Overview

This guide shows two quick methods of getting the Aptitude program on Debian and Ubuntu-based systems to successfully connect to remote package repositories from behind a corporate proxy. A proxy host IP address of 10.11.12.13 and port value of 8080 are used below for example purposes.

Please Note: This post is purely for interest's sake. I highly recommend you do not do this at your organisation as you may quickly find yourself on the wrong end of a workplace agreement violation.

Method 1 - Session and Command-line Environment Variables

The apt application makes use of the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables when present in the current execution environment. Using the example proxy IP and port mentioned earlier, the following will set the variables for the scope of a single command:

http_proxy=http://10.11.12.13:8080 https_proxy=http://10.11.12.13 apt-get update

Similarly, these variables can be exported as part of the terminal session as follows:

export http_proxy=http://10.11.12.13:8080
export https_proxy=http://10.11.12.13:8080
apt-get update && apt-get install -y proxytunnel

Method 2 - Permanent Configuration Change

For a more permanent solution, the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00aptitude configuration file (or the /etc/apt/apt.conf configuration file if you prefer) can be updated with the following directive:

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://10.11.12.13:8080";

Once saved, apt commands can be run without needing to specify the environment variables mentioned earlier: