AltME groups: search

Has anyone had any problems with getting Altme working thru a proxy?

I go out of town once a month, and have to use a squid proxy.  I 
can get IE, Firefox, and one of my own rebol apps to work thru the 
proxy, but not AltME.

Have you filed in all the proxy settings?  I'll assume so............perhaps 
you can send me all your settings so we can try to figure out why 
it might not work.

There's no way to set the gateway in the proxy settings .. is that 
important ?

I get the proxy ip address, type and port appear on the proxy server 
field.

(1) mark all messages in all groups as read (handy is your not online 
for a long time)

(2) There are some bugs in the proxy configuration reading. mixedup 
config settings etc...
(3) Scaling Fonts..very handy for the disabled readers

(4) Web Interfacing towards ALTME! instead of using the client use 
a webinterface, no problems with proxy's etc anymore...i hope ;-)
(5) ALTME API/SDK... for users to build bots ;-)

(1) per user rights (read/write/manage on groups)
(2) proxy settings that works

Just tested Altme against squid and it seems to work thru the proxy 
okay.

Is AltMe working fine thru proxy servers? Today I tryed to use it 
at work but I couldn't connect.

doesn't work for me thru a proxy server

;serwer proxy


p: make port! tcp://:80

p/awake: func [ port /local  data conn targed cmd partner url 
] [



conn: first port
wait conn
data: to-string copy conn

replace/all data "^M" ""
source data

targed: copy/part data find data "HTTP/1.1"
data: find/tail data "^/"
print targed

cmd: parse targed none

url:  decode-url cmd/2 

if not url/path  [url/path: "" ]

if not url/target  [url/target: ""]

partner: open/no-wait to-url rejoin [ "tcp://" url/host ":80" ]




insert partner rejoin [ cmd/1" /" url/path url/target " HTTP/1.1^/" 
 data]

wait partner

tmp: copy partner




close partner



insert conn tmp



close conn 

]


append system/ports/wait-list p


open/binary/no-wait p
 wait []


halt

The same bot  came back yesterday, via an anonymous proxy.

We are not alone -- this outfit is probing flaws in HTML forms on 
many (non-REBOL sites).

It would seem a reasonable security test on many websites to not 
allow sign-ups or feedback messages (etc) from anonymous proxies.

anyway - it would be cool to have really small thingy, which is able 
to do webserving, proxy (eventually), sendmail .... well, as for 
webserving purposes, I can imagine very small distro, with just cheyenne 
and rebol :-)

Any SSH / OpenVPN experts here? I have a little strange problem. 
I run my SSHD on port 443, so that I can connect to it via a HTTPS 
proxy. Than I use "dynamic portforwarding" to tunnel all kind of 
applications through the SSH connect.

Stick a proxy in the middle and check the data stream?

Also, there was problem, that the same client could be served by 
different process, so fastcgi guys implemented some kind of "afinity 
patch", kind of proxy, which then connected the same client always 
to the same process.

OS has a proxy auto detect  option. Does anyone have an example to 
do this?

Try again. Altme has an OS proxy auto detect  option. Does anyone 
have an example to do this?

Thanks Peter, But your suspicion is corrent ;-). I'm actually after 
the way altme & browser plugin read the systems proxy setup... I 
want to import those proxy settings automatically where possible

...and I agree with you, that sometimes ppl don't want to install 
something ... the worst thing is, that in many cases, ppl are behind 
the firewall/proxy, and rebol fails here - blocking like mad....

Is Uniserve integrating your NTLM auth scheme with the Proxy component?

Yes, in a service called "Proxy-NTLM", but not yet released.

I thought about making a standalone exe with Proxy-NTLM as replacement 
to this python product : http://www.geocities.com/rozmanov/ntlm/

do you mean MS sql server?

Galt Barber wrote an SQL -Proxy for MS-SQL7 a few years ago. Modifying 
his script I was able to snoop the connections to the Caché DB too.

if any one can point me to some sources it would be great.

 what sources? i thought you wanted to write the proxy in another 
 language.

But thinking more, i guess you planned to offer an encapped rebol-proxy.

Oh. a real plain /pro? But sure somebody else can encap? Just build 
a tcp-proxy and they encap it?

Is that what you want to do ? Because I just use Privoxy (a web proxy) 
to filter out the ads.

