Proxy apt connections from ubuntu server/vm to your macbook

Proxy HTTP and HTTPS Connections

sometimes you may want to proxy connections from your ubuntu server to another machine. lets say you want to proxy connections from a device (a server in your lab) to your laptop so that apt-packages can resolve. one can do that by installing squidman on MAC to run it as a proxy server. follow the below steps to try it out!

Proxy the connections from ubuntu server on VPN

Install Squidman to run MAC as a proxy server . you can download from here

• once squidman is installed, go to the preferences tab .
• http port is by default 8080. This can be left alone unless you have a different application using the same port
• click on tab clients and add the subnet of the interface where traffic would be arriving from the client device.
  • for example: my lab server is connected over VPN so , i will look at the IP allocated to the interface using ifconfig

      utun2: flags=8050<POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1400
      inet w.x.y.z --> w.x.y.z netmask 0xffffffff
    

  • in case there is no VPN , look at the wifi/wired interface where you receive the IP of your device
• add the IP range in the clients tab using new

Export env variables to proxy http and https connections to the laptop/new proxy server

Ensure, the client device (lab server) can reach the proxy server IP (your VPN interface or your wired/wireless interface in case of no VPN) and export the ENV variables.

HTTPS_PROXY="http://<IP>:<PORT>"
HTTP_PROXY="http://<IP>:<PORT>"

Here the IP is w.x.y.z which is the IP we retrieved earlier and PORT is 8080 which is the default port used in squidman

Edit apt configs

Edit/add the apt.conf to reflect the changes.

Note: In case the configs dont exist, create the file

root@ubuntu:/ more /etc/apt/apt.conf
Acquire::socks::proxy "socks5://w.x.y.z:8080";

Note that w.x.y.z is the interface IP (VPN or wired/wireless) of the proxy server.

Once the above is done, try doing a apt update or apt install <PACKAGE NAME> to see if every http/https request for apt is proxyd though your new proxy server

[ linux  ]