1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [
2 <!entity % dummy "INCLUDE">
3 <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">
4 <!entity newfeatures SYSTEM "newfeatures.sgml">
5 <!entity p-intro SYSTEM "privoxy.sgml">
6 <!entity seealso SYSTEM "seealso.sgml">
7 <!entity buildsource SYSTEM "buildsource.sgml">
8 <!entity contacting SYSTEM "contacting.sgml">
9 <!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
10 <!entity copyright SYSTEM "copyright.sgml">
11 <!entity p-version "2.9.13">
12 <!entity p-status "beta">
13 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
14 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
15 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
16 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
17 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
18 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
21 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
24 This file belongs into
25 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
27 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9 Exp $
29 Written by and Copyright (C) 2001 the SourceForge
30 Privoxy team. http://www.privoxy.org/
32 Based on the Internet Junkbuster originally written
33 by and Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and
34 Junkbusters Corporation. http://www.junkbusters.com
37 ========================================================================
38 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
39 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation. You have been warned!
40 Failure to abide by this rule will result in the revocation of your license
41 to live a peaceful existence!
42 ========================================================================
48 <title>Privoxy User Manual</title>
50 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9 Exp $</pubdate>
55 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
64 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
65 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
66 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
72 The user manual gives users information on how to install, configure and use
73 <application>Privoxy</application>.
77 Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate:
82 You can find the latest version of the user manual at <ulink
83 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>. Please see the Contact section on how to contact the developers.
87 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
93 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
94 <sect1 id="intro" label=""><title></title>
95 <!-- dummy section to force TOC on page by itself -->
96 <!-- DO NOT REMOVE! please ;) -->
100 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
102 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
105 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
106 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
107 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
108 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
109 configuration files. Development of version 3.0 is currently nearing
110 completion, and includes many significant changes and enhancements over
111 earlier versions. The target release date for
112 stable v3.0 is <quote>soon</quote> ;-)]]>.
116 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
118 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
119 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
120 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
125 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
127 <title>New Features</title>
129 In addition to <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
130 feature of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
131 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features<![%p-not-stable;[,
132 some of them currently under development]]>:
135 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
137 <!-- end boilerplate -->
143 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
146 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
147 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
149 <application>Privoxy</application> is available as raw source code (tarball
150 or via CVS), or pre-compiled binaries for various platforms. See the <ulink
151 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project Page</ulink> for
152 the most up to date release information.
153 <application>Privoxy</application> is also available via <ulink
154 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ijbswa/current/">CVS</ulink>.
155 <![%p-not-stable;[This is the recommended approach at this time.]]> But
156 please be aware that CVS is constantly changing, and it may break in
160 <!-- Include supported.sgml boilerplate -->
162 <!-- end boilerplate -->
164 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
165 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Source</title>
168 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
170 <!-- end boilerplate -->
173 For Redhat and SuSE Linux RPM packages, see below.
177 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
178 <sect3 id="installation-rh"><title>Red Hat</title>
180 To build Redhat RPM packages from source, install source as above. Then:
193 This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places. Example:
197 /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/privoxy-&p-version;-1.i686.rpm
200 /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm
204 To install, of course:
209 rpm -Uvv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/privoxy-&p-version;-1.i686.rpm
214 This will place the <application>Privoxy</application> configuration
215 files in <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename>, and log files in
216 <filename>/var/log/privoxy/</filename>. Run
217 <command>ckconfig privoxy on</command> to have
218 <application>Privoxy</application> start automatically during init.
224 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
225 <sect3 id="installation-suse"><title>SuSE</title>
227 To build SuSE RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
240 This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places. Example:
244 /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/privoxy-&p-version;-1.i686.rpm
247 /usr/src/packages/SRPMS/privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm
251 To install, of course:
256 rpm -Uvv /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/privoxy-&p-version;-1.i686.rpm
261 This will place the <application>Privoxy</application> configuration
262 files in <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename>, and log files in
263 <filename>/var/log/privoxy/</filename>.
269 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
270 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
277 <application>Privoxy</application> is packaged in a WarpIN self-
278 installing archive. The self-installing program will be named depending
279 on the release version, something like:
280 <filename>privoxyos2_setup_&p-version;.exe</filename>. In order to install it, simply
281 run this executable or double-click on its icon and follow the WarpIN
282 installation panels. A shadow of the <application>Privoxy</application>
283 executable will be placed in your startup folder so it will start
284 automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
288 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
289 into will contain all of the configuration files.
293 If you would like to build binary images on OS/2 yourself, you will need
294 a few Unix-like tools: autoconf, autoheader and sh. These tools will be
295 used to create the required config.h file, which is not part of the
296 source distribution because it differs based on platform. You will also
298 The distribution has been created using IBM VisualAge compilers, but you
299 can use any compiler you like. GCC/EMX has the disadvantage of needing
300 to be single-threaded due to a limitation of EMX's implementation of the
301 <function>select()</function> socket call.
305 In addition to needing the source code distribution as outlined earlier,
306 you will want to extract the <filename>os2seutp</filename> directory from CVS:
308 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
309 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co os2setup
311 This will create a directory named os2setup/, which will contain the
312 <filename>Makefile.vac</filename> makefile and <filename>os2build.cmd</filename>
313 which is used to completely create the binary distribution. The sequence
314 of events for building the executable for yourself goes something like this:
321 nmake -f Makefile.vac
323 You will see this sequence laid out in <filename>os2build.cmd</filename>.
329 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
330 <sect3 id="installation-win"><title>Windows</title>
331 <para>Click-click. (I need help on this. Not a clue here. Also for
332 configuration section below. HB.)
336 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
337 <sect3 id="installation-other"><title>Other</title>
339 Some quick notes on other Operating Systems.
343 For FreeBSD (and other *BSDs?), the build will require <command>gmake</command>
344 instead of the included <command>make</command>. <command>gmake</command> is
345 available from <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org">http://www.gnu.org</ulink>.
346 The rest should be the same as above for Linux/Unix.
354 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
357 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
359 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
361 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
362 will want to configure your browser(s) to use <application>Privoxy</application>
363 as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is localhost for the proxy address,
364 and port 8118 (earlier versions used port 800). This is the one required
365 configuration that must be done!
369 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
370 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under <literal>Edit
371 -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy</literal>.
372 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>: <literal>Tools ->
373 Internet Properties -> Connections -> LAN Setting</literal>. Then,
374 check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info (Address:
375 localhost, Port: 8118). Include if HTTPS proxy support too.
379 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
380 re-reading of all pages and get rid of any ads that may be cached. You
381 are now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
382 <application>Privoxy</application>.
387 <application>Privoxy</application> is typically started by specifying the
388 main configuration file to be used on the command line. Example Unix startup
395 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
401 An init script is provided for SuSE and Redhat.
405 For for SuSE: <command>/etc/rc.d/privoxy start</command>
409 For RedHat: <command>/etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start</command>
414 If no configuration file is specified on the command line,
415 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
416 <filename>config</filename> in the current directory. Except on Win32 where
417 it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>. If no file is specified on the
418 command line and no default configuration file can be found,
419 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
424 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
425 point, though may be somewhat aggressive in blocking junk. Most of the
426 per site configuration is done in the <quote>actions</quote> files. These
427 are where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking,
428 and other aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There
429 are several such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
433 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites that require persistent
434 cookies, and add these to <filename>default.action</filename> as needed. By
435 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
436 session, until you add them to the configuration. If you want the browser to
437 handle this instead, you will need to edit
438 <filename>default.action</filename> and disable this feature. If you use more
439 than one browser, it would make more sense to let
440 <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which case, the browser(s)
441 should be set to accept all cookies.