If you need to access other servers, put a proxy on the one you are 
allowed to access.

but like the first plugin version do not forget to take proxy configuration 
of IE or FireFox and the bypass-proxy input !!!!!!

As for things like do-browser, it would be nice if the copy of REBOL 
called by the plugin could be passed some callbacks to which it would 
delegate some basic functionality like requesting a local file, proxy 
settings, do-browser, etc. This would allow the plugin to better 
integrate with the browser's existing behavior and security infrastructure.

1) UI - we are not Flash player, we will likely produce real-life 
apps. So - do we give up right mouse click for configuration options? 
What if you will have your own one in your app? OTOH imo there NEEDS 
to be some UI for setting some parameters! Not everything which comes 
to my mind can be hidden from user. The ones which come to my mind 
- do you want to check for updates? Once a month, week, daily, Automatic 
downloade newer version? Ask, download. Use newest version if app 
does not specify its requirement? (maybe not needed, just an example 
of what could be configurable). Proxy settings .... List available 
version, provide uninstall button, etc.

3) Integration - the toughest part - first - old plug-in way of integration 
was not optimal. REBOL's code  of 'get-net-info is outdated and broken. 
First thing is to get proxy info automatically, if possible, but 
still allow it to be settable. Most corporate users do use proxy, 
without it, plug-in in non-existant product for corporate environment 
imo. Why to allow manual settings? Well, dunno how many companies 
do use it, but our company does :-( ..... "use script for proxy configuration" 
- and the script is JS code, which browser can interpret, but not 
rebol itself, so we need ability to set it manually


... or - second point and probably the main point from the architecture 
pov - do we allow what rebol allows? Do we allow our own networking, 
or will we allow only to tunnel via browser? One one hand, we would 
get https, on the other hand, if we limit it, we are not talking 
about rebol anymore, but sligthly different rebol based product. 
As for me, I am not able to see all the security related concerns, 
so I let it to others here ...

I am not sure .... my thoughts for config were more towards if/how 
often should it check for updates, manual proxy settings, sound, 
whatever else makes sense.....

REBOL can only function with its own Win32 HWND window that it controls 
completely (due to message loop issues), so, in order to change as 
little as possible within REBOL, we created an invisible proxy window 
that REBOL controls. When events come into the plugin window, they 
are asynchronously posted to the invisible proxy window, and only 
then make their way into REBOL.

Josh - have you found out how to do 'do-browser in FF and Opera? 
Today I thought about how to properly "import" proxy settings (use 
what browser uses) - simply to use some JS facility of browser, if 
there is any such function ....

the trouble in our company is (not sure how common it is), that we 
use proxy configuration script, which gets executed by browser, and 
returns according proxy to go thru ....

regarding proxy settings: please post that on the 1.3.3 checklist 
if you want me to take a look at that. if you could provide a sample 
configuration script for testing, that would be great

Pekr, regarding proxy settings: is there a problem with proxy settings 
via the registry?

.... I sent privately my findings regards get-net-info being outdated 
and how control panel/internet settings/proxy influences registry 
keys ....

Networking: as far as the browser can do the same, i would use browsers 
io. Or is it that much slower than rebols handler? Advantages are: 
proxy, cache. Maybe there are some extensions people like, about 
adds or blacklist or whatever? if such things exists they would be 
shared too. Its security , and a computer which knows my "no"s looks 
smarter.

proxy can be imo solved by importing settings. We need to find out, 
how to query browser for its settings etc.

Proxy settings: I think the simplest thing to do here is to modify 
whatever REBOL code is detecting the proxy settings to import the 
automatic proxy configuration script. REBOL is far more suited to 
parsing text files and interpreting information than C code. As a 
side note, we're not importing any settings via the plugin itself, 
we're just letting REBOL do whatever it does normally.

Well....the problem is that the plugin has to handle its own window 
events because of the COM architecture. And REBOL has to handle its 
own events for other reasons. Soo.....maybe instead of an invisible 
proxy window, we can make REBOL's window a real window that sits 
on top of the plugin window, then it would get its events directly.

proxy-parsing: IIRC when i once looked, proxy-settings can be javascript 
which returns the right proxy.

short report - proxy still not working under IE .....

to know if plug-in works, the version should appear in the plug-in 
app container .... if you are not behind the proxy, script will download 
and app launched ....

