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3 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
7 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
9 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa Exp $
11 Written by and Copyright (C) 2001 the SourceForge
12 Privoxy team. http://www.privoxy.org/
14 Based on the Internet Junkbuster originally written
15 by and Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and
16 Junkbusters Corporation. http://www.junkbusters.com
20 Sat 03/02/02 04:53:47 PM
22 This should be ready for BETA release.
24 Hal Burgiss <hal@foobox.net>
29 <title>Privoxy User Manual</title>
31 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa Exp $</pubdate>
36 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
43 The user manual gives users information on how to install, configure and use
44 <application>Privoxy</application>. <application>Privoxy</application> is a
45 web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy,
46 filtering web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and
47 removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet
48 Junk. <application>Privoxy</application> has a very flexible configuration
49 and can be customized to suit individual needs and
50 tastes. <application>Privoxy</application> has application for both
51 stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.
54 You can find the latest version of the user manual at <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
58 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
65 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
67 <sect1 id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
69 <application>Privoxy</application> is a web proxy with advanced filtering
70 capabilities for protecting privacy, filtering web page content, managing
71 cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other
72 obnoxious Internet junk. <application>Privoxy</application> has a very
73 flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and
74 tastes. <application>Privoxy</application> has application for both
75 stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.
79 <application>Privoxy</application> is based on the code of the
80 <application>Internet Junkbuster</application>.
81 <application>Junkbuster</application> was originally written by JunkBusters
82 Corporation, and was released as free open-source software under the GNU GPL.
83 Stefan Waldherr made many improvements, and started the SourceForge project
84 to continue development.
88 <application>Privoxy</application> continues the
89 <application>Junkbuster</application> tradition, but adds many
90 refinements and enhancements.
94 This documentation is included with the current BETA version of
95 <application>Privoxy</application> and is mostly complete at this
96 point. The most up to date reference for the time being is still the comments
97 in the source files and in the individual configuration files. Development
98 of version 3.0 is currently nearing completion, and includes many significant
99 changes and enhancements over earlier versions. The target release date for
100 stable v3.0 is <quote>soon</quote> ;-)
104 Since this is a BETA version, not all new features are well tested. This
105 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
106 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
111 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
113 <title>New Features</title>
115 In addition to <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
116 feature of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
117 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features, some of them
118 currently under development:
122 The section is in both user-manual and faq. Please keep in sync.
129 Integrated browser based configuration and control utility (<ulink
130 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>). Browser-based tracing of rule
137 Modularized configuration that will allow for system wide settings, and
138 individual user settings. (not implemented yet, probably a 3.1 feature)
144 Blocking of annoying pop-up browser windows.
150 HTTP/1.1 compliant (most, but not all 1.1 features are supported).
156 Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration files, and
157 generally a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax over
170 Web page content filtering (removes banners based on size,
171 invisible <quote>web-bugs</quote>, JavaScript, pop-ups, status bar abuse,
178 Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
185 Multi-threaded (POSIX and native threads).
191 Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
197 User-customizable HTML templates (e.g. 404 error page).
203 Improved cookie management features (e.g. session based cookies).
209 Builds from source on most UNIX-like systems. Packages available for: Linux
210 (RedHat, SuSE, or Debian), Windows, Sun Solaris, Mac OSX, OS/2, HP-UX 11 and AmigaOS.
217 In addition, the configuration is much more powerful and versatile over-all.
228 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
231 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
232 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
234 <application>Privoxy</application> is available as raw source code, or
235 pre-compiled binaries. See the <ulink
236 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Home Page</ulink>
237 for binaries and current release info. <application>Privoxy</application>
238 is also available via <ulink
239 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ijbswa/current/">CVS</ulink>.
240 This is the recommended approach at this time. But please be aware that CVS
241 is constantly changing, and it may break in mysterious ways.
244 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
245 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Source</title>
247 For gzipped tar archives, unpack the source:
252 tar xzvf privoxy-2.9.13-beta-src* [.tgz or .tar.gz]
253 cd privoxy-2.9.13-beta
258 For retrieving the current CVS sources, you'll need the CVS
259 package installed first. To download CVS source:
264 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
265 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co current
271 This will create a directory named <filename>current/</filename>, which will
272 contain the source tree.
276 Then, in either case, to build from tarball/CVS source:
281 ./configure (--help to see options)
282 make (the make from gnu, gmake for *BSD)
284 make -n install (to see where all the files will go)
285 make install (to really install)
290 For Redhat and SuSE Linux RPM packages, see below.
296 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
297 <sect2 id="installation-rh"><title>Red Hat</title>
299 To build Redhat RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
312 This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places. Example:
316 /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
319 /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/privoxy-2.9.11-1.src.rpm
323 To install, of course:
328 rpm -Uvv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
333 This will place the <application>Privoxy</application> configuration
334 files in <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename>, and log files in
335 <filename>/var/log/privoxy/</filename>.
340 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
341 <sect2 id="installation-suse"><title>SuSE</title>
343 To build SuSE RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
356 This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places. Example:
360 /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
363 /usr/src/packages/SRPMS/privoxy-2.9.11-1.src.rpm
367 To install, of course:
372 rpm -Uvv /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
377 This will place the <application>Privoxy</application> configuration
378 files in <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename>, and log files in
379 <filename>/var/log/privoxy/</filename>.
385 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
386 <sect2 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
393 <application>Privoxy</application> is packaged in a WarpIN self-
394 installing archive. The self-installing program will be named depending
395 on the release version, something like:
396 <filename>ijbos2_setup_1.2.3.exe</filename>. In order to install it, simply
397 run this executable or double-click on its icon and follow the WarpIN
398 installation panels. A shadow of the <application>Privoxy</application>
399 executable will be placed in your startup folder so it will start
400 automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
404 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
405 into will contain all of the configuration files.
409 If you would like to build binary images on OS/2 yourself, you will need
410 a few Unix-like tools: autoconf, autoheader and sh. These tools will be
411 used to create the required config.h file, which is not part of the
412 source distribution because it differs based on platform. You will also
414 The distribution has been created using IBM VisualAge compilers, but you
415 can use any compiler you like. GCC/EMX has the disadvantage of needing
416 to be single-threaded due to a limitation of EMX's implementation of the
417 select() socket call.
421 In addition to needing the source code distribution as outlined earlier,
422 you will want to extract the <filename>os2seutp</filename> directory from CVS:
424 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
425 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co os2setup
427 This will create a directory named os2setup/, which will contain the
428 <filename>Makefile.vac</filename> makefile and <filename>os2build.cmd</filename>
429 which is used to completely create the binary distribution. The sequence
430 of events for building the executable for yourself goes something like this:
437 nmake -f Makefile.vac
439 You will see this sequence laid out in <filename>os2build.cmd</filename>.
445 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
446 <sect2 id="installation-win"><title>Windows</title>
447 <para>Click-click. (I need help on this. Not a clue here. Also for
448 configuration section below. HB.)
452 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
453 <sect2 id="installation-other"><title>Other</title>
455 Some quick notes on other Operating Systems.
459 For FreeBSD (and other *BSDs?), the build will require <command>gmake</command>
460 instead of the included <command>make</command>. <command>gmake</command> is
461 available from <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org">http://www.gnu.org</ulink>.
462 The rest should be the same as above for Linux/Unix.
469 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
472 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
473 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
475 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is kept
476 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
477 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
478 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
483 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
486 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
488 <application>Privoxy</application> can be reached by the special
489 URL <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (or alternately
490 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/">http://www.privoxy.org/config/</ulink>),
491 which is an internal page. You will see the following section:
498 Please choose from the following options:
500 * Show information about the current configuration
501 * Show the source code version numbers
502 * Show the client's request headers.
503 * Show which actions apply to a URL and why
504 * Toggle Privoxy on or off
505 * Edit the actions list
511 This should be self-explanatory. Note the last item is an editor for the
512 <quote>actions list</quote>, which is where much of the ad, banner, cookie,
513 and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
514 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
515 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
516 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
517 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically detect any changes
522 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
523 have problems with your current actions and filters, or just to test if
524 a site misbehaves, whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
525 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
526 to run as a proxy in this case, but all filtering is disabled.
532 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
537 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
540 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
542 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
543 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
544 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
545 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. The name and number of
546 configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is subject to
547 change as development progresses.
