Using calibre in a proxy. fetching metadata proxy authentication required

[shiftymorgan]

Everything on my pc works, the only thing that has an issue is calibre when I try and use it to get meta data.

I have no idea why it doesnt get my details

[itimpi]

If you are using Windows, Calibre wil use whatever proxy settings are set for Internet Explorer, so you might want to check those.

[shiftymorgan]

Yeah its windows and its all pointed to the proxy server ok.
Internet explorer works fine through proxy

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by shiftymorgan

Yeah its windows and its all pointed to the proxy server ok.
Internet explorer works fine through proxy

Same here. My proxy works fine in Firefox and IE, but not in Calibre; looking at the logs:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\metadata\sources\amazon.py ", line 381, in identify
File "site-packages\mechanize-0.2.4-py2.7.egg\mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 199, in open_novisit
File "site-packages\mechanize-0.2.4-py2.7.egg\mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 255, in _mech_open
httperror_seek_wrapper: HTTP Error 407: Proxy Authentication Required

Which is right, it does require authentication every time a new *process* tries to connect to the Internet. And Calibre won't let me config the userid & password, nor does it ask for it...

[kovidgoyal]

calibre does not support authenticated proxies.

[SheepPig]

I had the same problem. The issue is that Windows handles the proxy authentication separately from it's proxy settings, and when the proxy server asks for the username and password, Calibre has no way of recognising the request or getting the username and password from the user.

My workaround was to tell Windows my username and password so that Calibre does not need to worry about it. Unfortunately, setting the proxy under Internet Options in Windows does not let you specify a username and password within the proxy. The solution was to set a new environment variable.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. In Windows 7, choose Advanced System Settings on the left. On XP, select the Advanced tab.
3. Click on the Environment Variables button
4. Under user variables, click New
5. Enter the variable name as http_proxy and the variable value as the following:
   

   http://[username]:[password]@[proxyaddress]:[port]

   Or if your proxy needs a domain name to be specified:
   

   http://[domain]\[username]:[password]@[proxyaddress]:[port]

   Obviously replacing the [] with whatever is supposed to be there.
6. Click OK on all the open dialogs.

After doing this, Calibre was able to connect to the internet and fetch metadata, as well as several other internet related tasks which it could not do before. (Using Calibre 0.8.0 on Windows 7)

[Manichean]

You should be aware, though, that this essentially lets everyone with access to that user, be it by physically accessing the computer or logging in via network (VNC, ...) see the password in plain text. This may not be desirable in all cases

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by SheepPig

After doing this, Calibre was able to connect to the internet and fetch metadata, as well as several other internet related tasks which it could not do before. (Using Calibre 0.8.0 on Windows 7)

Thanks for the tip! Works fine with XP as well.

[shiftymorgan]

Still no Joy here I have done everything you put, Do I need to restart the machine?

Also I know its dense But I don't put in the [] brackets at all do I?