Volker, re proxy-parsing: if you can post any REBOL code to read 
the proxy settings via javascript (via do-browser), that might work.

not too familar with proxy settings except through the auto-config 
script, which is just a javascript   here's a link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/ie/reskit/6/part6/c26ie6rk.mspx?mfr=true
 


But just because it's javascript doesn't happen to mean it's available 
through do-browser, I don't believe.

JoshM - doesn't my private post re how Internet proxy settings in 
control panel influence registry help? IIRC, you set proxy in the 
past according to incorrect registry path. Please revise get-net-info 
:-) I prefer 90% working proxy, than none at all :-)

but that is exactly proper proxy detection fails ... the code checks 
for proxy settings on inproper assumptions ... so - then why to release 
rebol 2 plug-in at all? :-)

I will study it once again to see ... but someone could confirm, 
if I am right thinking it is the function responsible for proxy detection 
:-)

Josh - have you somehow resorted proxy detection? Without that, and 
without some ability to configure plug-in, many ppl will be unable 
to use plug-in ....

Pekr, regarding proxy settings: If I remember correctly, we ended 
that conversation by realizing that get-net-info is the problem. 
So, whoever owns that REBOL code needs to fix it. This is all within 
the realm REBOL's network detection and not within the realm of the 
plugin itself.

JoshM, thanks .... but Josh, to not ruin first experience, please 
fix proxy code :-)

Pekr, I already answered this question twice. Proxy code is not part 
of the plugin.

If we could configure plug-in some-way, those behind proxy would 
at least normally edit their user.r and do some tweakings, not so 
with proxy ....

Note: After some research, Pekr and I discovered that you can place 
a user.r file in the "sandbox" directory (system/options/home) with 
your proxy settings to get around the limitations of set-net-info.

does proxy work behind squid ?

Altme doesn't? Is that problem of altme? I doubt it - altme uses 
proxy settings ... but it uses world look-up, and for that single 
thing is requires some special port opened on firewall, thing our 
admins will not do for me ....

As a suggestion for dealing with proxy issues, why not have the plugin 
dll read the browser's proxy settings and then call the View dll 
with some REBOL code that would set its proxy settings accordingly?

that is why even normal View is not able to get control panel proxy 
setting

but - we need some cooperation here first:

- change of "Find out why" document

- change of docs to reflect how to go via proxy ...., using user.r, 
making user.r example downloadable

- revisit demos - removing most user demos which are not working, 
making some nice visual demos from Contest running in plug-in ...

not even the install .... it worked at home - WinXP, but not at work 
- both notebook with W2K (no proxy) and PC with W2K (behind the proxy)

get-net-info is imo critical - imo majority of corporate users are 
behind the proxy. Imo to get those users on-board, we have to 1) 
provide ability to do some settings (control panel icon, right mouse 
context menu, whatever), or to make proxy detection better ....

hopefull my earlier points towards where windows stores proxy settings 
will help you ...

but maybe we don't need to solve it that way, simply suggesting in 
docs, that users should set their proxy in control panel, that would 
be the easier way ....

Having to set the proxy on the control panel may not be enough. There 
are lots of people out there, who don't know what a proxy is.

Ingo - I don't understand - most of the time, you don't care of proxy, 
if you don' know what it is ;-)

if you want to get yourself to the internet, and you are behind the 
proxy, either you know how to set it, or you don't have access to 
the internet. Or your ISP gives you adice of how to fill-in proxy 
settings ...

Remember older plug-in? There was no chance of getting plug-in for 
Mozilla/FF, Opera. No chance for multiple instances. Now we have 
them, in beta, auto installation. Last thing to be fixed is the proxy 
thing and fixing some bugs. Then Josh can look at compiling to other 
platforms ...

Volker - how is that? Our idea is to set-up proxy automatically ...

Because Ingo set up firefox and firefox has its own proxy-settings 
and rest of windows knows nothing about?

but maybe we don't need to solve it that way, simply suggesting in 
docs, that users should set their proxy in control panel, that would 
be the easier way ....

Question: If the plugin is running, is it than possible to establish 
from there something like a BEER session without having the firewall 
/proxy problems? IIRC the proxies grant direct TCP/IP access after 
a browser once passed.

James - yes, problems under W2K, both IE and Mozilla Suite. Two machines, 
one behind the proxy, second not. Exactly the same here - the black 
bar ....

Yeah, at work, proxy or not, W2K - no go ...