551 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though possibly
552 aggressive by some standards. For the time being, there are only three
553 default configuration files (this will change in time):
561 The main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename>
562 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
569 The <filename>default.action</filename> file is used to define various
570 <quote>actions</quote> relating to images, banners, pop-ups, access
571 restrictions, banners and cookies. There is a CGI based editor for this
572 file that can be accessed via <ulink
573 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>. (Other actions
574 files are included as well with differing levels of filtering
575 and blocking, e.g. <filename>ijb-basic.action</filename>.)
581 The <filename>default.filter</filename> file can be used to re-write the raw
582 page content, including viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript,
583 and whatever else lurks on any given web page.
591 <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>default.filter</filename>
592 can use Perl style regular expressions for maximum flexibility. All files use
593 the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a comment. Such
594 lines are not processed by <application>Privoxy</application>. After
595 making any changes, there is no need to restart
596 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
597 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> should detect such changes
602 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
603 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
604 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
605 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
610 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
613 <title>The Main Configuration File</title>
615 Again, the main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename> on
616 Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2, and <filename>config.txt</filename> on Windows.
617 Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword followed by a list of
618 values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For
626 <emphasis>blockfile blocklist.ini</emphasis>
633 Indicates that the blockfile is named <quote>blocklist.ini</quote>. (A
634 default installation does not use this.)
638 A <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> indicates a comment. Any part of a
639 line following a <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> is ignored, except if
640 the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> is preceded by a
641 <quote><literal>\</literal></quote>.
645 Thus, by placing a <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> at the start of an
646 existing configuration line, you can make it a comment and it will be treated
647 as if it weren't there. This is called <quote>commenting out</quote> an
648 option and can be useful to turn off features: If you comment out the
649 <quote>logfile</quote> line, <application>Privoxy</application> will not
650 log to a file at all. Watch for the <quote>default:</quote> section in each
651 explanation to see what happens if the option is left unset (or commented
656 Long lines can be continued on the next line by using a
657 <quote><literal>\</literal></quote> as the very last character.
661 There are various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> behavior
666 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
669 <title>Defining Other Configuration Files</title>
672 <application>Privoxy</application> can use a number of other files to tell it
673 what ads to block, what cookies to accept, etc. This section of the
674 configuration file tells <application>Privoxy</application> where to find
675 all those other files.
679 On <application>Windows</application> and <application>AmigaOS</application>,
680 <application>Privoxy</application> looks for these files in the same
681 directory as the executable. On Unix and OS/2,
682 <application>Privoxy</application> looks for these files in the current
683 working directory. In either case, an absolute path name can be used to
688 When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
689 per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of <quote>confdir</quote>.
690 For now, only <filename>confdir/templates</filename> is used for storing HTML
691 templates for CGI results.
695 The location of the configuration files:
702 <emphasis>confdir /etc/privoxy</emphasis> # No trailing /, please.
709 The directory where all logging (i.e. <filename>logfile</filename> and
710 <filename>jarfile</filename>) takes place. No trailing
711 <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, please:
718 <emphasis>logdir /var/log/privoxy</emphasis>
725 Note that all file specifications below are relative to
726 the above two directories!
730 The <quote>default.action</quote> file contains patterns to specify the
731 actions to apply to requests for each site. Default: Cookies to and from all
732 destinations are kept only during the current browser session (i.e. they are
733 not saved to disk). Pop-ups are disabled for all sites. All sites are
734 filtered through selected sections of <quote>default.filter</quote>. No sites
735 are blocked. <application>Privoxy</application> displays a checkboard type
736 pattern for filtered ads and other images. The syntax of this file is
737 explained in detail <link linkend="actionsfile">below</link>. Other
738 <quote>actions</quote> files are included, and you are free to use any of
739 them. They have varying degrees of aggressiveness.
746 <emphasis>actionsfile default.action</emphasis>
753 The <quote>default.filter</quote> file contains content modification rules
754 that use <quote>regular expressions</quote>. These rules permit powerful
755 changes on the content of Web pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite
756 JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some
757 fun replacing <quote>Microsoft</quote> with <quote>MicroSuck</quote> wherever
758 it appears on a Web page. Default: whatever the developers are playing with
763 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to slow down
764 page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has passed
765 the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way since
766 the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more noticeable
767 on slower connections.
775 <emphasis>filterfile default.filter</emphasis>
782 The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The logfile
783 can be useful for tracking down a problem with
784 <application>Privoxy</application> (e.g., it's not blocking an ad you
785 think it should block) but in most cases you probably will never look at it.
789 Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
790 periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
791 (see <quote>man cron</quote>). For Redhat, a <command>logrotate</command>
792 script has been included.
796 On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like <quote>/var/log/privoxy.*
797 +1024k 644 nobody.nogroup</quote> in <filename>/etc/logfiles</filename>, with
798 the effect that cron.daily will automatically archive, gzip, and empty the
799 log, when it exceeds 1M size.
803 Default: Log to the a file named <filename>logfile</filename>.
804 Comment out to disable logging.
811 <emphasis>logfile logfile</emphasis>
818 The <quote>jarfile</quote> defines where
819 <application>Privoxy</application> stores the cookies it intercepts. Note
820 that if you use a <quote>jarfile</quote>, it may grow quite large. Default:
821 Don't store intercepted cookies.
828 <emphasis>#jarfile jarfile</emphasis>
835 If you specify a <quote>trustfile</quote>,
836 <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow access to sites that
837 are named in the trustfile. You can also mark sites as trusted referrers,
838 with the effect that access to untrusted sites will be granted, if a link
839 from a trusted referrer was used. The link target will then be added to the
840 <quote>trustfile</quote>. This is a very restrictive feature that typical
841 users most probably want to leave disabled. Default: Disabled, don't use the
849 <emphasis>#trustfile trust</emphasis>
856 If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
857 documentation about your blocking policy and to specify the URL(s) here. They
858 will appear on the page that your users receive when they try to access
859 untrusted content. Use multiple times for multiple URLs. Default: Don't
860 display links on the <quote>untrusted</quote> info page.
867 <emphasis>trust-info-url http://www.your-site.com/why_we_block.html</emphasis>
868 <emphasis>trust-info-url http://www.your-site.com/what_we_allow.html</emphasis>
876 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
880 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
883 <title>Other Configuration Options</title>
886 This part of the configuration file contains options that control how
887 <application>Privoxy</application> operates.
891 <quote>Admin-address</quote> should be set to the email address of the proxy
892 administrator. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages. Default:
900 <emphasis>#admin-address fill@me.in.please</emphasis>
907 <quote>Proxy-info-url</quote> can be set to a URL that contains more info
908 about this <application>Privoxy</application> installation, it's
909 configuration and policies. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages
910 and its use is highly recommended in multi-user installations, since your
911 users will want to know why certain content is blocked or modified. Default:
912 Don't show a link to on-line documentation.
919 <emphasis>proxy-info-url http://www.your-site.com/proxy.html</emphasis>
926 <quote>Listen-address</quote> specifies the address and port where
927 <application>Privoxy</application> will listen for connections from your
928 Web browser. The default is to listen on the localhost port 8118, and
929 this is suitable for most users. (In your web browser, under proxy
930 configuration, list the proxy server as <quote>localhost</quote> and the
931 port as <quote>8118</quote>).
935 If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
936 serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well, you
937 will need to override the default. The syntax is
938 <quote>listen-address [<ip-address>]:<port></quote>. If you leave
939 out the IP address, <application>Privoxy</application> will bind to all
940 interfaces (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the
941 Internet. In that case, consider using access control lists (acl's) (see
942 <quote>aclfile</quote> above), or a firewall.
946 For example, suppose you are running <application>Privoxy</application> on
947 a machine which has the address 192.168.0.1 on your local private network
948 (192.168.0.0) and has another outside connection with a different address.
949 You want it to serve requests from inside only:
956 <emphasis>listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118</emphasis>
963 If you want it to listen on all addresses (including the outside
971 <emphasis>listen-address :8118</emphasis>
978 If you do this, consider using ACLs (see <quote>aclfile</quote> above). Note:
979 you will need to point your browser(s) to the address and port that you have
980 configured here. Default: localhost:8118 (127.0.0.1:8118).
984 The debug option sets the level of debugging information to log in the
985 logfile (and to the console in the Windows version). A debug level of 1 is
986 informative because it will show you each request as it happens. Higher
987 levels of debug are probably only of interest to developers.
994 debug 1 # GPC = show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
995 debug 2 # CONN = show each connection status
996 debug 4 # IO = show I/O status
997 debug 8 # HDR = show header parsing
998 debug 16 # LOG = log all data into the logfile
999 debug 32 # FRC = debug force feature
1000 debug 64 # REF = debug regular expression filter
1001 debug 128 # = debug fast redirects
1002 debug 256 # = debug GIF de-animation
1003 debug 512 # CLF = Common Log Format
1004 debug 1024 # = debug kill pop-ups
1005 debug 4096 # INFO = Startup banner and warnings.
