#196 Setup with caching proxy on OS X

[David Clough]

Thanks for privoxy!

I've just installed version 3.0.2 on OS X 10.2.5. I was hoping to find a solution to the problem that Apple's OS X applications can't handle https requests through my university's proxy server (Internet Explorer and Netscape are just fine).

Am I right that Privoxy can help with this? If not, please ignore the following...

I've enabled the forward lines as follows:

forward / wwwcache.dur.ac.uk:8080
forward .dur.ac.uk .

and http requests work fine with the proxies directed to localhost in the OS X network control panel. However, https requests still go nowhere.

If there's a way to get Privoxy to help with this, I'd be glad to know it.

With thanks,

David Clough.

[David Schmidt]

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David -

I'm not particularly clueful here, but it doesn't look like
https is supported after reading what the config file had to
say about how to do forwarding. Anybody else, feel free to
jump in...

[David Clough]

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Dear David,

thanks for this response. SSL forwarding does work without problems if I
point Internet Explorer to the Privoxy proxy for http & https requests, so I
don't think this can be the problem. Internet Explorer ignores the system
proxy settings, so the issue seems to be to do with Apple's OS X proxy
handling. It may be that Privoxy can't help with this, but I'd seen reports
that it could.

Yours,

David.

[Andreas Oesterhelt]

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David,

..not sure that I fully understand what you're trying to
do, but as far as Privoxy is concerned, your rules are
perfectly valid for both HTTP and HTTPS.

You can, in fact, even specifically define where HTTPS
traffic gets forwarded if you want:

forward / normal-proxy.some.where:8000
forward :443 special-proxy.some.where.else:8765

The only thing you can't do is base the distiction on the
path in HTTPS requests, since the path is encrypted. Thus

forward /.*\.exe virus-filter.somewhere:8000

will only show effect for HTTP requests, not HTTPS, and

forward :443/pattern some.where:8000

is completely useless.

HTH,
--Andreas

[David Clough]

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Dear Andreas,

thanks for your comments. What I'm trying to do is to get OS X
applications to do https through a firewall. For some reason, Apple's
proxy handling doesn't work with this, and I'd seen reports that Privoxy
could help.

It looks to me as though it won't help, though: it's doing all the proxy
handling as advertized, but https connections from Apple applications
(such as Safari) still don't work.

Yours,

David.

[Andy Gerweck]

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Hi David,

Have you tried the new version of Safari which has HTTPS bug
fixes?

Are you sure you really need the proxy? Are you aware that
proxies can provide no real benefits with HTTPS because they
cannot see any of the traffic? If it's the only way to get
out of a firewall on port 443, that makes a little sense,
but it's a totally pointless firewall rule.

Do you know where the problem is? Have you turned up
logging on privoxy to see whether it gets any requests from
Safari at all? If Safari doesn't support https proxies,
you're probably out of luck altogether.

[David Clough]

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Dear gerweck,

thanks for this response. I was hopeful that the recent release of Safari
might help, but it was just tightening the handling of site certificates.
The problem is in the OS proxy handling routines, I think.

I do require the HTTPS proxy, unfortunately, to get through a firewall. I
can't get around that.

The idea to look at the Privoxy log is a good one. I'll check that and see
where I get to.

Thanks again,

David.