It is also likely, and I should be clear, that some behaviors related 
to the browser handling of things like events may be somewhat different 
than in REBOL itself.  This is related to the fact that explorer 
is handling the events and sending them to us via a type of "relay" 
(we call it a window proxy).

regarding plug-in, my concern is just one - proxy - without it it 
will be no-go for ppl behind the proxy. My understanding is, get-net-info 
needs update ...

Yes. Confirmed. Josh is working on better way to obtain the proxy 
information, according to MS methods.

Based on your feedback, I've divided this project into three areas:
	1. Stability (no bugs, Win2k support, etc.)
	2. Security (signing, program limits, etc.)
	3. Proxy (correct proxy detection)


Is that accurate? Do you think that after addressing those three 
areas, the plugin would be "complete"? If not, what other areas do 
you think we need?

But yes, Josh, it seems like correct order. I give my vote to proxy. 
Dunno how many folks work in companies behind the proxy, but because 
there is not user.r by default, nor there is some abilitiy to launch 
desktop, the plug-in should do as much as possible, in regards to 
correctly detect proxy ...

Josh, that looks good to me.  Proxy would be good.

Josh, I believe the Proxy support is really needed and obviously 
that could be used in REBOL3 for universal use.  I hope you implement 
both kerberos and NT LM Authentication.  I know that Doc Kimbell 
already has a tested Proxy implementation using the NT LM Authentication 
on his website.

I know in my environment where we work with multiple customers with 
thousands of workstations in interconnected networks and extranets 
we definately need the proxy support.  We have so much proxy authentication 
going on between internal networks due to acquisitions where segmentation 
and security are still sensitive concerns.

Proxy: I've broken this sub-project down into two areas:

 1. Detection (auto-proxy, manual proxy, etc.) -- obtaining the correct 
 proxy server address for a given URL.

 2. Authentication (NTLM, Kerberos, etc.) -- authenticating with the 
 proxy server

Are there other areas you see related to proxy support?

Question: On these systems that need full proxy support, are you 
running the latest OS? (i.e. WinXP SP1+, Win2k3, or WIn2k SP3+)? 
If so, there is OS support in those systems that may make this significantly 
simpler...

Am I correct in assuming that the majority of these proxy scenarios 
are just downloading HTTP/FTP files? Is there a case where you need 
upload support through proxy as well?

I am not sure what is proxy, but in our case it is kind of web cache 
... we have squid here - it looks at its local cache, and if the 
file is available locally, it is served to you by proxy, not downloading 
it from web once again ...

OK. I'm thinking about using Win32 HTTP/FTP upload/download API functions, 
which use the proxy settings set in Windows.....

No, getting the config won't be necessary. There is full support 
in Win32 to download and upload files via HTTP and FTP, and these 
API functions automatically use the Internet Configuration in Tools->Internet 
Options, which includes proxy.....

Now they want me to add proxy handling to the rooms but the proxy 
should be handled only by some users (that's why I plan to have a 
controll room and not an extra button in computer rooms)

The plugin posts data to a CGI on the proxy and that's how I can 
control the proxy and store requests for repair

The min goal with the proxy is to open a specific room at a specifica 
time up to a specific hour or up to a limit hour (when the school 
closes)

hum... and the proxy configuration is handled by small cgi requests?

I will try to use the liquid concepts adding attributes to the nodes 
and do a "classical" plugin for the proxy

I see you plan on supporting SSL... is this in any way functional? 
or should we simply do a reverse-proxy through apache for now?

Maxim: I plan to support SSL natively in REBOL. I'm waiting for Carl 
to send me a test version of /Command with server-side SSL enabled. 
In the meantime, I recommand using a SSL proxy rather that Apache. 
See STunnel for example.

Doc,  I appreciate your time / work on this.  Just so I understand.... 
are you saying that the solution you would implement would only run 
on a Win machine and that solutions that run on other machines are 
not feasible  ... because they are basically cumbersome and unreliable? 
 e.g. http://drupal.org/node/44718And are schemes like NTLM Authorization 
Proxy Server unworkable?  refer http://www.geocities.com/rozmanov/ntlm/
    I can't see using Cheyenne in a work environment  unless it supports 
NTLM.

graham, you can put an apache server which only accepts the ssl connections 
with reverse proxy setup which redirects the uncrypted ssl traffic 
to/from the cheyenne server. it works well.

you install and setup an apache server which has ssl, reverse proxy, 
and redirection modules enabled.