1006 debug 8192 # ERROR = Non-fatal errors
1013 It is <emphasis>highly recommended</emphasis> that you enable ERROR
1014 reporting (debug 8192), at least until v3.0 is released.
1018 The reporting of FATAL errors (i.e. ones which crash
1019 <application>Privoxy</application>) is always on and cannot be disabled.
1023 If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set <quote>debug
1024 512</quote> ONLY, do not enable anything else.
1028 Multiple <quote>debug</quote> directives, are OK - they're logical-OR'd
1036 <emphasis>debug 15 # same as setting the first 4 listed above</emphasis>
1050 <emphasis>debug 1 # URLs</emphasis>
1051 <emphasis>debug 4096 # Info</emphasis>
1052 <emphasis>debug 8192 # Errors - *we highly recommended enabling this*</emphasis>
1059 <application>Privoxy</application> normally uses
1060 <quote>multi-threading</quote>, a software technique that permits it to
1061 handle many different requests simultaneously. In some cases you may wish to
1062 disable this -- particularly if you're trying to debug a problem. The
1063 <quote>single-threaded</quote> option forces
1064 <application>Privoxy</application> to handle requests sequentially.
1065 Default: Multi-threaded mode.
1072 <emphasis>#single-threaded</emphasis>
1079 <quote>toggle</quote> allows you to temporarily disable all
1080 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering. Just set <quote>toggle
1085 The Windows version of <application>Privoxy</application> puts an icon in
1086 the system tray, which also allows you to change this option. If you
1087 right-click on that icon (or select the <quote>Options</quote> menu), one
1088 choice is <quote>Enable</quote>. Clicking on enable toggles
1089 <application>Privoxy</application> on and off. This is useful if you want
1090 to temporarily disable <application>Privoxy</application>, e.g., to access
1091 a site that requires cookies which you would otherwise have blocked. This can also
1092 be toggled via a web browser at the <application>Privoxy</application>
1093 internal address of <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink> on
1098 <quote>toggle 1</quote> means <application>Privoxy</application> runs
1099 normally, <quote>toggle 0</quote> means that
1100 <application>Privoxy</application> becomes a non-anonymizing non-blocking
1101 proxy. Default: 1 (on).
1108 <emphasis>toggle 1</emphasis>
1115 For content filtering, i.e. the <quote>+filter</quote> and
1116 <quote>+deanimate-gif</quote> actions, it is necessary that
1117 <application>Privoxy</application> buffers the entire document body.
1118 This can be potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending
1119 data indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust. With nasty consequences.
1123 The <application>buffer-limit</application> option lets you set the maximum
1124 size in Kbytes that each buffer may use. When the documents buffer exceeds
1125 this size, it is flushed to the client unfiltered and no further attempt to
1126 filter the rest of it is made. Remember that there may multiple threads
1127 running, which might require increasing the <quote>buffer-limit</quote>
1128 Kbytes <emphasis>each</emphasis>, unless you have enabled
1129 <quote>single-threaded</quote> above.
1136 <emphasis>buffer-limit 4069</emphasis>
1143 To enable the web-based <filename>default.action</filename> file editor set
1144 <application>enable-edit-actions</application> to 1, or 0 to disable. Note
1145 that you must have compiled <application>Privoxy</application> with
1146 support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect. This
1147 internal page can be reached at <ulink
1148 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>.
1152 Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy
1153 can edit the actions file, and their changes will affect all users.
1154 For shared proxies, you probably want to disable this. Default: enabled.
1161 <emphasis>enable-edit-actions 1</emphasis>
1168 Allow <application>Privoxy</application> to be toggled on and off
1169 remotely, using your web browser. Set <quote>enable-remote-toggle</quote>to
1170 1 to enable, and 0 to disable. Note that you must have compiled
1171 <application>Privoxy</application> with support for this feature,
1172 otherwise this option has no effect.
1176 Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy can toggle
1177 it on or off (see <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>), and
1178 their changes will affect all users. For shared proxies, you probably want to
1179 disable this. Default: enabled.
1186 <emphasis>enable-remote-toggle 1</emphasis>
1194 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1197 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1200 <title>Access Control List (ACL)</title>
1202 Access controls are included at the request of some ISPs and systems
1203 administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. Please note
1204 the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a substitute
1205 for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic security
1210 If no access settings are specified, the proxy talks to anyone that
1211 connects. If any access settings file are specified, then the proxy
1212 talks only to IP addresses permitted somewhere in this file and not
1213 denied later in this file.
1217 Summary -- if using an ACL:
1222 Client must have permission to receive service.
1227 LAST match in ACL wins.
1232 Default behavior is to deny service.
1237 The syntax for an entry in the Access Control List is:
1244 ACTION SRC_ADDR[/SRC_MASKLEN] [ DST_ADDR[/DST_MASKLEN] ]
1251 Where the individual fields are:
1258 <emphasis>ACTION</emphasis> = <quote>permit-access</quote> or <quote>deny-access</quote>
1260 <emphasis>SRC_ADDR</emphasis> = client hostname or dotted IP address
1261 <emphasis>SRC_MASKLEN</emphasis> = number of bits in the subnet mask for the source
1263 <emphasis>DST_ADDR</emphasis> = server or forwarder hostname or dotted IP address
1264 <emphasis>DST_MASKLEN</emphasis> = number of bits in the subnet mask for the target
1272 The field separator (FS) is whitespace (space or tab).
1276 IMPORTANT NOTE: If <application>Privoxy</application> is using a
1277 forwarder (see below) or a gateway for a particular destination URL, the
1278 <literal>DST_ADDR</literal> that is examined is the address of the forwarder
1279 or the gateway and <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the address of the ultimate
1280 target. This is necessary because it may be impossible for the local
1281 <application>Privoxy</application> to determine the address of the
1282 ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
1286 Here are a few examples to show how the ACL features work:
1290 <quote>localhost</quote> is OK -- no DST_ADDR implies that
1291 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> destination addresses are OK:
1298 <emphasis>permit-access localhost</emphasis>
1305 A silly example to illustrate permitting any host on the class-C subnet with
1306 <application>Privoxy</application> to go anywhere:
1313 <emphasis>permit-access www.privoxy.com/24</emphasis>
1320 Except deny one particular IP address from using it at all:
1327 <emphasis>deny-access ident.privoxy.com</emphasis>
1334 You can also specify an explicit network address and subnet mask.
1335 Explicit addresses do not have to be resolved to be used.
1342 <emphasis>permit-access 207.153.200.0/24</emphasis>
1349 A subnet mask of 0 matches anything, so the next line permits everyone.
1356 <emphasis>permit-access 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis>
1363 Note, you <emphasis>cannot</emphasis> say:
1370 <emphasis>permit-access .org</emphasis>
1377 to allow all *.org domains. Every IP address listed must resolve fully.
1381 An ISP may want to provide a <application>Privoxy</application> that is
1382 accessible by <quote>the world</quote> and yet restrict use of some of their
1383 private content to hosts on its internal network (i.e. its own subscribers).
1384 Say, for instance the ISP owns the Class-B IP address block 123.124.0.0 (a 16
1385 bit netmask). This is how they could do it:
1392 <emphasis>permit-access 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis> # other clients can go anywhere
1393 # with the following exceptions:
1395 <emphasis>deny-access</emphasis> 0.0.0.0/0 123.124.0.0/16 # block all external requests for
1396 # sites on the ISP's network
1398 <emphasis>permit 0.0.0.0/0 www.my_isp.com</emphasis> # except for the ISP's main
1401 <emphasis>permit 123.124.0.0/16 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis> # the ISP's clients can go
1409 Note that if some hostnames are listed with multiple IP addresses,
1410 the primary value returned by DNS (via gethostbyname()) is used. Default:
1411 Anyone can access the proxy.
1416 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1419 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1421 <sect3 id="forwarding">
1422 <title>Forwarding</title>
1425 This feature allows chaining of HTTP requests via multiple proxies.
1426 It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
1427 accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains
1428 to a special purpose filtering proxy such as lpwa.com. Or to use
1429 a caching proxy to speed up browsing.
1433 It can also be used in an environment with multiple networks to route
1434 requests via multiple gateways allowing transparent access to multiple
1435 networks without having to modify browser configurations.
