[Karmic] Liferea doesn't update feeds behind a proxy

[Vincent Law]

Binary package hint: liferea

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10
----------------------------------
$ apt-cache policy liferea
liferea:
  Installé : 1.6.0-1ubuntu2
  Candidat : 1.6.0-1ubuntu2
 Table de version :
 *** 1.6.0-1ubuntu2 0
        500 cdrom://Ubuntu 9.10 _Karmic Koala_ - Alpha i386 (20091017) karmic/main Packages
        500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
----------------------------------
Since an update from jaunty I cannot update my liferea feeds anymore.

I'm behind a proxy and I have tried several ways of configuration.
* Configure it in GNOME preferences (Manual conf, same proxy for every protocols, proxy server : PROXY, Port : PORT, Username : USERNAME and Password : PASSWORD) and let liferea use GNOME settings. Note that my proxy password is a combination of numerical, alphanumerical and special characters
* Choose "Direct connection" in GNOME and Manual proxy setting in liferea

In each cases I get connection refused as detailed below.

Reverted back to liferea 1.4.26 I'm now allowed to update my feeds through GNOME proxy settings as seen in net debug logs bellow.

--------------------------------------------------
liferea 1.6.0-1ubuntu2
--------------------------------------------------
$ liferea --debug-net
NET: proxy set to http://<USERNAME>@<PROXY1>:<PORT>
NET: downloading http://planet.ubuntu.com/rss20.xml
> GET /rss20.xml HTTP/1.1
> Soup-Debug-Timestamp: 1256204082
> Soup-Debug: SoupSessionAsync 1 (0x8da5000), SoupMessage 1 (0x922b8e8), SoupSocket 1 (0x919e868)
> Host: planet.ubuntu.com
> User-Agent: Liferea/1.6.0 (Linux; fr_FR.UTF-8; http://liferea.sf.net/)

< HTTP/1.0 407 Proxy Authentication Required
< Soup-Debug-Timestamp: 1256204082
< Soup-Debug: SoupMessage 1 (0x922b8e8)
< Server: squid/3.0.STABLE13
< Mime-Version: 1.0
< Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:30:15 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html
< Content-Length: 1594
< Expires: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:30:15 GMT
< X-Squid-Error: ERR_CACHE_ACCESS_DENIED 0
< Proxy-Authenticate: Basic realm="Identification proxy"
< X-Cache: MISS from <PROXY>
< Via: 1.0 <PROXY> (squid/3.0.STABLE13)
< Proxy-Connection: close

NET: download status code: 407
NET: source after download: >>>http://planet.ubuntu.com/rss20.xml<<<

NET: 1594 bytes downloaded
NET: Changing online mode to online

--------------------------------------------------
liferea 1.4.26-0ubuntu1
--------------------------------------------------
NET: downloading url=/rss20.xml host=planet.ubuntu.com
NET: NetConnect() (with getaddrinfo)
NET: host=<PROXY> port=<PORT>
NET: successfully connected socket 39
NET: writing 244 bytes to socket 39
NET: received HTTP response for socket 39
NET: read 4096 bytes from socket 2736
NET: read HTTP status "200" for socket 39
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Last-Modified: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:52:28 GMT
NET: -> last modified "Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:52:28 GMT"
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Accept-Ranges: bytes
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Content-Length: 152302
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Content-Type: application/xml
NET: -> content type "application/xml"
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:04:28 GMT
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_python/3.3.1 Python/2.5.2 PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g mod_wsgi/1.3
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> ETag: "3d1a147-252ee-47698d89b3700"
NET: -> etag ""3d1a147-252ee-47698d89b3700""
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> X-Cache: HIT from <PROXY>
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Via: Version 2.2-Build_Linux_1132 $Date: 08/22/2007 16:05:0007$(IWSS), 1.0 <PROXY> (squid/3.0.STABLE13)
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>> Proxy-Connection: close
NET: processing header line from socket 39 >>>
NET: read 4096 bytes from socket 4095
[...]
NET: read 4096 bytes from socket 0
NET: read 152302 bytes message body from socket 39
NET: closed socket 39

[wirespot (wirespot)]

Ditto here. I'd suggest escalating the importance of this bug, since Liferea 1.6.x is hereby useless if you're behind an auth proxy.

(Also, I was dumb enough to delete my ~/.liferea-1.4 dir and now can't downgrade without losing my archive.)

On a sidenote, the support for auth proxies in lots of Linux apps today is simply abysmal. Some don't support them. Some support them but can't handle various characters (such as @ in username). Some have the support working but manage to lose it between releases. Some have it and use it for some things but not others. And so on. Basically, if you're behind an auth proxy with a Linux desktop, expect lots of grief.

[Vincent Law (vincentlaw)]

This is my first try on reporting a bug using launchpad, so how should I proceed to escalate ?
It doesn't seem to be a right I own

[Tobias Richter (tsr-ubuntu)]

I found that liferea fails to connect to the proxy if its own proxy settings are to be used. With 'Auto Detect' it picked up the gnome settings and worked fine. However, I do not need to authenticate with my proxy so that could be another issue.

[skre (stefan-kremer)]

I'm using Liferea behind a proxy and tried 'Auto Detect'. It didn't work. :-(

[Vincent Law (vincentlaw)]

Initially I was thinking about giving the following title "Proxy authentication failed" to the bug report, having noticed some strange informations in the logs.
First this :
NET: proxy set to http://<USERNAME>@<PROXY1>:<PORT>
Without any mention to <PASSWORD>. Neither in this line nor in the immediate following ones.

Then a "407 Proxy Authentication Required" error.

Seems that liferea 1.6 doesn't use <PASSWORD> parameter at all ...

So couldn't we consider this as a huge regression and increase importance to high ?

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

Vincent Law wrote:
> Initially I was thinking about giving the following title "Proxy authentication failed" to the bug report, having noticed some strange informations in the logs.
> First this :
> NET: proxy set to http://<USERNAME>@<PROXY1>:<PORT>
> Without any mention to <PASSWORD>. Neither in this line nor in the immediate following ones.
>
> Then a "407 Proxy Authentication Required" error.
>
> Seems that liferea 1.6 doesn't use <PASSWORD> parameter at all ...
>
> So couldn't we consider this as a huge regression and increase
> importance to high ?

That's wrong, it uses the password, but doesn't show it in the log for obvious
reasons...

[Emmanuel Lesouef (e-lesouef)]

Do we have some updates on this blocking issue ?

[Vincent Law (vincentlaw)]

A bug is already opened at liferea's SF page since 2009-10-22.
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2883971&group_id=87005&atid=581684

[Vincent Law (vincentlaw)]

Comments posted on the liferea SF bug tracker (see my previous post) mention that dev team finally found a fix for this bug.
People having tested recent commits (2010-01-06) in the 1.6 branch report to actually able to authenticate behind a proxy.
Nice work from the volunteers for this team working on the project during there free time !

For now, when can karmic users can expect having an updated package correcting this blocking issue ?
I know the existence of a ppa's liferea repository here https://launchpad.net/~liferea/+archive/ppa
But the latest version available don't include the recent fixes.

Any solution to cleanly update (ie using repositories and deb files) would be greatly appreciated

[Ara Pulido (ara)]

This was already fixed in liferea 1.6.2, and Maverick contains 1.6.3.
This should be fixed in Lucid as well