How to use SOCKS proxy for Raspbmc

Question

I need to access certain overseas content like BBC iPlayer via a SOCKS proxy server. My Linux virtual server in London is up and running and works perfectly with my other computers. I cannot work out how to use SOCKS for xbmc.

It would be best if only xbmc used the proxy but it would not be a deal breaker if all traffic had to go through it.

In spite of a lot of searching on the internet I could not find any clear answers, they all seem to refer to a http proxy which is in the xbmc options. Eg https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.raspberry-pi/kvT4E9LJQwE

Answer 1

If you're connecting via SSH to your London server you can route all your client traffic through SSH connection with sshuttle (https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle). sshuttle will redirect all TCP traffic through an SSH tunnel proxy.

I tried and it worked.

Answer 2

It is possible to convert a socks proxy to http proxy.

1) install polipo and copy the config sample:

$ sudo apt-get install polipo
$ cp /usr/share/doc/polipo/examples/config.sample ~/.poliporc

2) change these lines in ~/.poliporc:

# socksParentProxy = "localhost:9050"
# socksProxyType = socks5

to:

socksParentProxy = "<server_ip>:<server_port>"
socksProxyType = socks5

3) then run polipo:

$ polipo

4) a http proxy will start locally on port 8123 by default which still route the network traffic to your remote server only it is a http server. you can check if it is running successfully by this command:

$ sudo netstat -nap | grep polipo

if it worked, it will print something like this:

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8123          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      28783/polipo   

5) then you could enable the xbmc options of the http proxy to 127.0.0.1:8123, and it should work.