1439 Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. <application>Privoxy</application>
1440 SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 4A. The difference is that SOCKS 4A will resolve the target
1441 hostname using DNS on the SOCKS server, not our local DNS client.
1445 The syntax of each line is:
1452 <emphasis>forward target_domain[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1453 <emphasis>forward-socks4 target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1454 <emphasis>forward-socks4a target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1461 If http_proxy_host is <quote>.</quote>, then requests are not forwarded to a
1462 HTTP proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
1466 Lines are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
1470 There is an implicit line equivalent to the following, which specifies that
1471 anything not finding a match on the list is to go out without forwarding
1472 or gateway protocol, like so:
1479 <emphasis>forward .* . </emphasis># implicit
1486 In the following common configuration, everything goes to Lucent's LPWA,
1487 except SSL on port 443 (which it doesn't handle):
1494 <emphasis>forward .* lpwa.com:8000</emphasis>
1495 <emphasis>forward :443 .</emphasis>
1503 See the FAQ for instructions on how to automate the login procedure for LPWA.
1505 Some users have reported difficulties related to LPWA's use of
1506 <quote>.</quote> as the last element of the domain, and have said that this
1507 can be fixed with this:
1514 <emphasis>forward lpwa. lpwa.com:8000</emphasis>
1521 (NOTE: the syntax for specifying target_domain has changed since the
1522 previous paragraph was written -- it will not work now. More information
1527 In this fictitious example, everything goes via an ISP's caching proxy,
1528 except requests to that ISP:
1535 <emphasis>forward .* caching.myisp.net:8000</emphasis>
1536 <emphasis>forward myisp.net .</emphasis>
1543 For the @home network, we're told the forwarding configuration is this:
1551 <emphasis>forward .* proxy:8080</emphasis>
1558 Also, we're told they insist on getting cookies and JavaScript, so you should
1559 allow cookies from home.com. We consider JavaScript a potential security risk.
1560 Java need not be enabled.
1564 In this example direct connections are made to all <quote>internal</quote>
1565 domains, but everything else goes through Lucent's LPWA by way of the
1566 company's SOCKS gateway to the Internet.
1573 <emphasis>forward-socks4 .* lpwa.com:8000 firewall.my_company.com:1080</emphasis>
1574 <emphasis>forward my_company.com .</emphasis>
1581 This is how you could set up a site that always uses SOCKS but no forwarders:
1588 <emphasis>forward-socks4a .* . firewall.my_company.com:1080</emphasis>
1595 An advanced example for network administrators:
1599 If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content to
1600 their subscribers, you can configure forwarding to pass requests to the
1601 specific host that's connected to that ISP so that everybody can see all
1602 of the content on all of the ISPs.
1606 This is a bit tricky, but here's an example:
1611 host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.com. And host-b has a PPP connection to
1612 isp-b.com. host-a can run a <application>Privoxy</application> proxy with
1613 forwarding like this:
1620 <emphasis>forward .* .</emphasis>
1621 <emphasis>forward isp-b.com host-b:8118</emphasis>
1628 host-b can run a <application>Privoxy</application> proxy with forwarding
1636 <emphasis>forward .* .</emphasis>
1637 <emphasis>forward isp-a.com host-a:8118</emphasis>
1644 Now, <emphasis>anyone</emphasis> on the Internet (including users on host-a
1645 and host-b) can set their browser's proxy to <emphasis>either</emphasis>
1646 host-a or host-b and be able to browse the content on isp-a or isp-b.
1650 Here's another practical example, for University of Kent at
1651 Canterbury students with a network connection in their room, who
1652 need to use the University's Squid web cache.
1659 <emphasis>forward *. ssbcache.ukc.ac.uk:3128</emphasis> # Use the proxy, except for:
1660 <emphasis>forward .ukc.ac.uk . </emphasis> # Anything on the same domain as us
1661 <emphasis>forward * . </emphasis> # Host with no domain specified
1662 <emphasis>forward 129.12.*.* . </emphasis> # A dotted IP on our /16 network.
1663 <emphasis>forward 127.*.*.* . </emphasis> # Loopback address
1664 <emphasis>forward localhost.localdomain . </emphasis> # Loopback address
1665 <emphasis>forward www.ukc.mirror.ac.uk . </emphasis> # Specific host
1672 If you intend to chain <application>Privoxy</application> and
1673 <application>squid</application> locally, then chain as
1674 <literal>browser -> squid -> privoxy</literal> is the recommended way.
1678 Your squid configuration could then look like this:
1685 # Define Privoxy as parent cache
1686 <!-- per feedback from user...
1687 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 8118 parent 0 no-query
1689 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 0 no-query
1691 # Define ACL for protocol FTP
1694 # Do not forward ACL FTP to privoxy
1695 always_direct allow FTP
1697 # Do not forward ACL CONNECT (https) to privoxy
1698 always_direct allow CONNECT
1700 # Forward the rest to privoxy
1701 never_direct allow all
1709 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1712 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1715 <title>Windows GUI Options</title>
1717 Removed references to Win32. HB 09/23/01
1720 <application>Privoxy</application> has a number of options specific to the
1721 Windows GUI interface:
1725 If <quote>activity-animation</quote> is set to 1, the
1726 <application>Privoxy</application> icon will animate when
1727 <quote>Privoxy</quote> is active. To turn off, set to 0.
1734 <emphasis>activity-animation 1</emphasis>
1741 If <quote>log-messages</quote> is set to 1,
1742 <application>Privoxy</application> will log messages to the console
1750 <emphasis>log-messages 1</emphasis>
1757 If <quote>log-buffer-size</quote> is set to 1, the size of the log buffer,
1758 i.e. the amount of memory used for the log messages displayed in the
1759 console window, will be limited to <quote>log-max-lines</quote> (see below).
1763 Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and
1764 eat up all your memory!
1771 <emphasis>log-buffer-size 1</emphasis>
1778 <application>log-max-lines</application> is the maximum number of lines held
1779 in the log buffer. See above.
1786 <emphasis>log-max-lines 200</emphasis>
1793 If <quote>log-highlight-messages</quote> is set to 1,
1794 <application>Privoxy</application> will highlight portions of the log
1795 messages with a bold-faced font:
1802 <emphasis>log-highlight-messages 1</emphasis>
1809 The font used in the console window:
1816 <emphasis>log-font-name Comic Sans MS</emphasis>
1823 Font size used in the console window:
1830 <emphasis>log-font-size 8</emphasis>
1837 <quote>show-on-task-bar</quote> controls whether or not
1838 <application>Privoxy</application> will appear as a button on the Task bar
1846 <emphasis>show-on-task-bar 0</emphasis>
1853 If <quote>close-button-minimizes</quote> is set to 1, the Windows close
1854 button will minimize <application>Privoxy</application> instead of closing
1855 the program (close with the exit option on the File menu).
1862 <emphasis>close-button-minimizes 1</emphasis>
1869 The <quote>hide-console</quote> option is specific to the MS-Win console
1870 version of <application>Privoxy</application>. If this option is used,
1871 <application>Privoxy</application> will disconnect from and hide the
1888 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1891 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1892 <sect2 id="actionsfile">
1893 <title>The Actions File</title>
1896 The <quote>default.action</quote> file (formerly
1897 <filename>actionsfile</filename> or <filename>ijb.action</filename>) is used to define what actions
1898 <application>Privoxy</application> takes, and thus determines how images,
1899 cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and transactions are
1900 handled. Images can be anything you want, including ads, banners, or just
1901 some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
1902 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e.
1903 not written to disk). Changes to <filename>default.action</filename> should
1904 be immediately visible to <application>Privoxy</application> without
1905 the need to restart.
1909 The easiest way to edit <quote>actions</quote> file is with a browser by
1910 loading <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, and then select
1911 <quote>Edit Actions List</quote>. A text editor can also be used.
1915 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
1916 compared to all patterns in this file. Every time it matches, the list of
1917 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated. You can trace
1918 this process by visiting <ulink
1919 url="http://p.p/show-url-info">http://p.p/show-url-info</ulink>.
1924 There are four types of lines in this file: comments (begin with a
1925 <quote>#</quote> character), actions, aliases and patterns, all of which are
1926 explained below, as well as the configuration file syntax that
1927 <application>Privoxy</application> understands.
1932 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1934 <title>URL Domain and Path Syntax</title>
1936 Generally, a pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the
1937 <domain> and <path> part are optional. If you only specify a
1938 domain part, the <quote>/</quote> can be left out:
1942 <emphasis>www.example.com</emphasis> - is a domain only pattern and will match any request to
1943 <quote>www.example.com</quote>.