445 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all 1.1
446 features are as yet implemented. If browsers that support HTTP/1.1 (like
447 <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.) experience
448 problems, you might try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look
449 under <literal>Edit -> Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
450 Or set the <quote>+downgrade</quote> config option in
451 <filename>default.action</filename>.
455 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
456 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
457 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
458 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote> (as specified in <filename>default.action</filename>)
459 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
460 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>,
461 and then follow the link to <quote>edit the actions list</quote>.
462 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
466 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
467 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
468 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
469 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
470 to a given URL. In addition to the <filename>default.action</filename> file
471 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
472 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> from this page.
476 If you encounter problems, please verify it is a
477 <application>Privoxy</application> bug, by disabling
478 <application>Privoxy</application>, and then trying the same page.
479 Also, try another browser if possible to eliminate browser or site
480 problems. Before reporting it as a bug, see if there is not a configuration
481 option that is enabled that is causing the page not to load. You can then add
482 an exception for that page or site. For instance, try adding it to the
483 <literal>{fragile}</literal> section of <filename>default.action</filename>.
484 This will turn off most actions for this site. For more on troubleshooting
485 problem sites, see the <ulink
486 url="appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</ulink>. If a bug, please report it
487 to the developers (see below).
491 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
494 <title>Command Line Options</title>
496 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
497 command-line options:
505 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
508 Print version info and exit, Unix only.
513 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
516 Print a short usage info and exit, Unix only.
521 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
524 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
525 leader, don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
530 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
534 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
535 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failiure to create or delete the
536 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
537 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
542 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
546 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
547 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
548 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
553 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
556 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
557 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
558 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
559 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
560 full path to avoid confusion.
571 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
574 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
575 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
577 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
578 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
579 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
580 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
585 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
588 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
590 <application>Privoxy</application> can be reached by the special
591 URL <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (or alternately
592 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>),
593 which is an internal page. You will see the following section:
600 Please choose from the following options:
602 * Show information about the current configuration
603 * Show the source code version numbers
604 * Show the client's request headers.
605 * Show which actions apply to a URL and why
606 * Toggle Privoxy on or off
607 * Edit the actions list
613 This should be self-explanatory. Note the last item is an editor for the
614 <quote>actions list</quote>, which is where much of the ad, banner, cookie,
615 and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
616 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
617 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
618 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
619 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically detect any changes
624 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
625 have problems with your current actions and filters, or just to test if
626 a site misbehaves, whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
627 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
628 to run as a proxy in this case, but all filtering is disabled.
634 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
639 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
642 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
644 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
645 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
646 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
647 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
648 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
649 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
653 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though possibly
654 aggressive by some standards. For the time being, there are only three
655 default configuration files (this may change in time):
663 The main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename>
664 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
671 The <filename>default.action</filename> file is used to define various
672 <quote>actions</quote> relating to images, banners, pop-ups, access
673 restrictions, banners and cookies. There is a CGI based editor for this
674 file that can be accessed via <ulink
675 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>. (Other actions
676 files are included as well with differing levels of filtering
677 and blocking, e.g. <filename>basic.action</filename>.)
683 The <filename>default.filter</filename> file can be used to re-write the raw
684 page content, including viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript,
685 and whatever else lurks on any given web page.
693 <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>default.filter</filename>
694 can use Perl style regular expressions for maximum flexibility. All files use
695 the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a comment. Such
696 lines are not processed by <application>Privoxy</application>. After
697 making any changes, there is no need to restart
698 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
699 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> should detect such changes
705 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
706 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
707 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
708 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
714 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
717 <title>The Main Configuration File</title>
719 Again, the main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename> on
720 Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2, and <filename>config.txt</filename> on Windows.
721 Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword followed by a list of
722 values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For
730 <emphasis>blockfile blocklist.ini</emphasis>
737 Indicates that the blockfile is named <quote>blocklist.ini</quote>. (A
738 default installation does not use this.)
742 A <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> indicates a comment. Any part of a
743 line following a <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> is ignored, except if
744 the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> is preceded by a
745 <quote><literal>\</literal></quote>.
749 Thus, by placing a <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> at the start of an
750 existing configuration line, you can make it a comment and it will be treated
751 as if it weren't there. This is called <quote>commenting out</quote> an
752 option and can be useful to turn off features: If you comment out the
753 <quote>logfile</quote> line, <application>Privoxy</application> will not
754 log to a file at all. Watch for the <quote>default:</quote> section in each
755 explanation to see what happens if the option is left unset (or commented
760 Long lines can be continued on the next line by using a
761 <quote><literal>\</literal></quote> as the very last character.
765 There are various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> behavior
770 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
773 <title>Defining Other Configuration Files</title>
776 <application>Privoxy</application> can use a number of other files to tell it
777 what ads to block, what cookies to accept, and perform other functions. This
778 section of the configuration file tells <application>Privoxy</application>
779 where to find all those other files.
783 On <application>Windows</application> and <application>AmigaOS</application>,
784 <application>Privoxy</application> looks for these files in the same
785 directory as the executable. On Unix and OS/2,
786 <application>Privoxy</application> looks for these files in the current
787 working directory. In either case, an absolute path name can be used to
792 When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
793 per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of <quote>confdir</quote>.
794 For now, only <filename>confdir/templates</filename> is used for storing HTML
795 templates for CGI results.
799 The location of the configuration files:
806 <emphasis>confdir /etc/privoxy</emphasis> # No trailing /, please.
813 The directory where all logging (i.e. <filename>logfile</filename> and
814 <filename>jarfile</filename>) takes place. No trailing
815 <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, please:
822 <emphasis>logdir /var/log/privoxy</emphasis>
829 Note that all file specifications below are relative to
830 the above two directories!
834 The <quote>default.action</quote> file contains patterns to specify the
835 actions to apply to requests for each site. Default: Cookies to and from all
836 destinations are kept only during the current browser session (i.e. they are
837 not saved to disk). Pop-ups are disabled for all sites. All sites are
838 filtered through selected sections of <quote>default.filter</quote>. No sites
839 are blocked. <application>Privoxy</application> displays a checkboard type
840 pattern for filtered ads and other images. The syntax of this file is
841 explained in detail <link linkend="actionsfile">below</link>. Other
842 <quote>actions</quote> files are included, and you are free to use any of
843 them. They have varying degrees of aggressiveness.
850 <emphasis>actionsfile default.action</emphasis>
857 The <quote>default.filter</quote> file contains content modification rules
858 that use <quote>regular expressions</quote>. These rules permit powerful
859 changes on the content of Web pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite
860 JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some
861 fun replacing <quote>Microsoft</quote> with <quote>MicroSuck</quote> wherever
862 it appears on a Web page. Default: whatever the developers are playing with
867 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to slow down
868 page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has passed
869 the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way since
870 the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more noticeable
871 on slower connections.
879 <emphasis>filterfile default.filter</emphasis>
886 The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The logfile
887 can be useful for tracking down a problem with
888 <application>Privoxy</application> (e.g., it's not blocking an ad you
889 think it should block) but in most cases you probably will never look at it.
893 Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
894 periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
895 (see <quote>man cron</quote>). For Redhat, a <command>logrotate</command>
896 script has been included.
900 On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like <quote>/var/log/privoxy.*
901 +1024k 644 nobody.nogroup</quote> in <filename>/etc/logfiles</filename>, with
902 the effect that cron.daily will automatically archive, gzip, and empty the
903 log, when it exceeds 1M size.
