The symptoms described are due to changes made for bug 432631. Perhaps this should be marked as a duplicate (though it's kind of an anti- duplicate!)
The documentation of this change is in /usr/share/doc/sudo/changelog.Debian.gz: sudo (1.7.2p1-1ubuntu4) lucid; urgency=low * env.c: Revert addition of "http_proxy" again. This was an Ubuntu specific EBW hack, caused inconsistencies with other proxy variables (such as https_proxy and ftp_proxy), made sudo incompatible to upstream behaviour/documentation. This is solved in a much better way in apt itself and gnome-network-properties now. (LP: #432631) [changes in intervening versions elided] -- Martin Pitt <martin.p...@ubuntu.cosudo (1.7.0-1ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low [...] - env.c: Add "http_proxy" to initial_keepenv_table, so that it is kept for "sudo apt-get ...". (Ubuntu specific EBW hack, should disappear at some point) -- sudo does not keep http_proxy environment variable https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/556293 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs