Set Your Proxy Client On Synology NAS Through cli

linux

You want to be able to configure your proxy client settings with the terminal but don’t know how…

Challenge

I use a couple of different proxy servers I’ve created with docker and I can (de)activate them through the
command line at will. The trouble came when I tried to do the same with the proxy client settings as shown in the screen shot.

Normally on linux machines you can just set environment variables like http_proxy and https_proxy but it
seems to go a bit different on a Synology NAS.

So I was able to start and stop the docker proxies easily on my iPhone with a simple ssh app but not the proxy client of Synology itself.

Finally I got tired of it and dug my heels in and did some reverse engineering :-)

Solution

Do it with the synowebapi.

There is an /etc/proxy.conf file where DSM saves its data to be retrieved when needed, but when I tried
to just edit that file and change some values DSM did not pick it up, hmmm not what I wanted.

Ok lets do it through the web interface and use the developers view to see the network traffic…
Yup that seemed to work and that resulted in the script below.

~/bin/set-proxy:

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#!/bin/sh
PORT=8118
HOST=localhost
ENABLE=true
while getopts ":p:h:ad?" opt; do
   case ${opt} in
      h) HOST=$OPTARG
	  ;;
	  p) PORT=$OPTARG
	  ;;
	  a) ENABLE=true
	  ;;
	  d) ENABLE=false
	  ;;
	  \?) echo "Usage: set-proxy [-p PORT_NUMBER] [-h HOSTNAME] [-a] [-d] [-?]"
	  echo "  -p PORT_NUMBER       : sets the portnumber (default: 8118)"
	  echo "  -h HOSTNAME          : sets the hostname (default: localhost)"
	  echo "  -a                   : activates the proxy client (=default)"
	  echo "  -d                   : disables the proxy client"
	  echo "  -?                   : this help message"
	  exit 0
	  ;;
	  esac
done

/usr/syno/bin/synowebapi --exec \
   "api"="SYNO.Core.Network.Proxy" \
   "method"="set" \
   "version"="1" \
   "enable"=${ENABLE:-true} \
   "http_host"="${HOST}" \
   "http_port"="${PORT}" \
   "enable_different_host"=false \
   "enable_auth"=false \
   "enable_bypass"=false \
   "https_host"="${HOST}" \
   "https_port"="${PORT}"


/usr/syno/bin/synowebapi --exec \
   "api"="SYNO.Core.Network.Proxy" \
   "method"="get"

Note that I have my ~/bin folder always on my PATH

When I saved the above script in set-proxy and ran it without params

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set-proxy

the result was something like:

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Line 259] Exec WebAPI:  api=SYNO.Core.Network.Proxy, version=1, method=set, param={"enable":true,"enable_auth":false,"enable_bypass":false,"enable_different_host":false,"http_host":"localhost","http_port":8118,"https_host":"localhost","https_port":8118}, runner=
{
   "httpd_restart" : false,
   "success" : true
}
[Line 259] Exec WebAPI:  api=SYNO.Core.Network.Proxy, version=1, method=get, param={}, runner=
{
   "data" : {
      "enable" : true,
      "enable_auth" : false,
      "enable_bypass" : false,
      "enable_different_host" : false,
      "http_host" : "localhost",
      "http_port" : "8118",
      "https_host" : "localhost",
      "https_port" : "8118",
      "password" : "\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t",
      "username" : ""
   },
   "httpd_restart" : false,
   "success" : true
}

Other command examples:

Use localhost with port 3128 and enable it

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set-proxy -p 3128 -a

disable the proxy:

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set-proxy -d

Use some other host on port 92000 and enable it

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set-proxy -a -p 92000 -h www.example.com

Note that you can add true but as it is the default you can drop it too.

testing

I did quite a few tests with this and it seems to work just fine.

With the following command you can see your current external ip address

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curl -s https://ipecho.net/plain

Start with the above command to see what your IP is before setting a proxy and then start the proxy and try again…

An example test was to run my ivonet/nordvpn-tor-provoxy docker image on port 8118 and to set-proxy to it and then do
the curl as described above.

It all worked just as hoped.

Goal

Well my goal to be able to configure the proxy client through a cli interface has worked.
The commands need to be executed as root (sudo) and that makes scripting it a bit more difficult but not
insurmountable as I have already written a blog about how to Run A Script As root Without sudo

If you have questions of comments leave them below.
They are always welcome.