907 Default: Log to the a file named <filename>logfile</filename>.
908 Comment out to disable logging.
915 <emphasis>logfile logfile</emphasis>
922 The <quote>jarfile</quote> defines where
923 <application>Privoxy</application> stores the cookies it intercepts. Note
924 that if you use a <quote>jarfile</quote>, it may grow quite large. Default:
925 Don't store intercepted cookies.
932 <emphasis>#jarfile jarfile</emphasis>
939 If you specify a <quote>trustfile</quote>,
940 <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow access to sites that
941 are named in the trustfile. You can also mark sites as trusted referrers,
942 with the effect that access to untrusted sites will be granted, if a link
943 from a trusted referrer was used. The link target will then be added to the
944 <quote>trustfile</quote>. This is a very restrictive feature that typical
945 users most probably want to leave disabled. Default: Disabled, don't use the
953 <emphasis>#trustfile trust</emphasis>
960 If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
961 documentation about your blocking policy and to specify the URL(s) here. They
962 will appear on the page that your users receive when they try to access
963 untrusted content. Use multiple times for multiple URLs. Default: Don't
964 display links on the <quote>untrusted</quote> info page.
971 <emphasis>trust-info-url http://www.example.com/why_we_block.html</emphasis>
972 <emphasis>trust-info-url http://www.example.com/what_we_allow.html</emphasis>
980 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
984 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
987 <title>Other Configuration Options</title>
990 This part of the configuration file contains options that control how
991 <application>Privoxy</application> operates.
995 <quote>Admin-address</quote> should be set to the email address of the proxy
996 administrator. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages. Default:
1004 <emphasis>#admin-address fill@me.in.please</emphasis>
1011 <quote>Proxy-info-url</quote> can be set to a URL that contains more info
1012 about this <application>Privoxy</application> installation, it's
1013 configuration and policies. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages
1014 and its use is highly recommended in multi-user installations, since your
1015 users will want to know why certain content is blocked or modified. Default:
1016 Don't show a link to on-line documentation.
1023 <emphasis>proxy-info-url http://www.example.com/proxy.html</emphasis>
1030 <quote>Listen-address</quote> specifies the address and port where
1031 <application>Privoxy</application> will listen for connections from your
1032 Web browser. The default is to listen on the localhost port 8118, and
1033 this is suitable for most users. (In your web browser, under proxy
1034 configuration, list the proxy server as <quote>localhost</quote> and the
1035 port as <quote>8118</quote>).
1039 If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
1040 serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well, you
1041 will need to override the default. The syntax is
1042 <quote>listen-address [<ip-address>]:<port></quote>. If you leave
1043 out the IP address, <application>Privoxy</application> will bind to all
1044 interfaces (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the
1045 Internet. In that case, consider using access control lists (acl's) (see
1046 <quote>aclfile</quote> above), or a firewall.
1050 For example, suppose you are running <application>Privoxy</application> on
1051 a machine which has the address 192.168.0.1 on your local private network
1052 (192.168.0.0) and has another outside connection with a different address.
1053 You want it to serve requests from inside only:
1060 <emphasis>listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118</emphasis>
1067 If you want it to listen on all addresses (including the outside
1075 <emphasis>listen-address :8118</emphasis>
1082 If you do this, consider using ACLs (see <quote>aclfile</quote> above). Note:
1083 you will need to point your browser(s) to the address and port that you have
1084 configured here. Default: localhost:8118 (127.0.0.1:8118).
1088 The debug option sets the level of debugging information to log in the
1089 logfile (and to the console in the Windows version). A debug level of 1 is
1090 informative because it will show you each request as it happens. Higher
1091 levels of debug are probably only of interest to developers.
1098 debug 1 # GPC = show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
1099 debug 2 # CONN = show each connection status
1100 debug 4 # IO = show I/O status
1101 debug 8 # HDR = show header parsing
1102 debug 16 # LOG = log all data into the logfile
1103 debug 32 # FRC = debug force feature
1104 debug 64 # REF = debug regular expression filter
1105 debug 128 # = debug fast redirects
1106 debug 256 # = debug GIF de-animation
1107 debug 512 # CLF = Common Log Format
1108 debug 1024 # = debug kill pop-ups
1109 debug 4096 # INFO = Startup banner and warnings.
1110 debug 8192 # ERROR = Non-fatal errors
1118 It is <emphasis>highly recommended</emphasis> that you enable ERROR
1119 reporting (debug 8192), at least until v3.0 is released.
1124 The reporting of FATAL errors (i.e. ones which crash
1125 <application>Privoxy</application>) is always on and cannot be disabled.
1129 If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set <quote>debug
1130 512</quote> ONLY, do not enable anything else.
1134 Multiple <quote>debug</quote> directives, are OK - they're logical-OR'd
1142 <emphasis>debug 15 # same as setting the first 4 listed above</emphasis>
1156 <emphasis>debug 1 # URLs</emphasis>
1157 <emphasis>debug 4096 # Info</emphasis>
1158 <emphasis>debug 8192 # Errors - *we highly recommended enabling this*</emphasis>
1165 <application>Privoxy</application> normally uses
1166 <quote>multi-threading</quote>, a software technique that permits it to
1167 handle many different requests simultaneously. In some cases you may wish to
1168 disable this -- particularly if you're trying to debug a problem. The
1169 <quote>single-threaded</quote> option forces
1170 <application>Privoxy</application> to handle requests sequentially.
1171 Default: Multi-threaded mode.
1178 <emphasis>#single-threaded</emphasis>
1185 <quote>toggle</quote> allows you to temporarily disable all
1186 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering. Just set <quote>toggle
1191 The Windows version of <application>Privoxy</application> puts an icon in
1192 the system tray, which also allows you to change this option. If you
1193 right-click on that icon (or select the <quote>Options</quote> menu), one
1194 choice is <quote>Enable</quote>. Clicking on enable toggles
1195 <application>Privoxy</application> on and off. This is useful if you want
1196 to temporarily disable <application>Privoxy</application>, e.g., to access
1197 a site that requires cookies which you would otherwise have blocked. This can also
1198 be toggled via a web browser at the <application>Privoxy</application>
1199 internal address of <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink> on
1204 <quote>toggle 1</quote> means <application>Privoxy</application> runs
1205 normally, <quote>toggle 0</quote> means that
1206 <application>Privoxy</application> becomes a non-anonymizing non-blocking
1207 proxy. Default: 1 (on).
1214 <emphasis>toggle 1</emphasis>
1221 For content filtering, i.e. the <quote>+filter</quote> and
1222 <quote>+deanimate-gif</quote> actions, it is necessary that
1223 <application>Privoxy</application> buffers the entire document body.
1224 This can be potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending
1225 data indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust. With nasty consequences.
1229 The <application>buffer-limit</application> option lets you set the maximum
1230 size in Kbytes that each buffer may use. When the documents buffer exceeds
1231 this size, it is flushed to the client unfiltered and no further attempt to
1232 filter the rest of it is made. Remember that there may multiple threads
1233 running, which might require increasing the <quote>buffer-limit</quote>
1234 Kbytes <emphasis>each</emphasis>, unless you have enabled
1235 <quote>single-threaded</quote> above.
1242 <emphasis>buffer-limit 4069</emphasis>
1249 To enable the web-based <filename>default.action</filename> file editor set
1250 <application>enable-edit-actions</application> to 1, or 0 to disable. Note
1251 that you must have compiled <application>Privoxy</application> with
1252 support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect. This
1253 internal page can be reached at <ulink
1254 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>.
1258 Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy
1259 can edit the actions file, and their changes will affect all users.
1260 For shared proxies, you probably want to disable this. Default: enabled.
1267 <emphasis>enable-edit-actions 1</emphasis>
1274 Allow <application>Privoxy</application> to be toggled on and off
1275 remotely, using your web browser. Set <quote>enable-remote-toggle</quote>to
1276 1 to enable, and 0 to disable. Note that you must have compiled
1277 <application>Privoxy</application> with support for this feature,
1278 otherwise this option has no effect.
