[pca] using curl rather than wget

[Martin Paul]

Hi Glenn,

> I was setting it up for a new site last week that uses a Windows proxy
> that requires NTLM authentication to download patches etc. Getting them
> to change the authentication method is, well, difficult.

I found:
 
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Web-Browsing-Behind-ISA-Server-HOWTO.html

Obviously one can configure the proxy to additionally support basic 
authentication. I guess using --proxy-user and --proxy-password would 
work then. Maybe you already tried to convinve the proxy admin, but if 
not, that might be the easiest solution.

Method #2 on that page describes NTLMAPS, a local NTLM Authorization 
Proxy Server. Maybe that's another option for you? Looks like you could 
then use pca/wget unchanged.

According to wget's NEWS file you are right in that the NTLM support of 
wget does not include proxy authentication. If you haven't asked for 
that on the wget mailing list, do so. I had a problem with wget in the 
past, and it was fixed in a new beta version (and the next release) of 
wget immediately. Folks have been very helpful, plus this would solve 
the problem for all wget users, not just for those who use pca.

> I notice that curl supports NTLM proxy authentication so I figure it
> shouldn't be too hard to port that into pca instead of, or as well as,
> wget. Just wondering if anyone has been down this path before?

If your last chance is to make pca use curl instead, your basic idea is 
fine. The download() function in pca encapsulates all the low-level wget 
stuff, so it should be the location where you would make your changes. 
Check if the basename of $o{wget} is "curl", and set the options 
accordingly. The problem will be to find equivalents to all the wget 
option used by pca - not sure if they even exist. For a local hack you 
maybe won't need all of them, so this might work out.

hth,

Martin.