1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
5 >Troubleshooting</TITLE
8 CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK
10 TITLE="Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions"
11 HREF="index.html"><LINK
14 HREF="misc.html"><LINK
16 TITLE="Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests"
17 HREF="contact.html"><LINK
20 HREF="../p_doc.css"></HEAD
31 SUMMARY="Header navigation table"
40 >Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</TH
77 >5. Troubleshooting</A
85 >5.1. I cannot connect to any websites. Or, I am getting
88 >"connection refused"</SPAN
89 > message with every web page. Why?</A
92 > There are several possibilities:</P
102 > is not running. Solution: verify
106 > is installed correctly, has not crashed, and is indeed running.
110 > logging and look at the logs to see what they say.</P
114 >Or your browser is configured for a different port than what
118 > is using. Solution: verify that <SPAN
122 and your browser are set to the same port (<TT
129 >Or if using a forwarding rule, you have a configuration problem or a
130 problem with a host in the forwarding chain. Solution: temporarily alter your
131 configuration and take the forwarders out of the equation.</P
135 > Or you have a firewall that is interfering and blocking you. Solution:
136 try disabling or removing the firewall as a simple test.
148 >5.2. Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</A
151 > More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
152 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running! The solution is
153 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
154 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
155 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
164 >5.3. I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
165 still getting through. How?</A
168 > If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
169 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
170 the need for any request to the server, and <SPAN
174 will not be involved. Flush the browser's caches, and then try again.</P
176 > If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
177 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <A
178 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
180 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
182 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
183 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game. And
184 remember you need to block the URL of the ad in question, which may be
185 entirely different from the site URL itself. Most ads are hosted on different
186 servers than the main site itself. If you right-click on the ad, you should
187 be able to get all the relevant information you need. Alternately, you can
188 find the correct URL by looking at <SPAN
193 > Below is a slightly modified real-life log snippet that originates with one
197 > (name of site was changed
198 for this example, the number of requests is real). You can see in this the
199 complexity of what goes into making up this one <SPAN
203 are eight different domains involved here, with thirty two separate URLs
204 requested in all, making up all manner of images, Shockwave Flash,
205 JavaScript, CSS stylesheets, scripts, and other related content. Some of this
206 content is obviously <SPAN
213 Many of the more questionable looking requests, are going to outside domains
214 that seem to be identifying themselves with suspicious looking names, making
215 our job a little easier. <SPAN
222 and BLOCKED) quite a few items in this example, but perhaps missed a few as well. </P
232 >Request: www.example.com/
233 Request: www.example.com/favicon.ico
234 Request: img.example.com/main.css
235 Request: img.example.com/sr.js
236 Request: example.betamarker.com/example.html
237 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/bestsellers/skyscraper.php?likref=BSellers
238 Request: img.example.com/pb.png
239 Request: www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js crunch!
240 Request: www.advertising-department.com/ats/switch.ps.php?26856 crunch!
241 Request: img.example.com/p.gif
242 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example&mode=behind crunch!
243 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=5c3cf&tmpl=PBa.tmpl crunch!
244 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example crunch!
245 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/best_sellers.css
246 Request: www.adtrak.net/adx.js crunch!
247 Request: img.example.com/hbg.gif
248 Request: img.example.com/example.jpg
249 Request: img.example.com/mt.png
250 Request: img.example.com/mm.png
251 Request: img.example.com/mb.png
252 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=a71b91fa5&tmpl=Ua.tmp crunch!
253 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js
254 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/lsi_head.gif
255 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=020548130&what=zone:61 crunch!
256 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=463594413&what=zone:58&source=Ua crunch!
257 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/bottomani.swf
258 Request: mmm.elitemediagroup.net/install.php?allowpop=no&popupmincook=0&allowsp2=1 crunch!
259 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js?screen=1400x1050&win=962x693
260 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=61 crunch!
261 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=5c3cf599a9efd0320d26&si
262 Request: 66.70.21.80/img/pixel.gif
263 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=58&source=Ua&block=86400 crunch!
264 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=a71b9f6504b0c5681fa5&si=Ua</PRE
270 > Despite 12 out of 32 requests being blocked, the page looked, and seemed to
271 behave perfectly <SPAN
274 > (minus some ads, of course).</P
282 >5.4. One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
286 > First verify that it is indeed a <SPAN
290 by toggling off <SPAN
294 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle"
296 >http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</A
298 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
299 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
302 > If the problem went away, we know we have a configuration related problem.
304 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
306 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
308 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which
309 actions are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions
310 files are responsible for that. It might be helpful also to look at your logs
311 for this site too, to see what else might be happening. Many sites are
312 complex and require a number of related pages to help present their content.