1282 Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy can toggle
1283 it on or off (see <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>), and
1284 their changes will affect all users. For shared proxies, you probably want to
1285 disable this. Default: enabled.
1292 <emphasis>enable-remote-toggle 1</emphasis>
1300 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1303 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1306 <title>Access Control List (ACL)</title>
1308 Access controls are included at the request of some ISPs and systems
1309 administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. Please note
1310 the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a substitute
1311 for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic security
1316 If no access settings are specified, the proxy talks to anyone that
1317 connects. If any access settings file are specified, then the proxy
1318 talks only to IP addresses permitted somewhere in this file and not
1319 denied later in this file.
1323 Summary -- if using an ACL:
1328 Client must have permission to receive service.
1333 LAST match in ACL wins.
1338 Default behavior is to deny service.
1343 The syntax for an entry in the Access Control List is:
1350 ACTION SRC_ADDR[/SRC_MASKLEN] [ DST_ADDR[/DST_MASKLEN] ]
1357 Where the individual fields are:
1364 <emphasis>ACTION</emphasis> = <quote>permit-access</quote> or <quote>deny-access</quote>
1366 <emphasis>SRC_ADDR</emphasis> = client hostname or dotted IP address
1367 <emphasis>SRC_MASKLEN</emphasis> = number of bits in the subnet mask for the source
1369 <emphasis>DST_ADDR</emphasis> = server or forwarder hostname or dotted IP address
1370 <emphasis>DST_MASKLEN</emphasis> = number of bits in the subnet mask for the target
1378 The field separator (FS) is whitespace (space or tab).
1382 IMPORTANT NOTE: If <application>Privoxy</application> is using a
1383 forwarder (see below) or a gateway for a particular destination URL, the
1384 <literal>DST_ADDR</literal> that is examined is the address of the forwarder
1385 or the gateway and <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the address of the ultimate
1386 target. This is necessary because it may be impossible for the local
1387 <application>Privoxy</application> to determine the address of the
1388 ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
1392 Here are a few examples to show how the ACL features work:
1396 <quote>localhost</quote> is OK -- no DST_ADDR implies that
1397 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> destination addresses are OK:
1404 <emphasis>permit-access localhost</emphasis>
1411 A silly example to illustrate permitting any host on the class-C subnet with
1412 <application>Privoxy</application> to go anywhere:
1419 <emphasis>permit-access www.privoxy.com/24</emphasis>
1426 Except deny one particular IP address from using it at all:
1433 <emphasis>deny-access ident.privoxy.com</emphasis>
1440 You can also specify an explicit network address and subnet mask.
1441 Explicit addresses do not have to be resolved to be used.
1448 <emphasis>permit-access 207.153.200.0/24</emphasis>
1455 A subnet mask of 0 matches anything, so the next line permits everyone.
1462 <emphasis>permit-access 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis>
1469 Note, you <emphasis>cannot</emphasis> say:
1476 <emphasis>permit-access .org</emphasis>
1483 to allow all *.org domains. Every IP address listed must resolve fully.
1487 An ISP may want to provide a <application>Privoxy</application> that is
1488 accessible by <quote>the world</quote> and yet restrict use of some of their
1489 private content to hosts on its internal network (i.e. its own subscribers).
1490 Say, for instance the ISP owns the Class-B IP address block 123.124.0.0 (a 16
1491 bit netmask). This is how they could do it:
1498 <emphasis>permit-access 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis> # other clients can go anywhere
1499 # with the following exceptions:
1501 <emphasis>deny-access</emphasis> 0.0.0.0/0 123.124.0.0/16 # block all external requests for
1502 # sites on the ISP's network
1504 <emphasis>permit 0.0.0.0/0 www.my_isp.com</emphasis> # except for the ISP's main
1507 <emphasis>permit 123.124.0.0/16 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis> # the ISP's clients can go
1515 Note that if some hostnames are listed with multiple IP addresses,
1516 the primary value returned by DNS (via gethostbyname()) is used. Default:
1517 Anyone can access the proxy.
1522 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1525 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1527 <sect3 id="forwarding">
1528 <title>Forwarding</title>
1531 This feature allows chaining of HTTP requests via multiple proxies.
1532 It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
1533 accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains
1534 to a special purpose filtering proxy such as lpwa.com. Or to use
1535 a caching proxy to speed up browsing.
1539 It can also be used in an environment with multiple networks to route
1540 requests via multiple gateways allowing transparent access to multiple
1541 networks without having to modify browser configurations.
1545 Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. <application>Privoxy</application>
1546 SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 4A. The difference is that SOCKS 4A will resolve the target
1547 hostname using DNS on the SOCKS server, not our local DNS client.
1551 The syntax of each line is:
1558 <emphasis>forward target_domain[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1559 <emphasis>forward-socks4 target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1560 <emphasis>forward-socks4a target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1567 If http_proxy_host is <quote>.</quote>, then requests are not forwarded to a
1568 HTTP proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
1572 Lines are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
1576 There is an implicit line equivalent to the following, which specifies that
1577 anything not finding a match on the list is to go out without forwarding
1578 or gateway protocol, like so:
1585 <emphasis>forward .* . </emphasis># implicit
1592 In the following common configuration, everything goes to Lucent's LPWA,
1593 except SSL on port 443 (which it doesn't handle):
1600 <emphasis>forward .* lpwa.com:8000</emphasis>
1601 <emphasis>forward :443 .</emphasis>
1609 See the FAQ for instructions on how to automate the login procedure for LPWA.
1611 Some users have reported difficulties related to LPWA's use of
1612 <quote>.</quote> as the last element of the domain, and have said that this
1613 can be fixed with this:
1620 <emphasis>forward lpwa. lpwa.com:8000</emphasis>
1627 (NOTE: the syntax for specifying target_domain has changed since the
1628 previous paragraph was written -- it will not work now. More information
1633 In this fictitious example, everything goes via an ISP's caching proxy,
1634 except requests to that ISP:
1641 <emphasis>forward .* caching.myisp.net:8000</emphasis>
1642 <emphasis>forward myisp.net .</emphasis>
1649 For the @home network, we're told the forwarding configuration is this:
1657 <emphasis>forward .* proxy:8080</emphasis>
1664 Also, we're told they insist on getting cookies and JavaScript, so you should
1665 allow cookies from home.com. We consider JavaScript a potential security risk.
1666 Java need not be enabled.
1670 In this example direct connections are made to all <quote>internal</quote>
1671 domains, but everything else goes through Lucent's LPWA by way of the
1672 company's SOCKS gateway to the Internet.
1679 <emphasis>forward-socks4 .* lpwa.com:8000 firewall.my_company.com:1080</emphasis>
1680 <emphasis>forward my_company.com .</emphasis>
1687 This is how you could set up a site that always uses SOCKS but no forwarders:
1694 <emphasis>forward-socks4a .* . firewall.my_company.com:1080</emphasis>
1701 An advanced example for network administrators:
1705 If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content to
1706 their subscribers, you can configure forwarding to pass requests to the
1707 specific host that's connected to that ISP so that everybody can see all
1708 of the content on all of the ISPs.
1712 This is a bit tricky, but here's an example:
1717 host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.com. And host-b has a PPP connection to
1718 isp-b.com. host-a can run a <application>Privoxy</application> proxy with
1719 forwarding like this:
1726 <emphasis>forward .* .</emphasis>
1727 <emphasis>forward isp-b.com host-b:8118</emphasis>
1734 host-b can run a <application>Privoxy</application> proxy with forwarding
1742 <emphasis>forward .* .</emphasis>
1743 <emphasis>forward isp-a.com host-a:8118</emphasis>
1750 Now, <emphasis>anyone</emphasis> on the Internet (including users on host-a
1751 and host-b) can set their browser's proxy to <emphasis>either</emphasis>
1752 host-a or host-b and be able to browse the content on isp-a or isp-b.
