How can I download python .egg files, when behind a firewall

Question

I'm going to try out turbogears however I'm on windows vista. however due to firewall proxy problems, it seems i can't download .egg files which is required for setup turbogears to get installed in my windows environment. I do have a bootable, or I can make a bootable Linux USB, I can try cygwin but I am not sure where to start with cygwin, so I was wondering what would solve my firewall / proxy problem of installing something like turbogears.

if it's possible, is there some non-online version of turbogears that i could just download from visiting a site and then somehow importing that non-online version into my python environment?

thanks so much!:)

Answer 1

Add python to the firewall exceptions list. Just make sure you don't run any questionable code made in python, of course.

Answer 2

You can run TG locally from windows. The tgsetup.py method of installation uses setuptools which depends on being able to bring in .egg files from the internet. The best approach would be to open the firewall to eggs, as others suggested. TG has a list of egg files that you can try to bring manually (maybe from an open internet connection). Installing an egg manually is possible, but not recommended.

If changing the firewall rules is not possible, you can use a Linux (bootable or virtual) installation that has a pre-configured TG package. For example, Fedora has one. This way, the TG package crosses (hopefully) the firewall as an .rpm file.

Answer 3

Perhaps the problem is not with the firewall per se, but with the fact that you need to use an HTTP proxy. If you do need to use a proxy, try setting the http_proxy environment variable. It might be that your firewall uses NTLM proxy authentication (which Python doesn't support); in this case, try setting up an APS proxy server on your local machine, and point http_proxy to localhost.

Answer 4

You could use the old firewall hack... try throwing "?file.jpg" or "#file.jpg" on the end (sans quotes). The firewall may see this as you're trying to download an image file which it'll allow, the responding server probably won't care that you've attached a query string, and (I think) python will just see an egg.

Answer 5

This might not be what you are looking for, but you can bypass the proxy tunneling SSH. Another possibility is using Tor.