313 Look at what else might be used by the page in question, and what of that
321 Now, armed with this information, go to
323 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status"
325 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</A
327 and select the appropriate actions files for editing. </P
329 > You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
330 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
331 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
332 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
333 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
334 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
335 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!</P
337 > Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
338 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
339 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
347 which is an alias that turns off most <SPAN
351 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
352 your privacy and protection more than necessary, </P
354 > Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <A
355 HREF="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT"
357 >User Manual appendix,
358 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</A
361 HREF="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES"
365 with general configuration information and examples.</P
367 > As a last resort, you can always see if your browser has a setting that will
368 bypass the proxy setting for selective sites. Modern browsers can do this.</P
376 >5.5. After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
377 every time I start IE. What gives?</A
380 > This is a quirk that effects the installation of
384 >, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
385 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
386 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.</P
388 > When setting up an NT based Windows system with
392 > you may find that things do not seem to be
393 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
394 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
395 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
396 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
397 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
398 configured for the kids.</P
400 > When setting up <SPAN
403 > in this environment you
404 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
405 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
409 >. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
410 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
411 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
412 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
413 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
414 you have to store the password under each different user!</P
416 > The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
417 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
418 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
419 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
420 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
421 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.</P
423 >[Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]</P
431 >5.6. I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
438 > cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
439 so do not configure your browser to use <SPAN
443 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <SPAN
447 >any protocol other than HTTP
453 > Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
456 >ftp://ftp.example.com</TT
457 >, your browser is making
458 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
462 > does not, and cannot proxy
466 > To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <SPAN
470 setting, which will enable various protocols, including
477 > HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
478 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
482 > will indeed cause problems since
483 it does not know FTP. Newer version will give a sane error
484 message if a FTP connection is attempted. Just disable the FTP setting
485 and all will be well again.
491 > ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
492 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
502 >5.7. In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
503 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</A
506 > Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
507 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
508 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
509 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
510 is checked and enter <TT
513 > in the entry field.
517 > in the Port field. The next time you start
518 IE, it should reflect these values.
527 >5.8. In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
528 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
532 > Just dragging the <SPAN
535 > folder to the trash is
536 not enough to delete it. <SPAN
542 >uninstall.command</SPAN
543 > file that takes care of
544 these details. Open the trash, drag the <SPAN
546 >uninstall.command</SPAN
548 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
549 confirmation and the administration password.
552 > The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
553 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
562 >5.9. In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
563 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
567 > as my browser's proxy setting.</A
570 > We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in OSX, but don't fully
571 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
579 works around the problem.
588 >5.10. I get a completely blank page at one site. <SPAN
594 ><html><body></body></html></SPAN
596 Privoxy the page loads fine.</A
599 > Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
601 HREF="http://www.php.net/"
608 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
609 an uncompressed page, like <SPAN
613 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
616 > To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
619 >-prevent-compression</TT
634 > # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
636 {-prevent-compression}
642 > If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
643 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
644 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
645 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
654 >5.11. My logs show many <SPAN
656 >"Unable to get my own hostname"</SPAN
664 > tries to get the hostname of the system
665 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
676 > setting). If the system cannot supply
677 this information, <SPAN
680 > logs this condition. </P
682 > Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
683 not a fatal error to <SPAN
687 result in a much slower response from <SPAN
691 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.</P
693 > This can be caused by a problem with the local <TT
697 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
698 see if that helps. Make sure whatever name(s) are used for the local system,
699 that they resolve both ways.</P
707 >5.12. When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
710 >"port 8118 is already in use"</SPAN
711 > (or similar wording).
722 > port. Typically this message would mean that there
723 is already one instance of <SPAN
727 your system is actually trying to start a second
731 > on the same port, which will not work.
732 (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different ports.)
733 How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you need
734 to check your installation and start-up procedures.</P
742 >5.13. Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.</A
745 > This is caused by the <SPAN
748 > filter. You should either
752 >, or at least upgrade to the most
756 > file available from <A
757 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
761 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.</P
769 >5.14. Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
773 > This may also be caused by the <SPAN
777 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting the content type. Binary
778 files are exempted from <SPAN
782 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
786 >, or go to the most recent
790 > file available from <A
791 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
802 >5.15. What is the <SPAN
805 > and why is it there?</A
808 > The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
809 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
810 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
811 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
812 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
813 displayed correctly. <SPAN
817 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
818 correct these errors on the fly. </P
820 > But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
823 > If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
824 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
825 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <SPAN
833 > On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
834 notice wierd characters on pages, you might want to try it.</P
842 >5.16. Why do I keep seeing <SPAN
844 >"PrivoxyWindowOpen()"</SPAN
845 > in raw source code?</A
851 > is attempting to disable malicious
853 HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript"
857 in this case, with the <TT
859 >unsolicited-popups</TT
864 > cannot tell very well
868 > code snippets from <SPAN
873 > If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
874 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
875 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
876 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
877 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.</P
885 >5.17. I am getting too many DNS errors like <SPAN
887 >"404 No Such Domain"</SPAN
889 can't Privoxy do this better?</A
892 > There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
893 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
901 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
902 whatever the outcome was. And tries to give a coherent message if there seems
903 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
904 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
908 > to the URL). In other cases, if
912 > is being chained with another proxy, this
913 could complicate the issue, and cause undue
914 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <SPAN
918 server handles all the DNS. <SPAN
925 > which is reporting whatever problem occurred
926 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.</P
928 > In any case, newer versions include various improvements to help
932 > better handle these cases.</P
940 >5.18. At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
941 all CPU. Why is this?</A
944 > This is probably a manifestation of the <SPAN
948 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
949 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
950 pattern matching in <SPAN
954 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
955 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete. Until a better
956 solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages, particularly the
962 >unsolicited-popups</TT
972 >5.19. I just installed Privoxy, and all my
973 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives?</A
976 > This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
977 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
978 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
979 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
980 at a time and see if that helps.</P
988 >5.20. Why do my filters work on some sites but not on others?</A
991 > It's probably due to compression. It is a common practice for web servers to
992 send their content <SPAN
995 > in order to speed things up, and
996 then let the browser <SPAN
999 > them. When compiled with zlib support
1003 > can decompress content before filtering, otherwise you may want to enable
1005 HREF="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION"
1007 >prevent-compression</A
1016 SUMMARY="Footer navigation table"
1065 >Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests</TD