1756 Here's another practical example, for University of Kent at
1757 Canterbury students with a network connection in their room, who
1758 need to use the University's Squid web cache.
1765 <emphasis>forward *. ssbcache.ukc.ac.uk:3128</emphasis> # Use the proxy, except for:
1766 <emphasis>forward .ukc.ac.uk . </emphasis> # Anything on the same domain as us
1767 <emphasis>forward * . </emphasis> # Host with no domain specified
1768 <emphasis>forward 129.12.*.* . </emphasis> # A dotted IP on our /16 network.
1769 <emphasis>forward 127.*.*.* . </emphasis> # Loopback address
1770 <emphasis>forward localhost.localdomain . </emphasis> # Loopback address
1771 <emphasis>forward www.ukc.mirror.ac.uk . </emphasis> # Specific host
1778 If you intend to chain <application>Privoxy</application> and
1779 <application>squid</application> locally, then chain as
1780 <literal>browser -> squid -> privoxy</literal> is the recommended way.
1784 Your squid configuration could then look like this (assuming that the IP
1785 address of the box is <literal>192.168.0.1</literal> ):
1792 # Define Privoxy as parent cache
1793 <!-- per feedback from user...
1794 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 8118 parent 0 no-query
1796 cache_peer 192.168.0.1 parent 8118 0 no-query
1798 # don't listen to the whole world
1799 http_port 192.168.0.1:3128
1801 # define the local lan
1802 acl mylocallan src 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.5/255.255.255.255
1804 # grant access for http to local lan
1805 http_access allow mylocallan
1807 # Define ACL for protocol FTP
1810 # Do not forward ACL FTP to privoxy
1811 always_direct allow FTP
1813 # Do not forward ACL CONNECT (https) to privoxy
1814 always_direct allow CONNECT
1816 # Forward the rest to privoxy
1817 never_direct allow all
1825 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1828 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1831 <title>Windows GUI Options</title>
1833 Removed references to Win32. HB 09/23/01
1836 <application>Privoxy</application> has a number of options specific to the
1837 Windows GUI interface:
1841 If <quote>activity-animation</quote> is set to 1, the
1842 <application>Privoxy</application> icon will animate when
1843 <quote>Privoxy</quote> is active. To turn off, set to 0.
1850 <emphasis>activity-animation 1</emphasis>
1857 If <quote>log-messages</quote> is set to 1,
1858 <application>Privoxy</application> will log messages to the console
1866 <emphasis>log-messages 1</emphasis>
1873 If <quote>log-buffer-size</quote> is set to 1, the size of the log buffer,
1874 i.e. the amount of memory used for the log messages displayed in the
1875 console window, will be limited to <quote>log-max-lines</quote> (see below).
1879 Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and
1880 eat up all your memory!
1887 <emphasis>log-buffer-size 1</emphasis>
1894 <application>log-max-lines</application> is the maximum number of lines held
1895 in the log buffer. See above.
1902 <emphasis>log-max-lines 200</emphasis>
1909 If <quote>log-highlight-messages</quote> is set to 1,
1910 <application>Privoxy</application> will highlight portions of the log
1911 messages with a bold-faced font:
1918 <emphasis>log-highlight-messages 1</emphasis>
1925 The font used in the console window:
1932 <emphasis>log-font-name Comic Sans MS</emphasis>
1939 Font size used in the console window:
1946 <emphasis>log-font-size 8</emphasis>
1953 <quote>show-on-task-bar</quote> controls whether or not
1954 <application>Privoxy</application> will appear as a button on the Task bar
1962 <emphasis>show-on-task-bar 0</emphasis>
1969 If <quote>close-button-minimizes</quote> is set to 1, the Windows close
1970 button will minimize <application>Privoxy</application> instead of closing
1971 the program (close with the exit option on the File menu).
1978 <emphasis>close-button-minimizes 1</emphasis>
1985 The <quote>hide-console</quote> option is specific to the MS-Win console
1986 version of <application>Privoxy</application>. If this option is used,
1987 <application>Privoxy</application> will disconnect from and hide the
2004 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2007 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2008 <sect2 id="actionsfile">
2009 <title>The Actions File</title>
2012 The <quote>default.action</quote> file (formerly
2013 <filename>actionsfile</filename> or <filename>ijb.action</filename>) is used
2014 to define what actions <application>Privoxy</application> takes, and thus
2015 determines how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content
2016 and transactions are handled. These can be accepted or rejected for all
2017 sites, or just those sites you choose. See below for a complete list of
2021 Anything you want can blocked, including ads, banners, or just some obnoxious
2022 URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted or rejected, or
2023 accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not written to disk).
2024 Changes to <filename>default.action</filename> should be immediately visible
2025 to <application>Privoxy</application> without the need to restart.
2029 Note that some sites may misbehave, or possibly not work at all with some
2030 actions. This may require some tinkering with the rules to get the most
2031 mileage of <application>Privoxy's</application> features, and still be
2032 able to see and enjoy just what you want to. There is no general rule of
2033 thumb on these things. There just are too many variables, and sites are
2039 The easiest way to edit the <quote>actions</quote> file is with a browser by
2040 loading <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, and then select
2041 <quote>Edit Actions List</quote>. A text editor can also be used.
2045 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2046 compared to all patterns in this file. Every time it matches, the list of
2047 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated. You can trace
2048 this process by visiting <ulink
2049 url="http://p.p/show-url-info">http://p.p/show-url-info</ulink>.
2054 There are four types of lines in this file: comments (begin with a
2055 <quote>#</quote> character), actions, aliases and patterns, all of which are
2056 explained below, as well as the configuration file syntax that
2057 <application>Privoxy</application> understands.
2062 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2064 <title>URL Domain and Path Syntax</title>
2066 Generally, a pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the
2067 <domain> and <path> part are optional. If you only specify a
2068 domain part, the <quote>/</quote> can be left out:
2072 <emphasis>www.example.com</emphasis> - is a domain only pattern and will match any request to
2073 <quote>www.example.com</quote>.
2077 <emphasis>www.example.com/</emphasis> - means exactly the same.
2081 <emphasis>www.example.com/index.html</emphasis> - matches only the single
2082 document <quote>/index.html</quote> on <quote>www.example.com</quote>.
2086 <emphasis>/index.html</emphasis> - matches the document <quote>/index.html</quote>,
2087 regardless of the domain. So would match any page named <quote>index.html</quote>
2092 <emphasis>index.html</emphasis> - matches nothing, since it would be
2093 interpreted as a domain name and there is no top-level domain called
2094 <quote>.html</quote>.
2098 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2099 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2104 <emphasis>.example.com</emphasis> - matches any domain or sub-domain that
2105 <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in <quote>.example.com</quote>.
2109 <emphasis>www.</emphasis> - matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2114 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2115 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
2116 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
2117 any single character. And you can define character classes in square
2118 brackets and they can be freely mixed:
2122 <emphasis>ad*.example.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2123 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>.
2127 <emphasis>*ad*.example.com</emphasis> - matches all of the above, and then some.
2131 <emphasis>.?pix.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>www.ipix.com</quote>,
2132 <quote>pictures.epix.com</quote>, <quote>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</quote>, etc.
2136 <emphasis>www[1-9a-ez].example.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>www1.example.com</quote>,
2137 <quote>www4.example.com</quote>, <quote>wwwd.example.com</quote>,
2138 <quote>wwwz.example.com</quote>, etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2139 <quote>wwww.example.com</quote>.