1947 <emphasis>www.example.com/</emphasis> - means exactly the same.
1951 <emphasis>www.example.com/index.html</emphasis> - matches only the single
1952 document <quote>/index.html</quote> on <quote>www.example.com</quote>.
1956 <emphasis>/index.html</emphasis> - matches the document <quote>/index.html</quote>, regardless of
1961 <emphasis>index.html</emphasis> - matches nothing, since it would be
1962 interpreted as a domain name and there is no top-level domain called
1963 <quote>.html</quote>.
1967 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
1968 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
1973 <emphasis>.example.com</emphasis> - matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
1974 <quote>.example.com</quote>.
1978 <emphasis>www.</emphasis> - matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
1983 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
1984 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
1985 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
1986 any single character. And you can define character classes in square
1987 brackets and they can be freely mixed:
1991 <emphasis>ad*.example.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
1992 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>.
1996 <emphasis>*ad*.example.com</emphasis> - matches all of the above, and then some.
2000 <emphasis>.?pix.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>www.ipix.com</quote>,
2001 <quote>pictures.epix.com</quote>, <quote>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</quote>, etc.
2005 <emphasis>www[1-9a-ez].example.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>www1.example.com</quote>,
2006 <quote>www4.example.com</quote>, <quote>wwwd.example.com</quote>,
2007 <quote>wwwz.example.com</quote>, etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2008 <quote>wwww.example.com</quote>.
2012 If <application>Privoxy</application> was compiled with
2013 <quote>pcre</quote> support (default), Perl compatible regular expressions
2014 can be used. See the <filename>pcre/docs/</filename> directory or <quote>man
2015 perlre</quote> (also available on <ulink
2016 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>)
2017 for details. A brief discussion of regular expressions is in the
2018 <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link>. For instance:
2022 <emphasis>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpe?g</emphasis> - would match a URL from any
2023 domain, with any path that includes <quote>advert</quote> followed
2024 immediately by one or more digits, then a <quote>.</quote> and ending in
2025 either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>. So we match
2026 <quote>example.com/ads/advert2.jpg</quote>, and
2027 <quote>www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.jpeg</quote>, but not
2028 <quote>www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.gif</quote> (no gifs in the
2033 Please note that matching in the path is case
2034 <emphasis>INSENSITIVE</emphasis> by default, but you can switch to case
2035 sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2036 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch:
2040 <emphasis>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</emphasis> - will match only
2041 documents whose path starts with <quote>PaTtErN</quote> in
2042 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2047 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2051 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2054 <title>Actions</title>
2056 Actions are enabled if preceded with a <quote>+</quote>, and disabled if
2057 preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. Actions are invoked by enclosing the
2058 action name in curly braces (e.g. {+some_action}), followed by a list of
2059 URLs to which the action applies. There are three classes of actions:
2067 Boolean (e.g. <quote>+/-block</quote>):
2073 <emphasis>{+name}</emphasis> # enable this action
2074 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable this action
2084 parameterized (e.g. <quote>+/-hide-user-agent</quote>):
2090 <emphasis>{+name{param}}</emphasis> # enable action and set parameter to <quote>param</quote>
2091 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable action
2100 Multi-value (e.g. <quote>{+/-add-header{Name: value}}</quote>, <quote>{+/-wafer{name=value}}</quote>):
2106 <emphasis>{+name{param}}</emphasis> # enable action and add parameter <quote>param</quote>
2107 <emphasis>{-name{param}}</emphasis> # remove the parameter <quote>param</quote>
2108 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable this action totally
2119 If nothing is specified in this file, no <quote>actions</quote> are taken.
2120 So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2121 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically
2122 enable the privacy and blocking features you need (although the
2123 provided default <filename>default.action</filename> file will
2124 give a good starting point).
2128 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. For multi-valued
2129 actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
2133 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> <quote>actions</quote> are:
2141 Add the specified HTTP header, which is not checked for validity.
2142 You may specify this many times to specify many different headers:
2148 <emphasis>+add-header{Name: value}</emphasis>
2158 Block this URL totally. In a default installation, a <quote>blocked</quote>
2159 URL will result in bright red banner that says <quote>BLOCKED</quote>,
2160 with a reason why it is being blocked.
2166 <emphasis>+block</emphasis>
2176 De-animate all animated GIF images, i.e. reduce them to their last frame.
2177 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2178 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
2179 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last frame
2180 of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for most
2181 banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire last
2182 frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
2188 <emphasis>+deanimate-gifs{last}</emphasis>
2189 <emphasis>+deanimate-gifs{first}</emphasis>
2198 <quote>+downgrade</quote> will downgrade HTTP/1.1 client requests to
2199 HTTP/1.0 and downgrade the responses as well. Use this action for servers
2200 that use HTTP/1.1 protocol features that
2201 <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't handle well yet. HTTP/1.1
2202 is only partially implemented. Default is not to downgrade requests.
2208 <emphasis>+downgrade</emphasis>
2217 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
2218 will link to some script on their own server, giving the destination as a
2219 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs resulting
2220 from this scheme typically look like:
2221 http://some.place/some_script?http://some.where-else.
2224 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
2225 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
2226 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go to.
2227 Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your browser
2228 ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds the
2232 The <quote>+fast-redirects</quote> option enables interception of these
2233 requests by <application>Privoxy</application>, who will cut off all but
2234 the last valid URL in the request and send a local redirect back to your
2235 browser without contacting the remote site.
2241 <emphasis>+fast-redirects</emphasis>
2250 Apply the filters in the <literal>section_header</literal>
2251 section of the <filename>default.filter</filename> file to the site(s).
2252 <filename>default.filter</filename> sections are grouped according to like
2260 <emphasis>+filter{section_header}</emphasis>
2267 Filter sections that are pre-defined in the supplied
2268 <filename>default.filter</filename> include:
2274 <emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis>: Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.
2279 <emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis>: Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
2284 <emphasis>no-poups</emphasis>: Kill all popups in JS and HTML
2289 <emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis>: Give frames a border
2294 <emphasis>webbugs</emphasis>: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
2299 <emphasis>no-refresh</emphasis>: Automatic refresh sucks on auto-dialup lines
2304 <emphasis>fun</emphasis>: Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
2309 <emphasis>nimda</emphasis>: Remove (virus) Nimda code.
2314 <emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis>: Kill banners by size
2319 <emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis>: Kill all web pages that contain the words "sex" or "warez"
2328 Block any existing X-Forwarded-for header, and do not add a new one:
2334 <emphasis>+hide-forwarded</emphasis>
2343 If the browser sends a <quote>From:</quote> header containing your e-mail
2344 address, this either completely removes the header (<quote>block</quote>), or
2345 changes it to the specified e-mail address.
2351 <emphasis>+hide-from{block}</emphasis>
2352 <emphasis>+hide-from{spam@sittingduck.xqq}</emphasis>
2361 Don't send the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) header to the web site. You
2362 can block it, forge a URL to the same server as the request (which is
2363 preferred because some sites will not send images otherwise) or set it to a
2364 constant string of your choice.
2370 <emphasis>+hide-referer{block}</emphasis>
2371 <emphasis>+hide-referer{forge}</emphasis>
2372 <emphasis>+hide-referer{http://nowhere.com}</emphasis>
2381 Alternative spelling of <quote>+hide-referer</quote>. It has the same
2382 parameters, and can be freely mixed with, <quote>+hide-referer</quote>.
2383 (<quote>referrer</quote> is the correct English spelling, however the HTTP
2384 specification has a bug - it requires it to be spelled <quote>referer</quote>.)
2390 <emphasis>+hide-referrer{...}</emphasis>
2399 Change the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> header so web servers can't tell your
2400 browser type. Warning! This breaks many web sites. Specify the
2401 user-agent value you want. Example, pretend to be using Netscape on
2408 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla (X11; I; Linux 2.0.32 i586)}</emphasis>
2415 Or to identify yourself explicitly as a <application>Privoxy</application> user:
2421 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{Privoxy/1.0}</emphasis>
2426 (Don't change the version number from 1.0 - after all, why tell them?)
2433 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{browser-type}</emphasis>
2443 Treat this URL as an image. This only matters if it's also <quote>+block</quote>ed,
2444 in which case a <quote>blocked</quote> image can be sent rather than a HTML page.
2445 See <quote>+image-blocker{}</quote> below for the control over what is actually sent.
2446 If you want <emphasis>invisible</emphasis> ads, they should be defined as
2447 <emphasis>images</emphasis> and <emphasis>blocked</emphasis>. And also,
2448 <quote>image-blocker</quote> should be set to <quote>blank</quote>.
