setup.exe: How specify web proxy by command line parameters

setup.exe: How specify web proxy by command line parameters

[Dr. Christoph Gille]

Hi all,

I am developing a computer program
http://www.bioinformatics.org/strap/ which uses Cygwin.  Cygwin
is installed automatically by the program. The user does not need
to interact with setup.exe.  This is done by downloading and
starting setup.exe programmatically, with some command line options.

My problem: I need to specify the Web-proxy.  I have looked for
command line parameters, environment variables, registry
entries and files, but have not found anything.

How can I programmatically specify the Web proxy for invocation of setup.exe?

There had been discussion on this previously:

http://www.nabble.com/-Patch--Proxy-command-line-argument-td14989738.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/cygwin@cygwin.com/msg35204.html

Many thanks for your help

Christoph


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Re: setup.exe: How specify web proxy by command line parameters

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 09/15/2009 11:00 AM, Dr. Christoph Gille wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am developing a computer program
> http://www.bioinformatics.org/strap/ which uses Cygwin.  Cygwin
> is installed automatically by the program. The user does not need
> to interact with setup.exe.  This is done by downloading and
> starting setup.exe programmatically, with some command line options.
>
> My problem: I need to specify the Web-proxy.  I have looked for
> command line parameters, environment variables, registry
> entries and files, but have not found anything.
>
> How can I programmatically specify the Web proxy for invocation of setup.exe?
>
> There had been discussion on this previously:
>
> http://www.nabble.com/-Patch--Proxy-command-line-argument-td14989738.html
> http://www.mail-archive.com/cygwin@cygwin.com/msg35204.html

Sounds like you want Cygwin 1.7's setup.exe -> <http://cygwin.com/setup-1.7.exe>


-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: setup.exe: How specify web proxy by command line parameters

[Dr. Christoph Gille]

Hi Larry,

>> http://www.bioinformatics.org/strap/ which uses Cygwin.  Cygwin
>> My problem: I need to specify the Web-proxy.
> Sounds like you want Cygwin 1.7's setup.exe -> <http://cygwin.com/setup-1.7.exe>
Yes, that is what I need. It is great!
There is also the text search field that I missed so many years!
Why is it not yet the default setup.exe?

I would prefere a stable URL without the version number in the URL, something like
http://cygwin.com/setup-current.exe
Otherwise my program would need to probe several URLs with increasing version number.

Using this improved setup.exe there would be only one user interaction left:
The user needs to mark the closest mirror.
I do not think that this could be done automatically at the moment or what do you think?

Many thanks again
Christoph



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Re: setup.exe: How specify web proxy by command line parameters

[Charles Wilson]

Dr. Christoph Gille wrote:
>> Sounds like you want Cygwin 1.7's setup.exe -> <http://cygwin.com/setup-1.7.exe>
> Yes, that is what I need. It is great!
> There is also the text search field that I missed so many years!
> Why is it not yet the default setup.exe?

Because it will install the beta version of cygwin, cygwin-1.7.  Once
cygwin-1.7(.1) is officially released, then setup-1.7 will become the
default -- and lose the version number.  But not until then.

--
Chuck

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Re: setup.exe: How specify web proxy by command line parameters

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 09/15/2009 12:28 PM, Dr. Christoph Gille wrote:
> Hi Larry,
>
>>> http://www.bioinformatics.org/strap/ which uses Cygwin.  Cygwin
>>> My problem: I need to specify the Web-proxy.
>> Sounds like you want Cygwin 1.7's setup.exe ->  <http://cygwin.com/setup-1.7.exe>
> Yes, that is what I need. It is great!
> There is also the text search field that I missed so many years!
> Why is it not yet the default setup.exe?

It will be when 1.7 is released.  That will happen "soon".

> I would prefere a stable URL without the version number in the URL, something like
> http://cygwin.com/setup-current.exe
> Otherwise my program would need to probe several URLs with increasing
> version number.

When 1.7 is released, the "setup-1.7.exe" link will become 
<http://cygwin.com/setup.exe>
as Chuck said.

> Using this improved setup.exe there would be only one user interaction
> left: The user needs to mark the closest mirror. I do not think that this
> could be done automatically at the moment or what
> do you think?

Closest mirror?  I'm not sure what you mean by this.  'setup.exe' does not 
require
this as a setting.  Actually, there is no such concept.  You need to specify 
a mirror
to work with but you can do that with '-s'.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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setup.exe: Determine Geographically closest mirror programmatically

[Dr. Christoph Gille]

> Closest mirror?  I'm not sure what you mean by this.  'setup.exe' does not
> require this as a setting.  Actually, there is no such concept.  You need to specify
> a mirror to work with but you can do that with '-s'.

With each superfluous click I lose a user, so it would be best if setup.exe would be run within http://3d-alignment.eu/  without
user interaction.

I am not a network specialist, but
I see two possibilities how I could determine the closest cygwin mirror:

(I) I could compare the IP numbers  of all mirrors to the IP number of the client and make a guess of the geographically closest site.
I would use the site where the first digits of the IP match best and I would then probe a short file to check whether the mirror is indeed working.

