Proxy Servers and Camino

• What are proxy servers?
• What is Proxy Auto-Config?
• How do I configure Camino to use Proxy Auto-Config files?

 

What are proxy servers?

Some organizations block direct connections to the Internet, for security or other reasons. In these situations, connections are required to go through proxy servers, which are intermediate servers that redirect connections to their final destination.

Camino normally gets information about your proxy server settings (including Proxy Auto-Config) from the Network pane of the System Preferences (see the “Proxies” tab there). If you switch network locations or change the proxy settings, Camino will pick up those new settings without restarting.

What is Proxy Auto-Config?

Some organizations, including many academic institutions, use a scheme called Proxy Auto-Config that allows them to dynamically reconfigure proxy settings on the fly for all their users. To achieve this, the network administrators provide a URL to a proxy auto-config file (which usually has a “.pac” extension).

How do I configure Camino to use Proxy Auto-Config files?

PAC is supported in Camino just like other proxies, via the system-wide settings in the Network preference pane.

If for some reason you need to use a separate PAC for Camino, there is no user interface to override the system settings. However, you can enable a separate PAC by manually changing a couple of hidden preferences. Edit the user.js file and add the following:

user_pref("network.proxy.type", 2);
user_pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://foo.com/bar.pac");
user_pref("camino.use_system_proxy_settings", false);

(Replace http://foo.com/bar.pac with the URL supplied by your system administrator.)

Setting the camino.use_system_proxy_settings preference to false ensures that Camino doesn’t clobber your custom PAC file with the system’s proxy settings.