I've got Portable Firefox (2.0 rc3, to be exact) running on my USB thumb drive. It works fine at my house, but at school, it can't connect to the internet.
My school sysadmin has a proxy server of some sort setup (I'm not sure of the exact details - after all, as a student, I don't have access to the server). While Firefox is set to "Direct Connection to the Internet" in the network settings, I'm not able to access the internet with it (obviously, because of the proxy server).
"Auto-Detect Proxy Settings for this Network" doesn't seem to work either, for some reason. It's rather hard to troubleshoot, seeing as (as a student), I have very limited access to system settings. Without having access to the IE connection settings dialog, and no access to the system registry either, any way I can get Firefox to connect to the internet correctly?
I considered writing a simple app that would just go pull the IE proxy settings out of the registry and write them to a file, so I could configure the proxy server manually, but it seems like there should be a better way... But, if you guys don't know of any other way to get this working, anyone know of a good Java library for reading the Windows registry ? 
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Details about this are here:
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#proxies
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Can't know for sure without testing this out on my school's PC's, but this looks like it is *exactly* what I need to fix my problem.
Thanks !
The proxyget utility doesn't get the "automatic proxy configuration" script info.
Example: http://webserver.com/proxy.pac
It does get IE's proxy configuration, though, right ? Seems like the logical way to go about getting the proxy info from a system...
That *should* be all the info I need, seeing as how IE can connect up just fine through the proxy...
A lot more companies use pac files nowadays. This enables them to use multiple proxy servers, and other features. Therefore, they use a configuration script (pac file). This is put in the "Automatic Configuration" section in IE. The proxyget tool does not pick up where the location of that script is. So, the tool could be misleading.
It does get IE's proxy configuration, though, right ? - YES, this is in a different section of IE than the automatic configuration script (pac file). If you run the proxyget tool and it reports back the proxy info. then you could be fine. If you run the proxyget tool and get nothing back, but also can't access the internet, then it is possible they use a pac file.
Well that's apparently how it's setup, then. The utility said no proxy was enabled on one of the school's machines I tested it on, however Firefox still can't establish a direct connection to the internet.
The question now is, how can I get access to said PAC file ?
open up IE and go to tools/internet options/connections tab/lan settings
Copy the url from the "use automatic configuration script" field and paste it into firefox (tools/options/advanced/network).
It's also possible to paste the url in the address field of the browser to save the pac file and use it locally, but this is for the more experienced.
The sysadmin at my school (who is rather infamous among me and my friends... he is known as "The Matt" - the devious little bastard that disabled right-clicking...) restricted access to the Internet Options dialog.
Is there a registry key somewhere that tells where said file is located, perhaps? He didn't restrict access to apps reading from the registry, so I could just whip up a simple app to read that key and write it to a file - or even copy the file it contains to my USB drive for analysis...
the devious little bastard that disabled right-clicking
Damn, that happened to us too
Mind you, they are sort of like a corrupt government. In public, they say we aren't supposed to play games, but when we are in the labs, they play as well
----
R McCue
Cube Games
People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were
the kind of people who didn't need people.
(Maskerade)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
So, anyone have any idea how I can go about finding this PAC file ?
Search the registry for "AutoConfigURL"
If that doesn't do it then keep searching thru the registry for other IE settings.
or
Simply ask IT what it is.
That was the first thing I tried... But apparently, me having access to their proxy server would be bad. Not like they *force me to use it* or anything.
ProxyGet tells me that there's no proxy on my work PC as well, even though I know that there is one. I do have access to the registry so between that and the ProxyGet source code I think I know what's happening. ProxyGet first checks the ProxyEnable key. If it's zero PG reports "no proxy" and stops. For some reason my system with an autoconfig proxy has ProxyEnable set to zero even though it has values in AutoConfigProxy and ProxyServer. I've been thinking about hacking the source of ProxyGet to just report the values of those three keys regardless but haven't gotten around to it yet. (Mostly because I've never messed around with NSIS.)
Edit: Aha! IE's LAN settings even say "Automatic configuration may override manual settings." So it's entirely possible to have a (automatic) proxy even thought ProxyEnable is zero.
I'll take a look at the source code, and maybe see what happens if I have it always assume ProxyEnable is 1.