OS4X HTTP Proxy support

Why use an http proxy?

OS4X needs to update information from online ressources quite often, such as

• TSL download
• CRL download
• CSR transmission

OS4X needs these information up-to-date, otherwise most modern OFTP2 functionalities won't work at all. For this, OS4X needs a working http connection for every online ressource. The URLs needed are dynamic, so there is no absolute definite list of URLs for which OS4X must be allowed to access these ressources.

Environmental variables

Proxy support in general is handled by most Unix programs by setting a special environment variable "http_proxy". This variable is build with some parts of information needed. The syntax for this variable is:

<protocol>://[<username>:<password>@]<hostname or IP>:<port>

Examples:

http://proxyuser:proxypwd@proxyserver:3128

http://proxyserver:3128

Behaviour in OS4X

If proxy support is disabled, the above variable is overwritten with empty values by all OS4X binaries. In subsequent processes (like event scripts or plugins), these environment share the same variables as the parent processes have. If you need special variable values for the above listed variable, you have to take care about them in your use cases.

If you have enabled proxy support in OS4X and enabled usage of these special environmental variables, OS4X doesn't change these values and doesn't use other definitions for HTTP proxy definitions.

If you have enabled proxy support in OS4X and disabled usage of these special environmental variables, OS4X will change eventually set environment variables by setting them to the defined values in the OS4X definition, so it overwrites these variables in all processes. This environment variable is also available in all subsequent processes, like event scripts.