Reference:
http://kryptoz.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/the-http_proxy-environment-variable-setup-proxy-setting-in-a-linux-machine/
If you need to use proxy server to access http/https from a linux machine in the office LAN, set the environment variable http_proxy. This will allow wget and python’s urllib modules and other applications (yum, apt-get etc) to use this environment variable and access http/https using the settings assigned to the variable http_proxy.
The below would be the ideal way of assigning values for http_proxy variable.
$export http_proxy=”http://<proxy-server-ip>:<port>”
I have added this to my ~/.bashrc so that I don’t have to export this variable every time I reboot my machine !
And then there is the “ftp_proxy” …..
Posted by jaymspatel 