Proxy documentation is not clear

Proxy documentation is not clear

[ng0]

doc/guix.html/Build-Environment-Setup.html#index-http_005fproxy reads:

The daemon also honors the http_proxy environment variable for HTTP downloads it performs, be it for fixed-output derivations (see Derivations) or for substitutes (see Substitutes).

If you are installing Guix as an unprivileged user, it is still possible to run guix-daemon provided you pass --disable-chroot. However, build processes will not be isolated from one another, and not from the rest of the system. Thus, build processes may interfere with each other, and may access programs, libraries, and other files available on the system—making it much harder to view them as pure functions. 


... This links to:
doc/guix.html/Derivations.html#Derivations
and
doc/guix.html/Substitutes.html#Substitutes

where the substitutes page reads:

Substitutes are downloaded over HTTP or HTTPS. The http_proxy environment variable can be set in the environment of guix-daemon and is honored for downloads of substitutes. Note that the value of http_proxy in the environment where guix build, guix package, and other client commands are run has absolutely no effect. 


None of these pages provides any example or further explanation on how
this could be achieved, for example to make Guix use a socks5 proxy
systemwide. I know how this can be achieved with iptables etc, but it
would be better if the documentation is fixed. I have no idea how in
this case as the documentation is not clear.

Re: Proxy documentation is not clear

[Leo Famulari]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 05:06:23PM +0000, ng0 wrote:
> Substitutes are downloaded over HTTP or HTTPS. The http_proxy
> environment variable can be set in the environment of guix-daemon and
> is honored for downloads of substitutes. Note that the value of
> http_proxy in the environment where guix build, guix package, and
> other client commands are run has absolutely no effect. 
> 
> None of these pages provides any example or further explanation on how
> this could be achieved, for example to make Guix use a socks5 proxy
> systemwide. I know how this can be achieved with iptables etc, but it
> would be better if the documentation is fixed. I have no idea how in
> this case as the documentation is not clear.

It depends on how you start the daemon. For systemd, you can set the
environment variable from the service file. I'm not sure how to pass
this variable to the daemon on GuixSD.

Re: Proxy documentation is not clear

[ng0]

On 17-02-20 22:32:40, Leo Famulari wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 05:06:23PM +0000, ng0 wrote:
> > Substitutes are downloaded over HTTP or HTTPS. The http_proxy
> > environment variable can be set in the environment of guix-daemon and
> > is honored for downloads of substitutes. Note that the value of
> > http_proxy in the environment where guix build, guix package, and
> > other client commands are run has absolutely no effect. 
> > 
> > None of these pages provides any example or further explanation on how
> > this could be achieved, for example to make Guix use a socks5 proxy
> > systemwide. I know how this can be achieved with iptables etc, but it
> > would be better if the documentation is fixed. I have no idea how in
> > this case as the documentation is not clear.
> 
> It depends on how you start the daemon. For systemd, you can set the
> environment variable from the service file. I'm not sure how to pass
> this variable to the daemon on GuixSD.

Exactly, for systemd I would have been able to find it out, but I wonder
how to achieve this in GuixSD.