2454 <emphasis>+image</emphasis>
2462 <para> Decides what to do with URLs that end up tagged with <quote>{+block
2463 +image}</quote>, e.g an advertizement. There are five options.
2464 <quote>-image-blocker</quote> will send a HTML <quote>blocked</quote> page,
2465 usually resulting in a <quote>broken image</quote> icon.
2466 <!-- <quote>+image-blocker{logo}</quote> will send a -->
2467 <!-- <application>Privoxy</application> logo -->
2469 <quote>+image-blocker{blank}</quote> will send a 1x1 transparent GIF
2470 image. And finally, <quote>+image-blocker{http://xyz.com}</quote> will send a
2471 HTTP temporary redirect to the specified image. This has the advantage of the
2472 icon being being cached by the browser, which will speed up the display.
2473 <quote>+image-blocker{pattern}</quote> will send a checkboard type pattern
2475 <!-- which scales better than the logo (which can get blocky if the browser -->
2476 <!-- enlarges it too much). -->
2482 <!-- <emphasis>+image-blocker{logo}</emphasis> -->
2483 <emphasis>+image-blocker{blank}</emphasis>
2484 <emphasis>+image-blocker{pattern}</emphasis>
2485 <emphasis>+image-blocker{http://p.p/send-banner}</emphasis>
2494 By default (i.e. in the absence of a <quote>+limit-connect</quote>
2495 action), <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow CONNECT
2496 requests to port 443, which is the standard port for https as a
2501 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
2502 (https:// URLs) through proxies. It works very simply: the proxy
2503 connects to the server on the specified port, and then short-circuits
2504 its connections to the client <emphasis>and</emphasis> to the remote proxy.
2505 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can
2506 be abused as TCP relays very easily.
2510 If you want to allow CONNECT for more ports than this, or want to forbid
2511 CONNECT altogether, you can specify a comma separated list of ports and
2512 port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum defaulting to 0 and
2520 <emphasis>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need no be specified.</emphasis>
2521 <emphasis>+limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.</emphasis>
2522 <emphasis>+limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Port less than 3, 7, 20 to 100</emphasis>
2523 <emphasis> #and above 500 are OK.</emphasis>
2533 <quote>+no-compression</quote> prevents the website from compressing the
2534 data. Some websites do this, which can be a problem for
2535 <application>Privoxy</application>, since <quote>+filter</quote>,
2536 <quote>+no-popup</quote> and <quote>+gif-deanimate</quote> will not work on
2537 compressed data. This will slow down connections to those websites,
2538 though. Default is <quote>nocompression</quote> is turned on.
2545 <emphasis>+nocompression</emphasis>
2554 If the website sets cookies, <quote>no-cookies-keep</quote> will make sure
2555 they are erased when you exit and restart your web browser. This makes
2556 profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
2557 that you can log in for transactions. Default: on.
2563 <emphasis>+no-cookies-keep</emphasis>
2572 Prevent the website from reading cookies:
2578 <emphasis>+no-cookies-read</emphasis>
2587 Prevent the website from setting cookies:
2593 <emphasis>+no-cookies-set</emphasis>
2602 Filter the website through a built-in filter to disable those obnoxious
2603 JavaScript pop-up windows via window.open(), etc. The two alternative
2604 spellings are equivalent.
2610 <emphasis>+no-popup</emphasis>
2611 <emphasis>+no-popups</emphasis>
2620 This action only applies if you are using a <filename>jarfile</filename>
2621 for saving cookies. It sends a cookie to every site stating that you do not
2622 accept any copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking them not to track
2623 you. Of course, this is a (relatively) unique header they could use to
2630 <emphasis>+vanilla-wafer</emphasis>
2639 This allows you to add an arbitrary cookie. It can be specified multiple
2640 times in order to add as many cookies as you like.
2646 <emphasis>+wafer{name=value}</emphasis>
2657 The meaning of any of the above is reversed by preceding the action with a
2658 <quote>-</quote>, in place of the <quote>+</quote>.
2666 Turn off cookies by default, then allow a few through for specified sites:
2673 # Turn off all persistent cookies
2674 { +no-cookies-read }
2676 # Allow cookies for this browser session ONLY
2677 { +no-cookies-keep }
2679 # Exceptions to the above, sites that benefit from persistent cookies
2680 { -no-cookies-read }
2682 { -no-cookies-keep }
2689 # Alternative way of saying the same thing
2690 {-no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-keep}
2699 Now turn off <quote>fast redirects</quote>, and then we allow two exceptions:
2709 # Reverse it for these two sites, which don't work right without it.
2711 www.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wac\.cgi\?
2719 Turn on page filtering according to rules in the defined sections
2720 of <filename>refilterfile</filename>, and make one exception for
2728 # Run everything through the filter file, using only the
2729 # specified sections:
2730 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}\
2731 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
2733 # Then disable filtering of code from sourceforge!
2735 .cvs.sourceforge.net
2742 Now some URLs that we want <quote>blocked</quote>, ie we won't see them.
2743 Many of these use regular expressions that will expand to match multiple
2753 /.*/(.*[-_.])?ads?[0-9]?(/|[-_.].*|\.(gif|jpe?g))
2754 /.*/(.*[-_.])?count(er)?(\.cgi|\.dll|\.exe|[?/])
2755 /.*/(ng)?adclient\.cgi
2756 /.*/(plain|live|rotate)[-_.]?ads?/
2757 /.*/(sponsor)s?[0-9]?/
2758 /.*/_?(plain|live)?ads?(-banners)?/
2760 /.*/ad(sdna_image|gifs?)/
2761 /.*/ad(server|stream|juggler)\.(cgi|pl|dll|exe)
2765 /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/
2769 /.*/cgi-bin/centralad/getimage
2770 /.*/images/addver\.gif
2771 /.*/images/marketing/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
2775 /.*/sponsors?[0-9]?/
2776 /.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpg
2783 /graphics/defaultAd/
2785 /image\.ng/transactionID
2786 /images/.*/.*_anim\.gif # alvin brattli
2787 /ip_img/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
2791 /cgi-bin/nph-adclick.exe/
2792 /.*/Image/BannerAdvertising/
2794 /.*/adlib/server\.cgi
2802 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
2803 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
2804 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
2805 content he may depend on. There is no way to have hard and fast rules
2806 for all sites. See the <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link>
2807 for a brief example on troubleshooting actions.
2813 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2816 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2818 <title>Aliases</title>
2820 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
2821 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other <quote>actions</quote>.
2822 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in <quote>actions</quote>.
2823 Currently, an alias can contain any character except space, tab, <quote>=</quote>,
2824 <quote>{</quote> or <quote>}</quote>. But please use only <quote>a</quote>-
2825 <quote>z</quote>, <quote>0</quote>-<quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and
2826 <quote>-</quote>. Alias names are not case sensitive, and
2827 <emphasis>must be defined before anything</emphasis> else in the
2828 <filename>default.action</filename>file ! And there can only be one set of
2829 <quote>aliases</quote> defined.
2833 Now let's define a few aliases:
2840 # Useful customer aliases we can use later. These must come first!
2842 +no-cookies = +no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
2843 -no-cookies = -no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
2844 fragile = -block -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -no-popups
2845 shop = -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects
2846 +imageblock = +block +image
2848 #For people who don't like to type too much: ;-)
2851 c2 = -no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
2852 c3 = +no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
2853 #... etc. Customize to your heart's content.
2860 Some examples using our <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote>
2868 # These sites are very complex and require
2869 # minimal interference.
2871 .office.microsoft.com
2872 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
2875 # Shopping sites - still want to block ads.
2878 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
2882 # These shops require pop-ups
2894 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2897 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2898 <sect2 id="filterfile">
2899 <title>The Filter File</title>
2901 Any web page can be dynamically modified with the filter file. This
2902 modification can be removal, or re-writing, of any web page content,
2903 including tags and non-visible content. The default filter file is
2904 <filename>default.filter</filename>, located in the config directory.
2908 The included example file is divided into sections. Each section begins
2909 with the <literal>FILTER</literal> keyword, followed by the identifier
2910 for that section, e.g. <quote>FILTER: webbugs</quote>. Each section performs
2911 a similar type of filtering, such as <quote>html-annoyances</quote>.