(II) This is what I am currently using to determine the fastest database mirror for 3D-structures:
I fetch a tiny probe file from each database mirror and take the one with the shortest respond time.
This method is more simple  but as there are that many cygwin mirrors, I am not sure whether I would run into problems.

When I have the mirror I would set it with the command line option of setup.exe.
I think this would work and could be done easily. Do you have  other ideas?

Could you please tell me the URL of the file with the cygwin mirror list?

Cheers

Christoph





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Re: setup.exe: Determine Geographically closest mirror programmatically

[Dave Korn]

Dr. Christoph Gille wrote:
>> Closest mirror?  I'm not sure what you mean by this.  'setup.exe' does
>> not require this as a setting.  Actually, there is no such concept.  You
>> need to specify a mirror to work with but you can do that with '-s'.
> 
> With each superfluous click I lose a user, so it would be best if setup.exe
> would be run within http://3d-alignment.eu/  without user interaction.

  You could very simply compile a custom version of setup.exe for your users
which had a different URL for the mirrors list, pointing to a custom list on
your own server that only had one entry on it for 3d-alignment.eu.  (You could
even take advantage of the opportunity to replace the public key embedded in
it with one that you could use for signing on your own server; otherwise your
users will need to run setup.exe using the -X command-line flag to ignore
security, or you'd need to distribute a key file to all your users somehow.)

> I am not a network specialist, but I see two possibilities how I could
> determine the closest cygwin mirror:
> 
> (I) I could compare the IP numbers  of all mirrors to the IP number of the
> client and make a guess of the geographically closest site. I would use the
> site where the first digits of the IP match best and I would then probe a
> short file to check whether the mirror is indeed working.
> 
> (II) This is what I am currently using to determine the fastest database
> mirror for 3D-structures: I fetch a tiny probe file from each database
> mirror and take the one with the shortest respond time. This method is more
> simple  but as there are that many cygwin mirrors, I am not sure whether I
> would run into problems.

  Just as one further possibility, there's a bit of scripting on the page at
the cygwin website about how to setup your own package server that uses a
utility called 'netselect' to determine which is the fastest server in the
mirrors list:

    http://sourceware.org/cygwin-apps/package-server.html

  You might (or perhaps might not) find it adaptable to suit your purposes.

> When I have the mirror I would set it with the command line option of
> setup.exe. I think this would work and could be done easily. Do you have
> other ideas?

  If you wanted to be really cool, the URL that points to the alternative
mirrors list on your own server can in fact be a CGI script of some kind that
selects a geographically-nearest server based on the client's browser request
headers, and returns a dynamically generated mirrors.lst with one entry
customised just for that user.

> Could you please tell me the URL of the file with the cygwin mirror list?

  http://cygwin.com/mirrors.lst

  In the setup.exe source code, this is defined in IDS_MIRROR_LST in res.rc.

    cheers,
      DaveK

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Re: setup.exe: Determine Geographically closest mirror programmatically

[Ralph Hempel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 627 bytes --]

Dr. Christoph Gille wrote:
>> Closest mirror?  I'm not sure what you mean by this.  'setup.exe' does not
>> require this as a setting.  Actually, there is no such concept.  You need to specify
>> a mirror to work with but you can do that with '-s'.
> 
> With each superfluous click I lose a user, so it would be best if setup.exe would be run within http://3d-alignment.eu/  without
> user interaction.

Or you could modify the attached Windows batch file (I've made it
a TXT file so it passes through most filters) and change the
mirror name to one that's closer.

You might have to make one batch file per country :-)

Ralph

[-- Attachment #2: setupCygwin.txt --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 1034 bytes --]

@ECHO OFF
REM --------------------------------------------------------------------------
REM batch file to automate setup of Cygwin from the command line

SETLOCAL
  FOR /F %%D in ("%CD%") DO SET DRIVE=%%~dD

  SET DFLTSITE=http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/cygwin/

  SET DFLTLOCALDIR=%CD%/download
  SET DFLTROOTDIR=%DRIVE%/cygwinTest

  SET SITE=-s %DFLTSITE%
  SET LOCALDIR=-l %DFLTLOCALDIR%
  SET ROOTDIR=-R %DFLTROOTDIR%

REM --------------------------------------------------------------
REM Here's where I keep track of which packages I've loaded for
REM different types of work

REM C development: gcc4-core make readline

  SET PACKAGES=-P gcc4-core,make,readline

REM General      : diffutils ctags

  SET PACKAGES=%PACKAGES%,diffutils,ctags

REM Packaging     : cygport

  SET PACKAGES=%PACKAGES%,cygport

  setup -q -n -D -L %SITE% %LOCALDIR% %PACKAGES%

ECHO Cygwin installation is updated

REM --------------------------------------------------------------

ENDLOCAL

EXIT /B 0

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 218 bytes --]

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