proxy and apt-get

There are numerous suggestions - presumably these vary on distribution.

The thing that worked for me with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was editing /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf to add:

Acquire::http::proxy "http://proxysg.uwe.ac.uk:8080";
Acquire::ftp::proxy "ftp://proxysg.uwe.ac.uk:8080";