2916 This file uses regular expressions to alter or remove any string in the
2917 target page. The expressions can only operate on one line at a time. Some
2918 examples from the included default <filename>default.filter</filename>:
2922 Stop web pages from displaying annoying messages in the status bar by
2923 deleting such references:
2930 FILTER: html-annoyances
2932 # New browser windows should be resizeable and have a location and status
2935 s/resizable="?(no|0)"?/resizable=1/ig s/noresize/yesresize/ig
2936 s/location="?(no|0)"?/location=1/ig s/status="?(no|0)"?/status=1/ig
2937 s/scrolling="?(no|0|Auto)"?/scrolling=1/ig
2938 s/menubar="?(no|0)"?/menubar=1/ig
2940 # The <BLINK> tag was a crime!
2942 s*<blink>|</blink>**ig
2946 #s/framespacing="?(no|0)"?//ig
2947 #s/margin(height|width)=[0-9]*//gi
2954 Just for kicks, replace any occurrence of <quote>Microsoft</quote> with
2955 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>, and have a little fun with topical buzzwords:
2964 s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/ig
2968 s/industry-leading|cutting-edge|award-winning/<font color=red><b>BINGO!</b></font>/ig
2975 Kill those pesky little web-bugs:
2982 # webbugs: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
2985 s/<img\s+[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1\D[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1(\D[^>]*?)?>/<!-- Squished WebBug -->/sig
2993 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2997 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3000 <title>Templates</title>
3002 When <application>Privoxy</application> displays one of its internal
3003 pages, such as a 404 Not Found error page, it uses the appropriate template.
3004 On Linux, BSD, and Unix, these are located in
3005 <filename>/etc/privoxy/templates</filename> by default. These may be
3006 customized, if desired.
3013 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3017 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3018 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
3020 Install package, then run and enjoy! <application>Privoxy</application>
3021 is typically started by specifying the main configuration file to be
3022 used on the command line. Example Unix startup command:
3028 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
3034 An init script is provided for SuSE and Redhat.
3038 For for SuSE: /etc/rc.d/privoxy start
3042 For RedHat: /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
3047 If no configuration file is specified on the command line,
3048 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
3049 <filename>config</filename> in the current directory. Except on Win32 where
3050 it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>. If no file is specified on the
3051 command line and no default configuration file can be found,
3052 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
3056 Be sure your browser is set to use the proxy which is by default at
3057 localhost, port 8118. With <application>Netscape</application> (and
3058 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under <literal>Edit
3059 -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy</literal>.
3060 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>: <literal>Tools >
3061 Internet Properties -> Connections -> LAN Setting</literal>. Then,
3062 check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info (Address:
3063 localhost, Port: 8118). Include if HTTPS proxy support too.
3067 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
3068 point, though may be somewhat aggressive in blocking junk. You will probably
3069 want to keep an eye out for sites that require persistent cookies, and add these to
3070 <filename>default.action</filename> as needed. By default, most of these will
3071 be accepted only during the current browser session, until you add them to
3072 the configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will
3073 need to edit <filename>default.action</filename> and disable this feature. If you
3074 use more than one browser, it would make more sense to let
3075 <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which case, the
3076 browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
3080 If a particular site shows problems loading properly, try adding it
3081 to the <literal>{fragile}</literal> section of
3082 <filename>default.action</filename>. This will turn off most actions for
3087 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all 1.1
3088 features are as yet implemented. If browsers that support HTTP/1.1 (like
3089 <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.) experience
3090 problems, you might try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look
3091 under <literal>Edit -> Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
3092 Or set the <quote>+downgrade</quote> config option in
3093 <filename>default.action</filename>.
3097 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
3098 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
3099 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
3100 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote> (as specified in <filename>default.action</filename>)
3101 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
3102 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>,
3103 and then follow the link to <quote>edit the actions list</quote>.
3104 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
3108 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
3109 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
3110 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
3111 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
3112 to a given URL. In addition to the <filename>default.action</filename> file
3113 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
3114 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> from this page.
3118 If you encounter problems, please verify it is a
3119 <application>Privoxy</application> bug, by disabling
3120 <application>Privoxy</application>, and then trying the same page.
3121 Also, try another browser if possible to eliminate browser or site
3122 problems. Before reporting it as a bug, see if there is not a configuration
3123 option that is enabled that is causing the page not to load. You can
3124 then add an exception for that page or site. If a bug, please report it to
3125 the developers (see below).
3130 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3133 <title>Command Line Options</title>
3135 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
3136 command-line options:
3144 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
3147 Print version info and exit, Unix only.
3152 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
3155 Print a short usage info and exit, Unix only.
3160 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
3163 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
3164 leader, don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
3169 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
3173 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
3174 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failiure to create or delete the
3175 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
3176 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
3181 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
3185 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
3186 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
3187 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
3192 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
3195 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
3196 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
3197 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
3198 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
3199 full path to avoid confusion.
3210 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3214 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3216 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
3219 We value your feedback. However, to provide you with the best support,
3224 <listitem><para>Use the <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=211118">Sourceforge support forum</ulink> to get
3225 help.</para></listitem>
3227 <listitem><para>Submit bugs only thru our <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=111118">Sourceforge bug
3229 Make sure that the bug has not already been submitted. Please try to
3230 verify that it is a <application>Privoxy</application> bug, and not
3231 a browser or site bug first. If you are using your own custom configuration,
3232 please try the stock configs to see if the problem is a configuration
3233 related bug. And if not using the latest development snapshot, please
3234 try the latest one. Or even better, CVS sources.</para>
3238 <listitem><para>Submit feature requests only thru our <ulink
3239 url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118&func=browse">Sourceforge feature request forum</ulink>.</para></listitem>
3247 For any other issues, feel free to use the <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=11118">mailing lists</ulink>.
3251 Anyone interested in actively participating in development and related
3252 discussions can join the appropriate mailing list
3253 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=11118">here</ulink>.
3254 Archives are available here too.
3260 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3261 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Copyright and History</title>
3264 <title>License</title>
3266 <application>Privoxy</application> is free software; you can
3267 redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
3268 License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
3269 License, or (at your option) any later version.
3273 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
3274 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
3275 FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
3276 details, which is available from <ulink
3277 url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">the Free Software Foundation,
3278 Inc</ulink>, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
3283 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3286 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3289 <title>History</title>
3291 <application>Privoxy</application> is derived from
3292 <application>the Internet Junkbuster</application>, with many
3293 improvments and enhancements over the original.
3297 <application>Junkbuster</application> was originally written by Anonymous
3299 url="http://www.junkbusters.com">Junkbuster's
3300 Corporation</ulink>, and was released as free open-source software under the
3301 GNU GPL. <ulink url="http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/">Stefan
3302 Waldherr</ulink> made many improvements, and started the <ulink
3303 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">SourceForge project
3304 Privoxy</ulink> to rekindle development. There are now several active
3305 developers contributing. The last stable release of
3306 <application>Junkbuster</application> was v2.0.2, which has now
3314 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3315 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See also</title>
3320 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa">http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa</ulink>
3325 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">http://www.privoxy.org/</ulink>
3330 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>
3335 <ulink url="http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html">http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html</ulink>
3340 <ulink url="http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/">http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/</ulink>
3345 <ulink url="http://privacy.net/analyze/">http://privacy.net/analyze/</ulink>
3350 <ulink url="http://www.squid-cache.org/">http://www.squid-cache.org/</ulink>
3359 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3360 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
3363 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3365 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
3367 <application>Privoxy</application> can use <quote>regular expressions</quote>
3368 in various config files. Assuming support for <quote>pcre</quote> (Perl
3369 Compatible Regular Expressions) is compiled in, which is the default. Such
3370 configuration directives do not require regular expressions, but they can be
3371 used to increase flexibility by matching a pattern with wild-cards against
3376 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
3377 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
3378 introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
3382 <quote>Regular expressions</quote> is a way of matching one character
3383 expression against another to see if it matches or not. One of the
3384 <quote>expressions</quote> is a literal string of readable characters
3385 (letter, numbers, etc), and the other is a complex string of literal
3386 characters combined with wild-cards, and other special characters, called
3387 meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have special meanings and
3388 are used to build the complex pattern to be matched against. Perl Compatible
3389 Regular Expressions is an enhanced form of the regular expression language
3390 with backward compatibility.
3394 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
3395 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
3396 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
3397 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
3398 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
3399 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
3400 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
3401 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
3405 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
3406 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
3407 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
3408 and then some examples:
3413 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
3414 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
3420 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
3427 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
3434 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
3441 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
3442 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
3443 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
3444 not as a special meta-character.
