Support JVM proxy settings for Java

[gtback]

It would be great if vagrant-proxyconf could support the http.proxyHost, http.proxyPort, and http.nonProxyHosts (along with HTTPS and FTP) options to the JVM.

Ref: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/net/proxies.html

I'm not sure the best way to set these (via environment variables such as JAVA_OPTS, perhaps?), or if they need to be explicitly passed to JVM invocations. I'm not that experienced with either Ruby or Java, but I'm happy to help out any way I can.

Background: I'm trying to install ElasticSearch plugins using Ansible (on machines both behind a proxy and not). While I could (and probably will in the short term) manually tweak the command-line invocation of the plugin command for proxy environments, it would be great if this was handled transparently by vagrant-proxyconf, which I'm using for other proxy-related settings on this project.

[tmatilai]

I'm afraid that this is impossible to do in a generic way. It totally depends how you invoke the JVM. While many scripts honor JAVA_OPTS or something like it, they also set/override it in their configuration file. It's really pity java doesn't support the standard environment variables here.

So I believe you have to set the JVM parameters via your own provisioner when you configure the application itself. If someone has more insight, please comment and we'll reopen the issue.

[gtback]

Thanks, @tmatilai. It's unfortunate that there's not a good way to do this in Java; not the fault of vagrant-proxyconf though. 😃

[tknerr]

@gtback just stumbled over elatsicsearch plugin installation behind a corp proxy as well, and finally found my way here.

So there is one thing that seems to work generically, namely the _JAVA_OPTIONS env var:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/2966629/2388971

Putting this to /etc/environment (or make sure its otherwise set in the ENV while the provisioner runs) made it work:

_JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dhttp.proxyHost=foo.com -Dhttp.proxyPort=3128 -Dhttps.proxyHost=foo.com -Dhttps.proxyPort=3128'

Thought this would be a useful addition to set in the env via vagrant-proxyconf.

[tknerr]

One more thing: this would probably be something that should always be set as part of configure_env_proxy.rb, instead of detecting for java first.

Why? Because a common use case is to first install java then run a java app (e.g. the elasticsearch plugin command) within a single provisioner run.

[tmatilai]

Oh, that's interesting! I have never came across that variable before.

I'll reopen the issue and wait for a pull request. =)
Just be sure to append and not replace the original _JAVA_OPTIONS.

[tknerr]

We might even want to set

• _JAVA_OPTIONS for java apps (java.exe)
• JAVAWS_VM_ARGS for java webstart apps
• _JPI_VM_OPTIONS for java applets (javaw.exe)

See here:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/9677804/2388971

[tknerr]

@tmatilai +1 for appending (or even better: prepending? -- not sure how java deals with that...)