How to allow curl via a local proxy?

Question

According the the Charles Proxy configuration page, you can manually set up a proxy if you use your localhost with port 8080.

The syntax is curl --proxy localhost:8080 http://google.com/

However, this is not working for me. Here is my syntax and results - i'm also using the -v option for debugging:

curl -v --proxy localhost:8080 http://google.com/

* About to connect() to proxy localhost port 8080 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1... Connection refused
*   Trying ::1... Connection refused
*   Trying fe80::1... Connection refused
* couldn't connect to host
* Closing connection #0
curl: (7) couldn't connect to host

I can connect to localhost:8080 in the web browser, and the results are logged in the proxy. However this is not working, the connecting is refused and nothing is logged.

So far I have also tried:

- executing this as root
- using 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost
- using wget instead of curl
- disabling the system firewall

What am I doing wrong? What else can I try?

Answer 1

I had some success using port 8888: curl http://www.google.com --proxy 127.0.0.1:8888

Answer 2

Connection refused would suggest that nothing is listening on port 8080. Charles has to be running (and listening on port 8080) for curl to be able to use it as a proxy. That or you've got a firewall actively blocking that port, preventing anything from connecting.