No high school internet connection

Riptils

Hello, I would like to install archlinux with cachy os. I installed the gnome installer on a usb key and booted it correctly. I then successfully connected to my high school network. But I don’t have access to the network.
When I ping the dns and IP it works fine but I can’t access the internet with the cachy browser and can’t update the package database which makes online installation impossible.

I want to make sure that I can manipulate my system on my high school network before installing cachy os. Thank you for your support and help.

I can provide more information about my system and others if needed.

vnepogodin

Riptils
Most likely your school internet is using filtering system which allows only selected websites to visit, that common.

Fijxu

Riptils As vnepogodin said, it is probably a filtering system by your high school network. Probably a DNS one, since DNS is unencrypted they can inspect your traffic and simply block domains that they don’t want you to visit. You can either use a encrypted DNS protocol like DNS-over-TLS/HTTPS/QUIC so the system cannot inspect your DNS traffic, if this doesn’t work your best bet is using a VPN

MBK

vnepogodin
I have seen that earlier, cachyos had an option to easily use dnscrypt-proxy.

What happened to this? Any reason it was removed?

Riptils

I’ve tried the connection on other distributions such as arch itself, manjaro and endeavours and none of them worked. I think the problem comes from archlinux itself, or from a protection built into the dns that prevents the high school network from writing its own on my network. By way of comparison, wifi is correctly implemented on debien and ubuntu. I have to figure out what it wants to do and allow it for a set period of time while I connect to the network.

I’m looking into DNS and encrypted DNS protocols. It’s probably a configuration where I have to specify things in these files like.

Thanks for your answers

Riptils

Okay, I talked to the guy who manages the school’s network infrastructure. He told me to take a look at the proxy configuration. We think the DNS is well managed and configured with DNS certificates and encryption, what’s missing, or at least what we think is missing, is the proxy settings for the various network protocols.

I’ll get back to you once I’ve completed my tests.
Thanks again

Riptils

So I’m 100% sure it’s a proxy issue.
However, I don’t quite understand where and how to configure it. I’ve tried modifying environment variables, modifying the pacman.conf file and also with the Gnome utility. But none of them worked. The only thing that worked was to configure it in firefox, which allows you to connect to the internet, but not to use pacman to install the system…

If anyone can help me on how to proceed.

(I had looked at this archwiki page for info, and I didn’t find anything there that works or looks very conclusive, especially for pacman: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Proxy_server#Environment_variables)

MBK

In the KDE & Gnome settings (under network) you can configure your proxy settings.

But for system wide you also have everything in the wiki:

Riptils https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Proxy_server#Environment_variables

The wiki says :

Alternatively, there is a tool named proxyman-git AUR which claims to configure system-wide proxy settings easily. It also handles proxy configurations of other software like git, npm, Dropbox, etc.

Have you tried it?

You install it with yay or paru : “yay proxyman-git”

And then you configure it as explained in the howto.

But you can also directly add the environment variables as explained in the wiki to /etc/environment (without “export”)

http_proxy=http://10.203.0.1:5187/ https_proxy=$http_proxy ftp_proxy=$http_proxy rsync_proxy=$http_proxy no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com"

And then reboot.

Riptils

Okay, I’ll try that, thanks.

I can’t install packages on the PC if I don’t have access to the network… But thanks, I’ll see once I’m connected.

Riptils

I’ve tested everything you’ve told me (except the applications, since I can’t install them). Nothing works…

MBK

Riptils

pacman runs with sudo, so to preserve the proxies you have to run it with sudo -E (but this will not work with yay or paru as they call pacman directly), so you have to do “su -” to get to a root terminal, then you can export the proxies and then it should work.

If you export the variables (export http_proxy and https if this is what you are using in your pacman mirrors list) in the terminal before running pacman/yay/paru you should then be able to install packages.

-> if you install proxyman-git with yay or paru it should then be able to set everything up.

And if you still don’t have internet access, just enable the hotspot on your mobile phone & connect to it via wifi to install proxyman-gi.

Riptils

Thank you so much, I’ll be testing this out in the next few days. I’ll keep you posted on my progress! Thanks again

Riptils

Ok, I tested, pacman -Sy with sudo -E seems to work fine. The problem now is that I can’t get into sudo mode (su), I don’t know the password, I’ve tried typing nothing but it doesn’t seem to work. Can you tell me how to connect in su? Then I can test the environment variables and tell you if this solution works.

Riptils

Ok, I’ve entered the environment variables in user mode and root mode with the sudo su command but it still doesn’t work. The environment variables seem to be taken into account but pacman still doesn’t work.

MBK

Riptils

Is curl able to load a web page?
If not, does wget work (also edit the proxy in /etc/wgetrc)? (If it does you can change the XferCommand in pacman.conf to use wget).
Are the protocols (http, https,…) that you have setup in your mirrors lists (in /etc/pacman) the same as the ones you have exported?

If curl or wget can’t connect, pacman won’t either as it uses them to connect. So, you have to make sure they are working.

Also, look here for more info on how to do this.