Mandriva Proxy Nightmare
 

Dear All,

I've recently moved out of my term time university accommodation where i was behind a proxy firewall. and back home (no proxy). Unfortunately this has left me in proxy hell with firefox and thunderbird. Whilst konqueror seems to be fine and connects ok, thunderbird and firefox timeout and will not connect at all. I have unset the proxy environment variable in /etc/profile.d/proxy.sh and unset it in the firefox and thunderbird settings, but it doesn't seem to have helped. Anybody got any ideas because its really starting to annoy me.
Cheers
Graham

I've done a little digging and it would seem that this is a netscape problem. Has anybody got any experience of using Mandriva behind a proxy and then not behind one?? How do i unset the variables?? Cheers
Graham

Hi,
Maybe you must configure your Mozilla Firefox:

Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Settings

Regards,
Valentin

Yer i tried that but that isn't it. I've also installed netscape and that won't connect either, and i installed that after i moved from behind the proxy. It must be something to do with the fact that i set the proxy environment variable when i installed mandriva. Anybody got any ideas or hints??

Hi,
Try then from Mandriva Control Center -> Network & Internet -> Setup proxy server ...... -> leave all fields blank.

Regards,
Valentin

yep. Thought of that one too. There is a bug in mozilla and netscape that means that they don't listen to the drakproxy settings. Anybody got any ideas about how i can check this is the case?
Cheers
Graham

Can you try to deinstall Firefox and Netscape? Then delete folders: /home/yourname/.mozilla and /home/yourname/firefox (in your home directory you should have it). You must enable viewing of hidden files to do this. Then install fresh copy of Firefox from www.mozilla.org web site and create empty folder /home/yourname/.mozilla and /home/yourname/.mozilla/plugins (to copy plugins later). Both Firefox and Netscape, read configuration from same folder, so maybe this is a reason. I has similar situation with my daughter's PC.

Regards,
Valentin

Thats a good idea. I uninstalled firefox but i didn't delete the user folders so i'll try that. That said though i tried running both firefox, thunderbird and netscape as root :( and it still didn't work. I'll have a go at deleting my profiles, or have a look at editing the profile configuration. Thanks for your help. Regards, Graham

Update, had a go with that and no joy i'm afraid. Any other suggestions??

What do you connect through ?
If a network card then check the config of the card as it may have the proxy port after it ie
10.20.30.1:9001

Look in /etc/ for config files for hostname and hosts allow, resolveconflict , etc , that sort of file . look for a URL like the above with a proxy address on is ,delete the proxy bit, save the file and reboot . Have to be root of course

I connect through wireless. Any idea exactly what config files i should be looking for?? Cheers
Graham

Hi,
normally you can edit file /etc/sysconfig/network, but better from Mandriva Control Center -> Network&Internet ->Delete network interface you can delete your current connection. Then configure again (Setup new network interface) and then very important rerun your firewall to apply your current configuration.

Regards,
Valentin

Rite. Here is the strange thing. I connect via ethernet in halls, and via wireless at home. Everytime i reboot my computer, i have to reconfigure the wireless connection via drakconnect (but not eh ethernet), it won't start up on boot even though i ask it to. So essentially i set up a new connection everytime i reboot. Why does mandriva not start the wireless connection automatically, and do you think this might have something to do with the problem??

Hi,
I has same problem with my laptop. My wireless card is intel and use module ipw2200. When I create new wireless connection everything is OK, but after reboot my wireless card is no longer exist. So, to use internet every time I need to delete/create new wireless connection. Finally I found the problem:
When I create new connection Mandriva automatically load module ipw2200 to enable wireless card, but after reboot this module is not loaded automatically and wireless card is not exist. There is 3 ways to fix this.
1. Every time when you plan to use you WLAN, you must execute like root: modprobe ipw2200. This will start your WLAN card.
2. You can put name of your module for your WLAN in file /etc/modprobe.preload to load automatically on every boot
3. You can execute with root privileges: insmod /lib/modules/kernexxxxl/pathtomodule/yourmodule.ko.gz. This will load automatically module for your WLAN on every boot.

Of course module name depend of model of your wireless card. You can see which module enable your WLAN with using of command "lsmod" with root privileges before and after creating of new connection for WLAN.

Regards,
Valentin

Now thats a good post.
Good stuff Valentin

Hey Valentin,
Cheers for that post. Unfortunately came a little bit too late as i compiled a custom 2.16.8.6 kernel literally hours before your post which has sorted the problem with the wireless card not loading at boot-up. (removed the ndiswrapper module from the kernel configuration and compiled it from source). Miraculously this has also solved the problem with firefox, thunderbird and URPMI. So if anybody else comes across this problem, compile an updated kernel at least 2.16.8.6. I used www.kernel.org and http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_mandriva as a guideline incase somebody else had this problem. Pretty strange really, that konqueror, kmail, amsn, even wine apps would connect to the internet but URPMI, firefox, netscape and thunderbird wouldn't. Been doing some googling and it sounds like it might be a DNS problem (?). Mandriva is a wicked Distro in my opinion (sleeker, faster than Fedora, better than Ubuntu, easier than Gentoo) but they don't update the kernel very quickly!! Thanks for your help. Regards, Graham