howdy: Downloading 3 required data files... Too SLOW !

On my Ubuntu, I use method below to install howdy when data downloading failed.

1. cd into your howdy library directory, which should in /lib/security/howdy/dlib-data
2. modify install.sh, I use proxychains4 to enable wget to use my proxy
3. cd into dpkg library, which in /var/lib/dpkg/info, and run sudo ./howdy.preinst install to generate howdy_picked_device to make dpkg think it’s fresh configuration mode
4. modify line 131 in howdy.postinst, change it from LOADER_CMD = [loader, "--tries", "5", "--output-document"] to LOADER_CMD = ["proxychains4", "-q", loader, "--tries", "5", "--output-document"] so that wget can use proxy to download file
5. finally you can run sudo apt install howdy or whatever command that can make apt continue installing howdy

Here is some advise

1. You can specify which python3 packages howdy needs in README so people can install them before, in case root’s pip use different pypi mirror.
2. You can keep howdy_picked_device file existing until installation finally complete, in case installation failed. It took me a while to find why the script can’t run properly again after I modified it because the file was deleted.

You may lose your proxy env when you use sudo, which makes the download too slow. To solve that, you can first switch to root with

sudo -s

Then export proxy env like

export http_proxy=xxxxxxxxxxx
export https_proxy=xxxxxxxxxxx

Finally install howdy right in the root shell with

apt install howdy

You may lose your proxy env when you use sudo, which makes the download too slow. To solve that, you can first switch to root with

sudo -s

Then export proxy env like

export http_proxy=xxxxxxxxxxx
export https_proxy=xxxxxxxxxxx

Finally install howdy right in the root shell with

apt install howdy

I don’t know why but this doesn’t help. It does establish a connection through proxy, but github blocks the connection out. This method is of great help when downloading the pip package anyway. In my case, the only way to download the 3 files is through proxychains.

Thanks all for figuring it out, was unfortunately not much i could do from here. Closing this now because the problem is not with Howdy