Zotero standalone behind proxy

succinimid

Dear all,

is there any way to use Zotero Standalone behind a proxy?

br,
succinimid

Simon

This should just work, although there's no transparent redirection in Zotero connectors. What do URLs from your proxy look like?

succinimid

I am sitting behind a university proxy that requires a password. With firefox Zotero (Ubuntu 11.04), everything works fine. With standalone Zotero, I get an error message when Syncing:

"Empty response from server. Please try again in a few minutes."

With most programs that use the internet, I can just input my proxy-settings in the preferences somewhere and everything works fine. Since there is no such option in Standalone Zotero, I reckon this is the problem. I am surprised that I seem to be the only user who's got this problem.

Simon

Zotero Standalone should use your system proxy settings, as in most other applications, and as in Firefox if you choose the "Use system proxy settings" option in the preferences (which is the default). Make sure that 1) your proxy settings are set correctly in system settings (or whatever they are calling it these days) and 2) that the "Use system proxy settings" option works properly in Firefox. If these things are true and things are still not working for you, we can try to track this down further.

succinimid

Hi Simon,

just checked it:
- System settings are (were) set correctly
- firefox is running on "System setting" -> Zotero works
- Standalone doesn't synchronise :-(

Simon

This works fine for me, so I am guessing there is some kind of configuration issue. (There are apparently many places to store proxy settings on a Linux system, and it's possible only some are set properly.) You can try going to Zotero Preferences->Advanced->Open about:config and either 1) typing config.use_system_prefs into the box and setting it to true or 2) typing network.proxy into the box, setting network.proxy.type = 1, and setting the other proxy preferences as appropriate.

succinimid

option 1) showed the same results as usual.

option 2): The first difference I noticed was that the top right green circular arrow was turning and it actually tried to synchronise (as opposed to just pop up the error message). Unfortunately then it showed the error message:

"SSL certificate error connecting to sync.zotero.org"

In the about:config, there was no option to insert the proxy username and password. I reckon this might be the problem.

ferkan

I have the same issue. I'm also behind a proxy that requires a username and password...

Mahelita

Exactly the same problem, proposed solutions produce exactly same results.

maba

We have exactly the same problem. Zotero standalone is not able to ask you for the userid / password required to authenticate with the proxy.

By the way, this is exactly the same with the Zotero Firefox plugin. If you start firefox with an empty page the Zotero plugin is not able to connect to any web page including webdav. It only works if you have first visited an external web page and entered your userid / password for the web proxy in advance.

HTH Manfred

maba

@developers: is the described problem with proxies requiring authentication recognized as a problem?
Can I help somehow with more information concerning this issue?

Jason.mcvicar

I'm not sure if there is a solution to this yet, but I have found that selecting:

help > Check for Updates

will give me the proxy login prompt. Once I've entered my username and password I then click sync and it works.

I hope it will work for you too.

Jason

tjlynch

I'm having the same issue. I've just tried Jason's suggestion, but I just receive a message saying that the connection has timed out.

Ruud

Same issue here. I too have tried Jason's suggestion, but here too the connection has timed out. Is there a solution for this yet? I am using Zotero standalone.

Additional info: when trying to sync (button top right) I eventually get a "SSL certificate error connecting to sync.zotero.org" error. Unfortunately, the suggested website (http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/ssl_certificate_error) does not state how to deal with proxy problems.

Ben Kujala

I had a similar problem. I resolved it by changing the following in about:config...

1) Add a proxy into the network.proxy.ssl string
2) Add a port into the network.proxy.ssl_port
3) Set network.proxy.type = 1

After this my proxy worked for the network settings at my organization. I make no claims for others. Good luck.

vollmilch

Hello! I just installed the Zotero tool on a fairly standard Ubuntu system behind a university proxy. Do I understand it right that there are no 'proxy settings' for this tool, but just for the Firefox add-on? Is there any reason for that??
In fact, I followed the 2-3 ideas for solving the 'no internet connection' issue above. None of them worked. So, it seems Zotero could be a nice tool just in theory and I have to stick to JabRef!
(Out of curiousity: If the tool worked, wasn't the Firefox add-on quite redundant? Or am I missing a point here?)

adamsmith

I'm not sure what you're trying to do specifically. There is no reference to a "no internet connection" problem in the posts above. Specifically to your questions:

1. The "proxy settings" in Firefox refer to automatic proxy redirection for gated resources, typically by adding a string to URLs. The reason they're only in Firefox is that Zotero Standalone doesn't run in your browser so it can't affect browser URLs.
The proxy settings in Zotero for Firefox don't affect syncing.

2. Many people prefer the tighter integration into the browser offered by the Firefox add-on. It also has some features standalone doesn't have (see 1. e.g.).

dstillman

Zotero Standalone 4.0.8, now available, should work better with authenticated proxies, triggering a proxy authentication prompt when it first starts up or, if that fails, when you click the sync button. After you've successfully authenticated, further network requests should work through the proxy until you close Standalone.

