Use a proxy with web authentication

Question

I'm behind a web-proxy that needs me to authenticate on a web page in order to browse the web. It seems to me that because of this authentication page sytem, I can't set up my linux package manager to use this proxy (already tried to use my login/password the proxy configuration). Of course, this issue doesn't come up only for my package manager, but it is the most anoying case.

How can I get through this ? Am I screwed ?

Ps : I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 but this is probably a useless piece of information

Answer 1

This depends on the configuration of the proxy. In many cases, once you log in using your web browser, the proxy knows that your computer (or at least that network card) is valid on the network - it authenticates your MAC address. This is, for example, how some WI-FI hotspots work, and the reason that you can get other services through them after you've authenticated once.

If, on the other hand, your proxy uses a cookie to authenticate only your browser (which I'm not actually sure is possible), you're pretty much screwed.

In short, try logging in with your browser then running your package manager. The worst that can happen is that it fails.