smart proxy not working correctly?

[Grant McWilliams]

I have a situation where there are a lot of mobile machines that roam inside
and outside of a network. When they're inside the network they need to
connect to an http/ftp proxy in order to access the outside. Setting this is
easy in smart (smart config --set http-proxy=
http://proxy.example-company.com:8080). The problem is sometimes these
machines are on the outside of the network and the proxy isn't available to
them ( proxy.example-company.com is a DNS name only available inside the
network).

>
> I was hoping (wishful) that if smart couldn't contact the proxy server it
> would attempt the action without the proxy. What would be the problem with
> this, it would just error out twice right?
>
> To test this theory I changed the proxy settings like this
>
> smart config --set ftp-proxy= ftp://proxy.example-company:8080
> > smart config --set http-proxy=http://proxy.example-company:8080
> >
>
> As well as this to cover my bases
>
>  smart config --set ftp-proxy=http://proxy.example-company:8080
> >  smart config --set ftp-proxy=proxy.example-company:8080
> >  smart config --set http-proxy=proxy.example-company:8080
> >
>
> The following syntax seems to work -> smart config --set http-proxy=http://proxy.example-company:8080
> .
> If I do this smart can't download or update the repo if the proxy server
> is not available even if the machine is on the public network and the repo
> could be accessed directly. I believe this to be the intended behavior.
>
> If I set the ftp-proxy setting in the same manner I can still download
> and/or update any repo list as if the proxy
> setting wasn't even there. I've tried all of the above settings for
> ftp-proxy and they all work when I'm outside the network and the proxy
> server can't be reached.
>
> So is this a problem with Smart not actually setting the proxy or is it
> just ignoring the proxy setting if the proxy isn't available?
>
> I asked the Windows admin about the proxy settings and he said (in total
> Windows fashion) that the proxies only work with Internet Explorer and not
> the command line (cough sputter!). I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
>
> Grant
>
>
Here is proxy section of the output of smart config --show

 'ftp-proxy': 'http://proxy.mascorp.com:8080',
>  'gtk-size': (680, 583),
>  'gtk-vpaned-position': 227,
>  'http-proxy': 'http://proxy.mascorp.com:8080',
>

Also here are the error messages for both the ftp and http sections when
trying to do smart update. I have both http and ftp proxies set.

Fetching information for 'Guru smart repository'...
> ->
> http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/smart/repo/10.2/repodata/repomd.xml
>
> repomd.xml
> [ 63%]
> error: Failed acquiring release file for 'Guru smart
> repository':
> error:
> http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/smart/repo/10.2/repodata/repomd.xml:
> (-2, 'Name or service not known')
>

Fetching information for 'SUSE Linux Online Updates'...
> -> ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/update/10.2/repodata/repomd.xml
>
> repomd.xml
> ################################################################### [ 53%]
>

Notice that even though I have both proxies set and to the same machine
which is not available from where I'm testing it the ftp download succeeds
but the http download does not.

Grant
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