username and password?

Question

I'm trying to set a system wide proxy, and I'm specifically having difficulties with apt-get for installing applications on my Ubuntu. I'm in a university using a proxy server with username/password. I'm aware of setting a proxy with username and password in the following manner:

http://username:password@proxy.thing.com:8080/

But it fails, as a critical example with apt-get. Username contains backslash( \ ) in it and I'm wondering whether that could be a problem for failing. I'd be grateful with any input on this.

Answer 1

Try escaping the backslash like this:

http://user%5Cname:password@proxy.thing.com:8080/

where '%5C' is the URL-encoded value for the backslash character. See this background.

Answer 2

Historically, you could set up a proxy using environment variables like http_proxy=http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@PROXYIP:PROXYPORT

So it might be possible to specify the username and password in the host field of the Network section like above, i.e. myuser:mypass@my.proxy.com

Answer 3

1. Open Network by pressing Alt + F2 and typing the same.
2. You should clearly see the Network Proxy tab.
3. After selecting the tab, select the Method to be manual and set all the proxies.
4. Then, click Apply system wide, it will ask for your password, and you're done.