I moved my PC onto a network where all net access must go through a proxy server. The proxy server only seems to allow access through one port (8080). On this port http and https seem to be supported(I can get both in firefox anyway)

My woes are simple. Apart from webbrowsers, no other program that needs to connect to the internet will work. Email, newsreaders, cvs, you name it, it probobly won't work behind the proxy. Some programs (yum) do have their own proxy setting but most have nothing.

There seems to be a strange lack of information on this about the net. Googling isn't helping much. Which is wierd because I thought this would be a common problem.

Can anyone offer any solutions? SSL and ssh seem to crop up in a lot of threads related to this subject. Can I set up ssl tunnelling through the proxy? Can I make it so that everything can "just work"?

you could always try get a box on the other side of the proxy and create a tunnel through the proxy using ssh and then 'route' everything through that.