[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Insight Broadband
> A 'non-authorized' MAC address (on your NIC) will get an unrouteable
> IP. This will allow you to reach their website and register your
> machine. You can enter your account and registration number, verify
> your details, and hit the magic Next button to finalise your install.
>
> However at this point, Insight try and insert proxy settings into your
> browser, so you can register an email account, and finish the install.
> If you don't register your email account you don't get a connection it
> seems. These inserted proxy settings are designed for IE. and will not
> work under linux, though perhaps you could enter them manually.
Can you run a network sniffer and capture the "inserted proxy settings"?
Mozilla understands Netscape's automatic proxy settings format.
You should just have to enter the proxy server's URL into the
Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> Automatic Proxy Configuration URL
You may be able to see what that is when you use IE to walk through the
setup.
BEFORE you reboot your Windows box, go into IE's Internet Tools and see
what they've setup for your browser. There's also a browser auto-config
file that Windows will load as well.
What does the Mozilla file look like? Javascript, basically.
And it is the *SAME* as for IE.
Except that the webserver should deliver the file with a mime-type of
application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig. That's it.
Check out http://www.lib.rpi.edu/services/wamproxy.html for a nice page
that links to a CGI that sniffs your browser and then returns the
appropriate file for the browser.
Here's what both browsers use - it's just a plain text file that defines
a JavaScript function FindProxyForURL. It can be as complicated as you
like. Most are pretty simple pattern matches. Some calculate a hash on
the URL and send you to a load-balancing proxy farm.
> function FindProxyForURL(url,host) {
> if (isPlainHostName(host)) {
> return "DIRECT"
> }
>
> // Followed by a series of these...
> if( shExpMatch( host, "_REGEX_")) return "PROXY _PROXY_URL_";
> // ...
>
> // Except replace _REGEX_ with a regex
> // to match the host you want to proxy
> // and _PROXY_URL_ with the URL of your proxy server
> }
Here's the documentation for this file.
http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/proxy-live.html
A very interesting trick to providing an auto-config for Mozilla:
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~dowdy/netscape_cfg/config.jsc.txt
The guts:
// This file is only called if there's an encoded
// $MOZILLA_HOME/netscape.cfg that references this file via:
// config( "autoadmin.global_config_url",
// "file:/tools/cs/netscape-4.6/config.jsc"
// );
// This is the simplest way, as netscape.cfg *MUST* be encoded via
// "config_ed" or "jsc2cfg", wherease this file may be plaintext (yahoo!)
//
// Netscapes' Flow of preference configuration:
// 1) configure defaults from internal javascript file in ns executable
// 2) global prefs from netscape.cfg
// 3) autoconfig file (config.jsc) if defined in netscape.cfg
// 4) executes ~/.netscape/preferences.js file
// 5) executes ~/.netscape/user.js (if exists)
// ("user.js" is of the same form as this file, requiring a
// 'with (PrefConfig) { .. }' wrapper .)
// (somewhere in here liprefs.js is run, which is the configuration for
// (a roaming profile)
Neat way to auto-deploy a locked-down version of Mozilla in an enterprise.
Here's what Mozilla has to say on setting up your own PAC file at:
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/netlib/pac.html
> 6. Installing an existing PAC file in Mozilla
> Steps to install a PAC file
>
> 1. If the PAC file is on a remote server then download the PAC file
> to a local copy.
> 2. Copy mozilla/netwerk/base/src/nsProxyAutoConfig.js to
> mozilla/dist/bin/components (this step may not be needed if the
> file is already installed there!)
> 3. Edit the nsProxyAutoConfig.js file in mozilla/dist/bin/components
> directory and remove the sample implementation towards the end of
> the file starting with the line-
>
> //Sample implementation ...
>
> 4. Append your existing PAC file (the one from step 1) to this file.
> 5. Go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Proxies and select the
> "Automatic Proxy configuration URL:" radio button. There is no
> need to type anything in the URL field (that is currently ignored
> till bug 53080 is fixed)
> 6. Restart your browser. You should see a console message that says
> something like--
>
> ...Registering Proxy Auto Config (a Javascript component!)
>
> 7. Enjoy!
This was informative also:
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:twzeR1-hO_cJ:developer.novell.com/research/appnotes/2002/april/02/a020402.doc+IE+proxy+auto-config+file+format+PAC+internet+explorer&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
However, it is a Google-translated MS Word doc from Novell. Go figure.
And lastly, this gem from MS TechNet:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/ie/reskit/ie6/part4/c18ie6rk.asp
This is what they may be using, so you're going to be looking for accessing
URLs of *.pac and *.ins files.
Hope this helps. Other than that, complain, complain, complain.
Tell them you're a paying customer. Tell them you plan to file a complaint
with your local government (who grants them the cable rights to the
community) and the FCC telling them that your access to the internet via
your chartered cable TV company is allowed only when you are coerced
into using Microsoft Windows, a product you neither want, need, nor can
afford, in addition to Microsoft being a convicted, serial offender
monopoly. Tell them you do not want to do business with such companies,
and ask that cable franchisees be forced to support standard,
non-proprietary means to providing Internet access. It's bad enough that
you cannot use another ISP, (a monopoly privilege the cable companies
paid^Wlobbied quite heavily for).
You do know that Charter Cable is owned by Paul Allen. Yep, that's
right, *that* Paul Allen. Of *Microsoft* fame. Guess which OS'es his cable
company supports^Wallows their customers to use?
Mike/
-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@luci.org with
"unsubscribe luci-discuss" in the body.