On Sat, 2006-05-27 at 17:24 +0100, Cam wrote:
Philip
> I have a laptop that travels with me from work (where there's the
> use of web proxies) to home (where I don't), and was overwhelmed
> by the number of config files that I have to switch over every time
> I move from one place to the other.
How about having a lightweight proxy on every machine. All configuration
should point to the local proxy.
When the network changes, only the proxy need be informed of the changes.
It's a horrible hack, I know :) but configuration in the environment
isn't dynamic enough, and hell will freeze over before any new
configuration scheme reaches the level of acceptance that http_proxy in
env has.
I don't know that this is as bad a hack as it sounds. Having a very lightweight
proxy, that has some reasonable smarts such as auto-proxy config via .pac files, D-BUS
support to talk with NetworkManager, etc could be a nice way to handle it. This would
also mean that it wouldn't have to be a library - though it could provide a library
for apps that want to make use of it - which means not having to fixup apps. If NM was
extended to have some type of profile support, ala IBM Access Connections on Thinkpads, as
you swap from one wireless net to the other, you start/stop using the appropriate upstream
proxy, etc. Harder to deal with on wired connections, but something should be able to be
figured out.
--
David Hollis <dhollis(a)davehollis.com>