On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 09:26:31AM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 11:31:37PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote: > > I do think we ought to attempt autodetection for this. As long as a > > means exists for preseeders and expert installs to specify one anyway > > (for optional caching proxies), autodetecting by default seems like a > > good idea, to eliminate one of the more highly technical questions in > > the install. > > Just how would you autodetect if a proxy should be used? You can detect > if internet access works without one perhaps, but that doesn't mean a > proxy isn't desired.
"Desired but not required for outbound connectivity" seems like exactly the case for having an alternative means of specifying the proxy, such as going back from the download screen, handling errors, and supporting expert installs. > I have actually encountered a network where the > firewall allowed access to one debian mirror without going through the > proxy, but security required going through a proxy. Good luck detecting > that mess correctly. Fascinating. I think we can only deal with network-specific brokenness to a point; if we attempt to download from security and get through, we could consider the network apparently working without a proxy. (Debian really needs a canonical "connectivity-detection" page, similar to Google's /generate_204 page.)
