Installing Ubuntu or Mint from behind a proxy

Question

Whenever I install Ubuntu or Mint from behind a proxy, I find that the installation hangs during the timezone configuration phase. Figuring that it had to be related to the network, I restarted the install and selected "Try Ubuntu" instead of "Install Ubuntu". This boots me into a gnome-shell.

From there I updated the proxy settings to the values appropriate for my network and clicked on the "Ubuntu Install" icon on the desktop. The install still stalls around the "Copying Files" phase, grrrr.

Using a terminal, I can verify that the environment variables are correctly set to the proxy values, however, when I examine the environ file in the /proc/pid entry for the installer process, these proxy variables are not set.

Therein lies the problem, the installer is almost certainly invoked using the old environment variables and consequently, never gets to see the proxy settings.

I suspect the issue would be resolved if I could log out and log back in again, forcing the gnome-shell to reload but that isn't an option as the Ubuntu live configuration does not allow you to do this. I've got a workaround which I'm going to post here for others but any additional insight or more elegant solutions are welcomed.

Answer 1

Ok, once you're in the Ubuntu live gnome-shell and you've got the proxy values set correctly, right click on the installer icon. Examine the properties of the launcher and copy the value of the "command" field. This was "ubiquity --desktop %k gtk_ui" for my system but may be different for yours.

Now open a terminal, verify that the proxy settings are correct by typing:

env | grep -i proxy

You should see the proxy values listed, otherwise you need to set them. Now run the ubiquity command from the terminal:

ubiquity --desktop %k gtk_ui

Viola!, your install should proceed without any problems, correctly using the proxy settings whenever it needs to (such as fetching timezone data).