Evolution 2.32.2 in Natty mindlessly uses socks proxy environment

[Simon Fraser]

Binary package hint: evolution

System->Preferences->Network Proxy has a web proxy set, and if the 'Use the same proxy for all protocols' checkbox is selected, Evolution attempts to connect to a non-existant socks proxy when trying to reach an IMAP server. This is a change in behaviour from Maverick.

Initial symptoms are that Evolution hangs when trying to reach the IMAP server - `tcptrack -i eth0` and strace show connections to the configured http proxy, and then an IMAP connection to 127.0.0.1. Unchecking the 'use the same proxy for all protocols' box and individually setting the proxy for the other lines fixes the issue.

This occurs even when Evolution has 'Direct connection to the internet' set in its own Network Preferences.

[MikeCamel (mike-hingston)]

From "main-session.c":

static void
set_socks_proxy_from_gconf (void)
{
 GConfClient *client;
 gchar *mode, *host;
 gint port;

 client = mail_config_get_gconf_client ();

 mode = gconf_client_get_string (client, MODE_PROXY, NULL);
 if (!g_strcmp0(mode, "manual")) {
  host = gconf_client_get_string (client, KEY_SOCKS_HOST, NULL); /* NULL-GError */
  port = gconf_client_get_int (client, KEY_SOCKS_PORT, NULL); /* NULL-GError */
  camel_session_set_socks_proxy (session, host, port);
  g_free (host);
 }
 g_free (mode);
}

Unless I'm misunderstanding this, it looks like SOCKS is always enabled if the Network Proxy setting is "manual". Not only is this silly unless we've specifically set SOCKS, but it's also quite likely that there may be no SOCKS setting, so at the very least we should check whether KEY_SOCKS_HOST is null already, because if it is, we should disable SOCKS.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

There's a fix for proxies on this branch: http://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/commit/?id=6057792e7d42d490c93f79b57b74baed20b8e4df ; probably it fix the issue (haven't tried yet though)

[Rodrigo Moya (rodrigo-moya)]

Mike, that commit that Pedro points to (which contains the code you pasted) is indeed wrong, but it's fixed by this other commit

http://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/commit/?h=gnome-2-32&id=517023edcb2468e76786511b0ada27025e18caa6

so I was going to apply to our packages, but of course we already have it, as this was added in 2.31.x, so not sure what's going on. Investigating further...

[Rodrigo Moya (rodrigo-moya)]

hmm, btw, does this happen when you change the settings and leave evolution running after doing so? Or does it continue doing the wrong thing even after restarting evolution? If the former, it might be an easy fix

[Noel Shelton (noel-noelshelton)]

Evolution uses the gnome proxy settings as they were when you opened it. Subsequent changes to settings do not seem to affect evolution as long as it is open. Once you close Evolution, you must make the gnome proxy settings compatible with Evolution before re-opening it again.

[Florian Echtler (floe)]

I'd also like to add another aspect to this bug: even when a valid global SOCKS proxy is configured, evolution will _always_ try to use the proxy, regardless of the entries in the global ignore list.

[Jörg Frings-Fürst (jff-de)]

natty not longer supported
please change status to Won't Fix

[Jörg Frings-Fürst (jff-de)]

change status to Fix Committed