3450 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
3451 any of the enclosed characters are encountered.
3457 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
3458 or multiple sub-expressions.
3464 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
3465 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
3466 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches.
3472 <emphasis>s/string1/string2/g</emphasis> - This is used to rewrite strings of text.
3473 <quote>string1</quote> is replaced by <quote>string2</quote> in this
3479 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
3480 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
3481 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
3482 be more illuminating:
3486 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
3487 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
3488 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
3489 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
3490 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
3491 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
3492 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
3493 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
3494 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
3495 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
3496 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
3497 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
3498 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
3499 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
3504 A now something a little more complex:
3508 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
3509 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
3510 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
3511 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
3512 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
3513 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
3514 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
3519 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
3520 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
3521 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
3522 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
3523 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
3524 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
3525 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
3526 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
3527 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
3528 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
3529 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
3530 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
3531 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
3532 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
3533 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
3534 changing our regular expression to:
3535 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
3540 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
3541 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
3542 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
3543 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
3544 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
3545 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
3546 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
3547 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
3548 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
3549 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
3550 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
3551 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
3552 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
3553 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
3554 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
3555 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
3556 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
3557 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
3558 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
3559 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
3560 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
3561 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
3562 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
3563 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
3564 in the expression anywhere).
3568 <emphasis><literal>s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/i</literal></emphasis> - This is
3569 a substitution. <quote>MicroSuck</quote> will replace any occurrence of
3570 <quote>microsoft</quote>. The <quote>i</quote> at the end of the expression
3571 means ignore case. The <quote>(?!.com)</quote> means
3572 the match should fail if <quote>microsoft</quote> is followed by
3573 <quote>.com</quote>. In other words, this acts like a <quote>NOT</quote>
3574 modifier. In case this is a hyperlink, we don't want to break it ;-).
3578 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
3579 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
3580 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
3581 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
3582 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
3587 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
3588 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
3593 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3596 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3598 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
3601 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
3602 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
3603 trap certain URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
3604 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
3605 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
3606 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
3607 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
3613 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
3614 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
3615 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
3616 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
3629 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/">http://www.privoxy.org/config/</ulink>
3633 Alternately, this may be reached at <ulink
3634 url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, but this
3635 variation may not work as reliably as the above in some configurations.
3641 Show information about the current configuration:
3645 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-status">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-status</ulink>
3652 Show the source code version numbers:
3656 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-version">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-version</ulink>
3663 Show the client's request headers:
3667 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-request">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-request</ulink>
3674 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
3678 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info</ulink>
3685 Toggle Privoxy on or off:
3689 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle">http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle</ulink>
3693 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
3697 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=disable">http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
3702 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=enable">http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
3709 Edit the actions list file:
3713 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/edit-actions">http://www.privoxy.org/config/edit-actions</ulink>
3722 These may be bookmarked for quick reference.
3729 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3730 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
3731 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
3734 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies <quote>actions</quote>
3735 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so easy to understand what
3736 is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to <emphasis>see</emphasis>
3737 just what <application>Privoxy</application> is doing. Especially,
3738 if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing is causing
3739 us a problem inadvertantly. It can be a little daunting to look at
3740 the actions files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
3741 <quote>regular expressions</quote> whose consequences are not always
3742 so obvious. <application>Privoxy</application> provides the
3743 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info</ulink>
3744 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
3745 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
3749 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
3750 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
3751 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
3752 help with filtering effects from the <filename>default.filter</filename> file! It
3753 also will not tell you about any other URLs that may be embedded within the
3754 URL you are testing. For instance, images such as ads are expressed as URLs
3755 within the raw page source of HTML pages. So you will only get info for the
3756 actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area -- not any sub-URLs. If you
3757 want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you will have to dig those out of
3758 the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View Page Source</quote> option
3763 Let's look at an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
3764 one section at a time:
3769 System default actions:
3771 { -add-header -block -deanimate-gifs -downgrade -fast-redirects -filter
3772 -hide-forwarded -hide-from -hide-referer -hide-user-agent -image
3773 -image-blocker -limit-connect -no-compression -no-cookies-keep
3774 -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set -no-popups -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3780 This is the top section, and only tells us of the compiled in defaults. This
3781 is basically what <application>Privoxy</application> would do if there
3782 were not any <quote>actions</quote> defined, i.e. it does nothing. Every action
3783 is disabled. This is not particularly informative for our purposes here. OK,
3790 Matches for http://google.com:
3792 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade +fast-redirects
3793 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3794 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3795 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3796 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} +no-compression
3797 +no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups
3798 -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3801 { -no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set }
3811 This is much more informative, and tells us how we have defined our
3812 <quote>actions</quote>, and which ones match for our example,
3813 <quote>google.com</quote>. The first grouping shows our default
3814 settings, which would apply to all URLs. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote>
3815 file, this would be the section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section
3816 near the top. This applies to all URLs as signified by the single forward
3817 slash -- <quote>/</quote>.
3822 These are the default actions we have enabled. But we can define additional
3823 actions that would be exceptions to these general rules, and then list
3824 specific URLs that these exceptions would apply to. Last match wins.
3825 Just below this then are two explict matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>.
3826 The first is negating our various cookie blocking actions (i.e. we will allow
3827 cookies here). The second is allowing <quote>fast-redirects</quote>. Note
3828 that there is a leading dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will
3829 match any hosts and sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
3830 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these actions defined
3831 somewhere in the lower part of our actions file, and
3832 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced in these sections.
3837 And now we pull it altogether in the bottom section and summarize how
3838 <application>Privoxy</application> is appying all its <quote>actions</quote>
3839 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
3848 -add-header -block -deanimate-gifs -downgrade -fast-redirects
3849 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3850 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3851 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3852 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} -limit-connect +no-compression
3853 -no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups -vanilla-wafer
3860 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
3879 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
3880 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +image</quote>,
3881 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
3882 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<quote>Aliases</quote> are defined in the
3883 first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
3888 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
3889 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
3890 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
3891 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
3892 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
3893 is done here -- as both a <quote>+block</quote> <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
3894 <quote>+image</quote>. The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> does this
3899 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
3900 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm...
3906 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
3908 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade +fast-redirects
3909 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3910 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3911 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3912 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} +no-compression
3913 +no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups
3914 -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3924 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
3925 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
3926 now add a new action below this that explictly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
3927 block (-block) pages with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are various ways to
3928 handle such exceptions. Example:
3941 Now the page displays ;-)
3951 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
3952 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
3953 Public License as published by the Free Software
3954 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
3955 your option) any later version.
3957 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
3958 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
3959 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
3960 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
3961 License for more details.
3963 The GNU General Public License should be included with
3964 this file. If not, you can view it at
3965 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
3966 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
3967 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
3969 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
3970 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
3971 we have a new homepage!
3973 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
3974 A few minor catch ups with name change.
3976 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
3977 configure needs to be generated.
3979 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
3980 we are too lazy to make a block-built
3981 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
3983 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
3984 name change related issue.
3986 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
3987 name change. changed filenames.
3989 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
3992 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
3993 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
3994 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
3995 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
3996 comments and remarks to history untouched.
3998 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
4001 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
4002 New section in Appendix.
4004 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
4005 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
4007 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
4008 correct feedback channels
4010 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
4011 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
4013 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
4016 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
4017 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
4019 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
4020 Added imageblock{pattern}.
4022 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
4025 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
4026 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
4028 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
4029 provide correct feedback channels
4031 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
4032 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
4034 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
4035 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
4037 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
4038 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
4040 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
4041 Add new - - user option.
4043 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
4044 Added section on command line options.
4046 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
4047 Changed default port to 8118
4049 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
4050 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
4052 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
4053 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
4054 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
4057 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
4060 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
4061 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
4063 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
4064 Update OS/2 build section
4066 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
4067 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
4068 will work - no other changes are needed.
4070 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
4071 Added a very short section on Templates
4073 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
4074 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
4076 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
4077 Touch ups for *.action files.
4079 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
4082 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
4083 Updates for recent changes.
4085 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
4086 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
4088 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
4089 Correct 2 minor errors
4091 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
4092 *** empty log message ***
4094 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
4095 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
4097 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
4098 wrong url in documentation
4100 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
4101 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
4103 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
4106 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
4109 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
4112 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
4113 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
4115 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
4116 Some additions, and re-arranging.
4118 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
4121 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
4122 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
4124 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
4127 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
4128 source files for junkbuster documentation
4130 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
4131 first proposal of a structure.
4133 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
4134 docs should have an author.
4136 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
4137 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.