Comment 0 for bug 1100587

12.04, Unity, on a x220.

Go into system settings => network => Network Proxy => Method => Manual
Set a proxy (I chose 'goats' for the http bit, and 8080 as the port.

Click on 'apply system wide'.

Note that /etc/environment contains 'http_proxy="http://goats:8080"'

Then go into system settings => network => Network Proxy => Method => Automatic
Set my automatic proxy config URL to my companies wpad.dat.
Click on 'apply system wide'

Note that /etc/environment still contains 'http_proxy="http://goats:8080".
This ends up hosing specific applications that read the proxy from the environment, instead of from wherever GNOME stores this data.

Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS Precise

gnome-control-center-1:3.4.2-0ubuntu0.8 (from precise-updates)