2143 If <application>Privoxy</application> was compiled with
2144 <quote>pcre</quote> support (the default), Perl compatible regular expressions
2145 can be used. These are more flexible and powerful than other types
2146 of <quote>regular expressions</quote>. See the <filename>pcre/docs/</filename> directory or <quote>man
2147 perlre</quote> (also available on <ulink
2148 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>)
2149 for details. A brief discussion of regular expressions is in the
2150 <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link>. For instance:
2154 <emphasis>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpe?g</emphasis> - would match a URL from any
2155 domain, with any path that includes <quote>advert</quote> followed
2156 immediately by one or more digits, then a <quote>.</quote> and ending in
2157 either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>. So we match
2158 <quote>example.com/ads/advert2.jpg</quote>, and
2159 <quote>www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.jpeg</quote>, but not
2160 <quote>www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.gif</quote> (no gifs in the
2165 Please note that matching in the path is case
2166 <emphasis>INSENSITIVE</emphasis> by default, but you can switch to case
2167 sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2168 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch:
2172 <emphasis>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</emphasis> - will match only
2173 documents whose path starts with <quote>PaTtErN</quote> in
2174 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2179 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2183 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2186 <title>Actions</title>
2188 Actions are enabled if preceded with a <quote>+</quote>, and disabled if
2189 preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. Actions are invoked by enclosing the
2190 action name in curly braces (e.g. {+some_action}), followed by a list of
2191 URLs to which the action applies. There are three classes of actions:
2199 Boolean (e.g. <quote>+/-block</quote>):
2205 <emphasis>{+name}</emphasis> # enable this action
2206 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable this action
2216 parameterized (e.g. <quote>+/-hide-user-agent</quote>):
2222 <emphasis>{+name{param}}</emphasis> # enable action and set parameter to <quote>param</quote>
2223 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable action
2232 Multi-value (e.g. <quote>{+/-add-header{Name: value}}</quote>, <quote>{+/-wafer{name=value}}</quote>):
2238 <emphasis>{+name{param}}</emphasis> # enable action and add parameter <quote>param</quote>
2239 <emphasis>{-name{param}}</emphasis> # remove the parameter <quote>param</quote>
2240 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable this action totally
2251 If nothing is specified in this file, no <quote>actions</quote> are taken.
2252 So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2253 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically
2254 enable the privacy and blocking features you need (although the
2255 provided default <filename>default.action</filename> file will
2256 give a good starting point).
2260 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
2261 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file. For
2262 multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are
2267 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> <quote>actions</quote> are:
2275 Add the specified HTTP header, which is not checked for validity.
2276 You may specify this many times to specify many different headers:
2282 <emphasis>+add-header{Name: value}</emphasis>
2292 Block this URL totally. In a default installation, a <quote>blocked</quote>
2293 URL will result in bright red banner that says <quote>BLOCKED</quote>,
2294 with a reason why it is being blocked, and an option to see it anyway.
2295 The page displayed for this is the <quote>blocked</quote> template
2302 <emphasis>+block</emphasis>
2312 De-animate all animated GIF images, i.e. reduce them to their last frame.
2313 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2314 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
2315 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last frame
2316 of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for most
2317 banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire last
2318 frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
2324 <emphasis>+deanimate-gifs{last}</emphasis>
2325 <emphasis>+deanimate-gifs{first}</emphasis>
2334 <quote>+downgrade</quote> will downgrade HTTP/1.1 client requests to
2335 HTTP/1.0 and downgrade the responses as well. Use this action for servers
2336 that use HTTP/1.1 protocol features that
2337 <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't handle well yet. HTTP/1.1
2338 is only partially implemented. Default is not to downgrade requests.
2344 <emphasis>+downgrade</emphasis>
2353 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
2354 will link to some script on their own server, giving the destination as a
2355 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs resulting
2356 from this scheme typically look like:
2357 <emphasis>http://some.place/some_script?http://some.where-else</emphasis>.
2360 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
2361 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
2362 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go to.
2363 Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your browser
2364 ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds the
2368 The <quote>+fast-redirects</quote> option enables interception of these
2369 types of requests by <application>Privoxy</application>, who will cut off
2370 all but the last valid URL in the request and send a local redirect back to
2371 your browser without contacting the intermediate site(s).
2377 <emphasis>+fast-redirects</emphasis>
2386 Apply the filters in the <literal>section_header</literal>
2387 section of the <filename>default.filter</filename> file to the site(s).
2388 <filename>default.filter</filename> sections are grouped according to like
2389 functionality. <application>Filters</application> can be used to
2390 re-write any of the raw page content. This is a potentially a
2391 very powerful feature!
2398 <emphasis>+filter{section_header}</emphasis>
2405 Filter sections that are pre-defined in the supplied
2406 <filename>default.filter</filename> include:
2412 <emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis>: Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.
2417 <emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis>: Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
2422 <emphasis>no-poups</emphasis>: Kill all popups in JS and HTML
2427 <emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis>: Give frames a border
2432 <emphasis>webbugs</emphasis>: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
2437 <emphasis>no-refresh</emphasis>: Automatic refresh sucks on auto-dialup lines
2442 <emphasis>fun</emphasis>: Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
2447 <emphasis>nimda</emphasis>: Remove (virus) Nimda code.
2452 <emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis>: Kill banners by size
2457 <emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis>: Kill all web pages that contain the words "sex" or "warez"
2466 Block any existing X-Forwarded-for header, and do not add a new one:
2472 <emphasis>+hide-forwarded</emphasis>
2481 If the browser sends a <quote>From:</quote> header containing your e-mail
2482 address, this either completely removes the header (<quote>block</quote>), or
2483 changes it to the specified e-mail address.
2489 <emphasis>+hide-from{block}</emphasis>
2490 <emphasis>+hide-from{spam@sittingduck.xqq}</emphasis>
2499 Don't send the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) header to the web site. You
2500 can block it, forge a URL to the same server as the request (which is
2501 preferred because some sites will not send images otherwise) or set it to a
2502 constant, user defined string of your choice.
2508 <emphasis>+hide-referer{block}</emphasis>
2509 <emphasis>+hide-referer{forge}</emphasis>
2510 <emphasis>+hide-referer{http://nowhere.com}</emphasis>
2519 Alternative spelling of <quote>+hide-referer</quote>. It has the same
2520 parameters, and can be freely mixed with, <quote>+hide-referer</quote>.
2521 (<quote>referrer</quote> is the correct English spelling, however the HTTP
2522 specification has a bug - it requires it to be spelled <quote>referer</quote>.)
2528 <emphasis>+hide-referrer{...}</emphasis>
2537 Change the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> header so web servers can't tell your
2538 browser type. Warning! This breaks many web sites. Specify the
2539 user-agent value you want. Example, pretend to be using Netscape on
2546 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla (X11; I; Linux 2.0.32 i586)}</emphasis>
2553 Or to identify yourself explicitly as a <application>Privoxy</application> user:
2559 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{Privoxy/1.0}</emphasis>
2564 (Don't change the version number from 1.0 - after all, why tell them?)
2571 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{browser-type}</emphasis>
2581 Treat this URL as an image. This only matters if it's also <quote>+block</quote>ed,
2582 in which case a <quote>blocked</quote> image can be sent rather than a HTML page.
2583 See <quote>+image-blocker{}</quote> below for the control over what is actually sent.
2584 If you want <emphasis>invisible</emphasis> ads, they should be defined as
2585 <emphasis>images</emphasis> and <emphasis>blocked</emphasis>. And also,
2586 <quote>image-blocker</quote> should be set to <quote>blank</quote>. Note you
2587 cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, frames
2588 require an HTML page to display. So a frame that is an ad, cannot be
2589 treated as an image. Forcing an <quote>image</quote> in this
2590 situation just will not work.
2596 <emphasis>+image</emphasis>
2604 <para> Decides what to do with URLs that end up tagged with <quote>{+block
2605 +image}</quote>, e.g an advertizement. There are five options.
