Comment 18 for bug 987965

I think I may have gotten "sudo -E /usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader" to work. I had to export the following variables as below:

$ export http_proxy='http://server.domain.ext:port/'
$ export https_proxy='http://server.domain.ext:port/'
$ export ftp_proxy='http://server.domain.ext:port/'

I then saw this happy little message:
flashplugin-installer: downloading http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_11.2.202.251.orig.tar.gz
Installing from local file /tmp/tmpiuX3Vk.gz
Flash Plugin installed.

Hopefully this helps someone else -- and perhaps the devs so they can make sure these variables pass through to package-data-downloader.