If you manually changed the proxy settings in about:config, you may want to try setting those back to their defaults so that Zotero just follows the system proxy settings.

Unfortunately, like Firefox, it won't use the entered username/password from the system preferences (on OSes where that's even possible, such as OS X), requiring you to enter your username and password when you first start the program. Hopefully this will be addressed by Mozilla in the future.

dstillman

Actually, it occurs to me that our solution in 4.0.8 may not be a complete fix. If syncing was broken for you, all network requests from Standalone should now work. If only requests for gated files were failing (e.g., saving PDFs from the Chrome/Safari extensions, the requests for which are done from Standalone), 4.0.8 may not help.

A bit more technical detail: we set most of the network requests we make in Zotero to be background requests, specifically to avoid popping up certificate/authentication dialogs during saving. (In normal use they should never be necessary, and we'd rather problems just trigger failures and not annoying dialogs, which could potentially not even be in the front-most app if you're using Standalone.)

In 4.0.8, we make a foreground request at startup to a simple text file under our control, which, if you're using an authenticated system proxy for all network traffic, will trigger an authentication dialog, and further network requests will go through the proxy.

This might not work for people using proxy auto-configuration, however. A PAC file tells clients to use the proxy only for certain requests—such as for specific gated resources—and to send all other requests to the sites directly. In that case, the text file would likely be loaded without triggering the proxy authentication dialog, but later background requests for gated resources would still fail.

If that turns out to be the case, we'll have to think about other ways to address this. Let us know if you continue to have trouble with a proxy-based setup. At the very least, syncing should now work properly for people behind full proxies.

parras

Does not work for me with 4.0.8 standalone.
No proxy authentication prompt is triggered, neither at startup nor when I try to synchronize.
In the second case, I get the following error:

[JavaScript Error: "Erreur lors de la connexion au serveur. Vérifiez votre connexion Internet." {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/sync.js" line: 638}]

peskeguy

Dan thanks for continuing to look into this. Latest Zotero doesn't sync when my school's proxy server is enabled.
UVA:
Configuration URL: http://proxy.virginia.edu/

It might be because the login for this proxy doesn't use a typical password authentication but runs through UVA's own "netbadge" secure log-in system?
I don't see any authentication at startup or sync, and no errors have popped up either.

dstillman

If it's not working for you, what happens when you try to load https://api.zotero.org in Firefox? If that works for you (i.e, you see "Nothing to see here."), what are the exact steps you have to take, from Firefox startup through loading that page? Do you have to log into something for that to work?

peskeguy

Loading that page worked for me ("nothing to see here"...)
All I did was open Firefox, type in the address and it popped up. No logging in to anything.
Like for some others on here, Zotero synced perfectly fine within Firefox for me. It's Standalone that is getting stuck at the "logging in to sync server" step.

dstillman

And if you load http://proxytest.itc.virginia.edu/ in Firefox?

dstillman

Also, did this work for you previously in Standalone? If so, did it used to pop up an authentication dialog? We have some reason to believe there are two separate issues here: 1) an inability to sync via an authenticated proxy (which, as evidenced by this thread, has possibly always been the case, and which 4.0.8 addresses) and 2) a new problem in 4.0 (or, possibly, the latest version of the Mozilla framework that we use) that's preventing network access in Standalone from working if system proxy settings are enabled. Your case sounds a lot like the latter, in that, based on UVA's proxy auto-configuration file, your connection to zotero.org should be direct and not have anything to do with the proxy.

peskeguy

That takes me through the proxy server log-in.
1) Redirects to: https://www.proxy.its.virginia.edu:8443/ezproxy/auth.cgi?url=http://proxytest.itc.virginia.edu/
(Page that says I need to sign in to access proxy server)
2) I click the "Sign in with Netbadge" button on the page and redirect to: https://netbadge.virginia.edu/
This is the login page UVA uses for accessing any protected UVA content, including the proxy server. Here I enter my username and password
3) After login, I end up at the proxy test site

peskeguy

This did previously work for me in Standalone. My last successful sync before tonight when I realized I needed to turn off the proxy (In system preferences) was 3 days ago.

peskeguy

I don't know if it adds anything for you, but when the proxy is on the "Check for updates" will never connect either, probably the same issue.

dstillman

Yeah, same issue. So unfortunately it seems there are indeed two issues here, and 4.0.8 only addresses the first one, with authenticated proxies that handle all traffic. We haven't been able to reproduce the second one, with conditional proxy settings, but we'll keep looking at it.

Just to add to our debugging, what OS is this?

peskeguy

Well thanks for looking into it.
I'm running OS X 10.8.3, mid-2009 MBP

bonedriven

Yes. Same problem like peskeguy, exactly.

4.0.8, behind university proxy (proxy.univiersityname.fr or rather universityname.fr/proxy.pac). Everything works in firefox.

Standalone has no connection whatsoever.