466624 - Proxy setting and JRE not working correctly

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Peter Frandsen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; da; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; da; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

There seems to be an inconsistency between the way that Java and Firefox stores proxy information.

I am trying to access a Java application (Primavera Timesheets) on my companies local network through JNLP. The JRE is setup to use the default browsers (Firefox) network proxy setting, but the Java application does not get the correct proxy settings.

When IE is set as default browser the Java program gets the correct proxy information. When the proxy setting is configured directly in the JRE the program works correctly.
The application also works correctly if Chrome is the default browser (but it seems to reuse the settings from IE, so that is no supprise).

JRE expects semicolon (;) as separator when listing exceptions. Firefox use comma (,) as separator. It would be valuable if the separator character could be configured (which it does not seem to be - at least I cant find the option).

JRE version: Version 6 update 10 (build 1.6.0_10-b33)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Make sure that Firefox is default browser
2. Configure JRE to user browsers network proxy setting
3. Launch Primavera Timesheets through JNLP
Actual Results:  
Program exits with error: Malformed reply from SOCKS server

Expected Results:  
Jave program launched with correct network proxy settings

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

A plugin can't get a proxy address through NPAPI.

Comment 2

[Peter Frandsen]

I may be wrong, but I do not think that it is the same bug as 315683. It is a standalone Java application that needs to access the proxy information - not an applet/plugin. The Java application can be launched from any browser - Firefox does not need to be running to trigger the error, it just needs to be the default browser.

Also, I think that it would be valuable to be able to use a user defined separator character for the exceptions in the proxy setting.

Please mark it as dublicate again if you still think that it is a dublicate.

Regards

/Peter

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

I don't know how your external Java application gets Firefox Proxy settings but if it does that in some way it also must parse it correctly (including a conversation of the separators).

Note: Firefox proxy settings can be different form profile to profile, there is no global Firefox proxy setting and every user can have several profiles.

bug 315683 is for an applet inside the browser and if the network traffic
should not go through NPAPI

This is invalid and if JRE supports using Firefox proxy settings, it would be a bug in Java if it fails to do so.

Comment 4

[Peter Frandsen]

Here is another way to trigger the problem which may be easier to use since its a public available Java application.

1. Make sure that you are accessing the web through a proxy.
2. Make sure that Firefox is the default browser.
3. Configure JRE to user browsers network proxy setting
4. Launch SoapUI through http://www.soapui.org/jnlp/2.5-beta2/soapui.jnlp (or from wwww.soapui.org).
5. In SoapUI go to File->Preferences->Proxy Settings and enter proxy information (before the lates release of the JRE SoapUI did not seem to have a dependency on the JRE roxy settings - now the proxy has to be set in both places).
6. Load WSDL from service located on the web into SoapUI (e.g., http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl)
7. Generate sample request and try to call service -> cannot connect to server
8. Set proxy information directly in JRE, reload SoapUI and call service -> service called (in case of the Google service it will return an error due to a missing key, but this is not a network problem :-)

I will try to report the issue to Sun. Ana I agree that it is probably primarily a Java problem, but it _is_ a blocker for Firefox usage in corporations...

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

If sun needs something then the can write a bug report but we don't know how they get Firefox settings and how we should fix that.
Firefox doesn't store the proxy settings in the registry, only in the Firefox profile in the prefs.js file.