If I try to authenticate using openid to my site, it tries to create a http or https connection to the openid server. This doesn't work, because the direct connection is blocked by the firewall.

It would be good if ikiwiki supported setting up a proxy server to solve this.

I have found if I add:

newenviron[i++]="HTTPS_PROXY=http://host.domain.com:3128";

to IkiWiki/Wrapper.pm it solves the problem for https requests, however it obviously would be preferred if the proxy name is not hard coded.

Also, the ability to set HTTPS_CA_FILE and HTTPS_CA_DIR might benefit some people. Then again, it I can't see any evidence that the SSL certificate of the server is being checked. See the bug report I filed on this separate issue.

Unfortunately, HTTP_PROXY doesn't work for http:// requests, it looks like that library is different.


Update 2008-10-26:

Better solution, one that works for both http and https, and uses config options. It appears to work...

Note that using $ua->proxy(['https'], ...); won't work, you get a "Not Implemented" error, see http://community.activestate.com/forum-topic/lwp-https-requests-proxy. Also see Debian bug #129528.

Also note that the proxy won't work with liblwpx-paranoidagent-perl, I had to remove liblwpx-paranoidagent-perl first.

louie:/usr/share/perl5/IkiWiki/Plugin# diff -u openid.pm.old openid.pm
--- openid.pm.old   2008-10-26 12:18:58.094489360 +1100
+++ openid.pm   2008-10-26 12:40:05.763429880 +1100
@@ -165,6 +165,14 @@
            $ua=LWP::UserAgent->new;
    }
 
+   if (defined($config{"http_proxy"})) {
+       $ua->proxy(['http'], $config{"http_proxy"});
+   }
+
+   if (defined($config{"https_proxy"})) {
+       $ENV{HTTPS_PROXY} = $config{"https_proxy"};
+   }
+
    # Store the secret in the session.
    my $secret=$session->param("openid_secret");
    if (! defined $secret) {

Brian May

Rather than adding config file settings for every useful environment variable, there is a ENV config file setting that can be used to set any environment variables you like. So, no changed needed. --Joey

One thing I don't like about using ikiwiki for tracking bugs is I don't get notified when changes are made :-(.

Anyway, if you look at the code I pasted above, the environment variables do not work for http:// - you have to use $ua->proxy(...) for them. This is significant, because all openid servers in my version appear to have been defined with http:// not https:// in /usr/share/ikiwiki/openid-selector/ikiwiki/openid/openid-jquery.js

Use $ua->env_proxy() to get it to read the environment variables. Then http:// does work.

Unfortunately this breaks https:// even more - but nothing I do seems to make https:// work anymore.

LWP::UserAgent defaults to not caring about proxy settings in the environment. (To give control over the result, I guess?) To get it to care, pass env_proxy => 1 to the constructor. Affected plugins: aggregate, openid, pinger. This probably wants to be on by default, and might not need to be configurable. --schmonz

Okay, in a real-world scenario it does need to be configurable. A working implementation (tested with aggregate, not tested with the other two plugins) is in my git, commit 91c46819dee237a281909b0c7e65718eb43f4119. --schmonz

Oh, and according to the LWPx::ParanoidAgent docs, "proxy support is explicitly removed", so if ikiwiki can preferentially find that installed, even with the above commit, openid won't be able to traverse a proxy. --schmonz

Available in a git repository branch.
Branch: schmonz/proxy
Author: schmonz

I've redone this from scratch, much more simply, on a new branch. --schmonz.