The first part of this howto is general, i.e. install and setup of FoxyProxy. Then one particular use case. Enterprise with many subnetworks and dedicated environments: different staging, test systems, etc… Problem is that on one of those systems builds fail. Reason is that some resource is not reachable. And FoxyProxy can help you to identify it.

Software:

Firefox 3.5.8
FoxyProxy 2.19.1

Precondition:

This howto describes the usage of FoxyProxy in the enterprise network, spitted into many sub-networks by proxies.
If your network is different, this howto is likely useless for you.

Once you find it, the problem should be likely fixed by operation support department (network guys)…

1

Installation

Install fast Proxy switch for your browser. In my case I used FoxyProxy because it is quite popular amongst my peers
Download page: http://foxyproxy.mozdev.org/downloads.html. You can choose free standard version, it has all we need.

After restart you see the FoxyProxy sign in the right bottom corner of Firefox window.
 

2

Enter the Proxy Settings for sub-networks

• [Right MOUSE] on the Foxy Proxy sign in your browser.

• [General TAB], enter Proxy Name.

• [Proxy Details TAB], enter Host ot IP Adress and Port for your proxy.

• [URL Patterns TAB] -> [Add New Pattern BUTTON], enter Pattern Name = all and URL pattern = *

 
Tip. For all your proxies, you can use [Copy Selection BUTTON] and then just edit whats different.

Enter info for all your sub-networks, whatever your have: Staging1, Staging2, Test1 etc.

3

Find the resource which seems to be unreachable

Grep or less through logs to find the resource which seems to be unreachable. For example, selenium might run browsers in background. Naturally, they still rely on the same resources. Get the URL which causes the problem.

4

Use FoxyProxy to check the visibility of problematic URL

Just enter the url in your browser and switch between available proxies. If you see that resource is actually there, but not reachable from one of the sub-networks, you found the problem. From here operations support department or your system administration can search for the root cause.