2606 <quote>-image-blocker</quote> will send a HTML <quote>blocked</quote> page,
2607 usually resulting in a <quote>broken image</quote> icon.
2608 <!-- <quote>+image-blocker{logo}</quote> will send a -->
2609 <!-- <application>Privoxy</application> logo -->
2611 <quote>+image-blocker{blank}</quote> will send a 1x1 transparent GIF
2612 image. And finally, <quote>+image-blocker{http://xyz.com}</quote> will send a
2613 HTTP temporary redirect to the specified image. This has the advantage of the
2614 icon being being cached by the browser, which will speed up the display.
2615 <quote>+image-blocker{pattern}</quote> will send a checkboard type pattern
2617 <!-- which scales better than the logo (which can get blocky if the browser -->
2618 <!-- enlarges it too much). -->
2624 <!-- <emphasis>+image-blocker{logo}</emphasis> -->
2625 <emphasis>+image-blocker{blank}</emphasis>
2626 <emphasis>+image-blocker{pattern}</emphasis>
2627 <emphasis>+image-blocker{http://p.p/send-banner}</emphasis>
2636 By default (i.e. in the absence of a <quote>+limit-connect</quote>
2637 action), <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow CONNECT
2638 requests to port 443, which is the standard port for https as a
2643 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
2644 (https:// URLs) through proxies. It works very simply: the proxy
2645 connects to the server on the specified port, and then short-circuits
2646 its connections to the client <emphasis>and</emphasis> to the remote proxy.
2647 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can
2648 be abused as TCP relays very easily.
2652 If you want to allow CONNECT for more ports than this, or want to forbid
2653 CONNECT altogether, you can specify a comma separated list of ports and
2654 port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum defaulting to 0 and
2662 <emphasis>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need no be specified.</emphasis>
2663 <emphasis>+limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.</emphasis>
2664 <emphasis>+limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Port less than 3, 7, 20 to 100</emphasis>
2665 <emphasis> #and above 500 are OK.</emphasis>
2675 <quote>+no-compression</quote> prevents the website from compressing the
2676 data. Some websites do this, which can be a problem for
2677 <application>Privoxy</application>, since <quote>+filter</quote>,
2678 <quote>+no-popup</quote> and <quote>+gif-deanimate</quote> will not work on
2679 compressed data. This will slow down connections to those websites,
2680 though. Default is <quote>no-compression</quote> is turned on.
2687 <emphasis>+nocompression</emphasis>
2696 If the website sets cookies, <quote>no-cookies-keep</quote> will make sure
2697 they are erased when you exit and restart your web browser. This makes
2698 profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
2699 that you can log in for transactions. Default: on.
2705 <emphasis>+no-cookies-keep</emphasis>
2714 Prevent the website from reading cookies:
2720 <emphasis>+no-cookies-read</emphasis>
2729 Prevent the website from setting cookies:
2735 <emphasis>+no-cookies-set</emphasis>
2744 Filter the website through a built-in filter to disable those obnoxious
2745 JavaScript pop-up windows via window.open(), etc. The two alternative
2746 spellings are equivalent.
2752 <emphasis>+no-popup</emphasis>
2753 <emphasis>+no-popups</emphasis>
2762 This action only applies if you are using a <filename>jarfile</filename>
2763 for saving cookies. It sends a cookie to every site stating that you do not
2764 accept any copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking them not to track
2765 you. Of course, this is a (relatively) unique header they could use to
2772 <emphasis>+vanilla-wafer</emphasis>
2781 This allows you to add an arbitrary cookie. It can be specified multiple
2782 times in order to add as many cookies as you like.
2788 <emphasis>+wafer{name=value}</emphasis>
2799 The meaning of any of the above is reversed by preceding the action with a
2800 <quote>-</quote>, in place of the <quote>+</quote>.
2808 Turn off cookies by default, then allow a few through for specified sites:
2815 # Turn off all persistent cookies
2816 { +no-cookies-read }
2818 # Allow cookies for this browser session ONLY
2819 { +no-cookies-keep }
2821 # Exceptions to the above, sites that benefit from persistent cookies
2822 { -no-cookies-read }
2824 { -no-cookies-keep }
2831 # Alternative way of saying the same thing
2832 {-no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-keep}
2841 Now turn off <quote>fast redirects</quote>, and then we allow two exceptions:
2851 # Reverse it for these two sites, which don't work right without it.
2853 www.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wac\.cgi\?
2861 Turn on page filtering according to rules in the defined sections
2862 of <filename>refilterfile</filename>, and make one exception for
2870 # Run everything through the filter file, using only the
2871 # specified sections:
2872 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}\
2873 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
2875 # Then disable filtering of code from sourceforge!
2877 .cvs.sourceforge.net
2884 Now some URLs that we want <quote>blocked</quote> (normally generates
2885 the <quote>blocked</quote> banner). Many of these use regular expressions
2886 that will expand to match multiple URLs:
2895 /.*/(.*[-_.])?ads?[0-9]?(/|[-_.].*|\.(gif|jpe?g))
2896 /.*/(.*[-_.])?count(er)?(\.cgi|\.dll|\.exe|[?/])
2897 /.*/(ng)?adclient\.cgi
2898 /.*/(plain|live|rotate)[-_.]?ads?/
2899 /.*/(sponsor)s?[0-9]?/
2900 /.*/_?(plain|live)?ads?(-banners)?/
2902 /.*/ad(sdna_image|gifs?)/
2903 /.*/ad(server|stream|juggler)\.(cgi|pl|dll|exe)
2907 /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/
2911 /.*/cgi-bin/centralad/getimage
2912 /.*/images/addver\.gif
2913 /.*/images/marketing/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
2917 /.*/sponsors?[0-9]?/
2918 /.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpg
2925 /graphics/defaultAd/
2927 /image\.ng/transactionID
2928 /images/.*/.*_anim\.gif # alvin brattli
2929 /ip_img/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
2933 /cgi-bin/nph-adclick.exe/
2934 /.*/Image/BannerAdvertising/
2936 /.*/adlib/server\.cgi
2944 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
2945 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
2946 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
2947 content he may depend on. There is no way to have hard and fast rules
2948 for all sites. See the <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link>
2949 for a brief example on troubleshooting actions.
2954 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2957 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2959 <title>Aliases</title>
2961 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
2962 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other <quote>actions</quote>.
2963 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in <quote>actions</quote>.
2964 Currently, an alias can contain any character except space, tab, <quote>=</quote>,
2965 <quote>{</quote> or <quote>}</quote>. But please use only <quote>a</quote>-
2966 <quote>z</quote>, <quote>0</quote>-<quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and
2967 <quote>-</quote>. Alias names are not case sensitive, and
2968 <emphasis>must be defined before anything</emphasis> else in the
2969 <filename>default.action</filename>file! And there can only be one set of
2970 <quote>aliases</quote> defined.
2974 Now let's define a few aliases:
2981 # Useful custom aliases we can use later. These must come first!
2983 +no-cookies = +no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
2984 -no-cookies = -no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
2985 fragile = -block -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -no-popups
2986 shop = -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects
2987 +imageblock = +block +image
2989 #For people who don't like to type too much: ;-)
2992 c2 = -no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
2993 c3 = +no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
2994 #... etc. Customize to your heart's content.
3001 Some examples using our <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote>
3009 # These sites are very complex and require
3010 # minimal interference.
3012 .office.microsoft.com
3013 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
3016 # Shopping sites - still want to block ads.
3019 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3023 # These shops require pop-ups
3033 The <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> aliases are often used for
3034 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require most actions to be disabled
3035 in order to function properly.
3042 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3045 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3046 <sect2 id="filterfile">
3047 <title>The Filter File</title>
3049 Any web page can be dynamically modified with the filter file. This
3050 modification can be removal, or re-writing, of any web page content,
3051 including tags and non-visible content. The default filter file is
3052 <filename>default.filter</filename>, located in the config directory.
3056 This is potentially a very powerful feature, and requires knowledge of both
3057 <quote>regular expression</quote> and HTML in order create custom
3058 filters. But, there are a number of useful filters included with
3059 <application>Privoxy</application> for many common situations.
3063 The included example file is divided into sections. Each section begins
3064 with the <literal>FILTER</literal> keyword, followed by the identifier
3065 for that section, e.g. <quote>FILTER: webbugs</quote>. Each section performs
3066 a similar type of filtering, such as <quote>html-annoyances</quote>.
3070 This file uses regular expressions to alter or remove any string in the
3071 target page. The expressions can only operate on one line at a time. Some
3072 examples from the included default <filename>default.filter</filename>:
3076 Stop web pages from displaying annoying messages in the status bar by
3077 deleting such references:
3084 FILTER: html-annoyances
3086 # New browser windows should be resizeable and have a location and status
3089 s/resizable="?(no|0)"?/resizable=1/ig s/noresize/yesresize/ig
3090 s/location="?(no|0)"?/location=1/ig s/status="?(no|0)"?/status=1/ig
3091 s/scrolling="?(no|0|Auto)"?/scrolling=1/ig
3092 s/menubar="?(no|0)"?/menubar=1/ig
3094 # The <BLINK> tag was a crime!
3096 s*<blink>|</blink>**ig
3100 #s/framespacing="?(no|0)"?//ig
3101 #s/margin(height|width)=[0-9]*//gi
3108 Just for kicks, replace any occurrence of <quote>Microsoft</quote> with
3109 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>, and have a little fun with topical buzzwords:
3118 s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/ig
3122 s/industry-leading|cutting-edge|award-winning/<font color=red><b>BINGO!</b></font>/ig
3129 Kill those pesky little web-bugs:
3136 # webbugs: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
3139 s/<img\s+[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1\D[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1(\D[^>]*?)?>/<!-- Squished WebBug -->/sig
3147 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3151 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3154 <title>Templates</title>
3156 When <application>Privoxy</application> displays one of its internal
3157 pages, such as a 404 Not Found error page, it uses the appropriate template.
3158 On Linux, BSD, and Unix, these are located in
3159 <filename>/etc/privoxy/templates</filename> by default. These may be
3160 customized, if desired.
3163 The default <quote>Blocked</quote> banner page with the bright red top
3164 banner, is called just <quote><filename>blocked</filename></quote>. This
3165 may be customized or replaced with something else if desired.
3172 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3176 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3178 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
3181 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
3185 <!-- end boilerplate -->
3190 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3191 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Copyright and History</title>
3193 <sect2><title>Copyright</title>
3194 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
3196 <!-- end copyright -->
3199 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3202 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3204 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
3205 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
3207 <!-- end history -->
3211 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3212 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
3213 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
3215 <!-- end seealso -->
3220 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3221 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
3224 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3226 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
3228 <application>Privoxy</application> can use <quote>regular expressions</quote>
3229 in various config files. Assuming support for <quote>pcre</quote> (Perl
3230 Compatible Regular Expressions) is compiled in, which is the default. Such
3231 configuration directives do not require regular expressions, but they can be
3232 used to increase flexibility by matching a pattern with wild-cards against
3237 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
3238 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
3239 introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
3243 <quote>Regular expressions</quote> is a way of matching one character
3244 expression against another to see if it matches or not. One of the
3245 <quote>expressions</quote> is a literal string of readable characters
3246 (letter, numbers, etc), and the other is a complex string of literal
3247 characters combined with wild-cards, and other special characters, called
3248 meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have special meanings and
3249 are used to build the complex pattern to be matched against. Perl Compatible
3250 Regular Expressions is an enhanced form of the regular expression language
3251 with backward compatibility.
3255 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
3256 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
3257 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
3258 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
3259 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
3260 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
3261 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
3262 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
3266 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
3267 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
3268 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
3269 and then some examples:
3274 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
3275 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
3281 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
3288 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
3295 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
3302 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
3303 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
3304 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
3305 not as a special meta-character.
3311 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
3312 any of the enclosed characters are encountered.
3318 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
3319 or multiple sub-expressions.
3325 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
3326 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
3327 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches.
3333 <emphasis>s/string1/string2/g</emphasis> - This is used to rewrite strings of text.
3334 <quote>string1</quote> is replaced by <quote>string2</quote> in this
3340 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
3341 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
3342 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
3343 be more illuminating:
3347 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
3348 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
3349 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
3350 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
3351 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
3352 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
3353 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
3354 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
3355 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
3356 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
3357 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
3358 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
3359 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
3360 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
3365 A now something a little more complex:
3369 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
3370 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
3371 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
3372 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
3373 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
3374 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
3375 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
3380 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
3381 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
3382 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
3383 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
3384 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
3385 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
3386 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
3387 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
3388 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
3389 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
3390 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
3391 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
3392 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
3393 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
3394 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
3395 changing our regular expression to:
3396 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
3401 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
3402 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
3403 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
3404 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
3405 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
3406 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
3407 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
3408 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
3409 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
3410 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
3411 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
3412 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
3413 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
3414 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
3415 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
3416 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
3417 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
3418 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
3419 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
3420 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
3421 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
3422 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
3423 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
3424 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
3425 in the expression anywhere).
3429 <emphasis><literal>s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/i</literal></emphasis> - This is
3430 a substitution. <quote>MicroSuck</quote> will replace any occurrence of
3431 <quote>microsoft</quote>. The <quote>i</quote> at the end of the expression
3432 means ignore case. The <quote>(?!.com)</quote> means
3433 the match should fail if <quote>microsoft</quote> is followed by
3434 <quote>.com</quote>. In other words, this acts like a <quote>NOT</quote>
3435 modifier. In case this is a hyperlink, we don't want to break it ;-).
3439 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
3440 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
3441 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
3442 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
3443 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
3448 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
3449 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
3454 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3457 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3459 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
3462 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
3463 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
3464 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
3465 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
3466 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
3467 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
3468 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
3474 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
3475 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
3476 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
3477 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
3490 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
3494 Alternately, this may be reached at <ulink
3495 url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, but this
3496 variation may not work as reliably as the above in some configurations.
3502 Show information about the current configuration:
3506 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
3513 Show the source code version numbers:
3517 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
3524 Show the client's request headers:
3528 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
3535 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
3539 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
3546 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
3547 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
3551 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
3555 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
3559 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
3564 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
3571 Edit the actions list file:
3575 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions">http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions</ulink>
3584 These may be bookmarked for quick reference.
3588 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
3589 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
3591 Here are some bookmarklets to allow you to easily access a
3592 <quote>mini</quote> version of this page. They are designed for MS Internet
3593 Explorer, but should work equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other
3594 browsers which support JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from
3595 your bookmarks - not by clicking the links below (although that will work for
3599 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
3600 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
3601 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
3602 Bookmarklet directly from your favourites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
3603 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
3604 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
3612 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=enabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Enable Privoxy</ulink>
3618 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=disabled','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Disable Privoxy</ulink>
3624 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y&set=toggle','ijbstatus','width=250,height=100,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Toggle Privoxy</ulink> (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
3630 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?mini=y','ijbstatus','width=250,height=2,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">View Privoxy Status</ulink>
3638 Credit: The site which gave me the general idea for these bookmarklets is
3639 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
3640 have more information about bookmarklets.
3649 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3650 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
3651 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
3654 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies <quote>actions</quote>
3655 and <quote>filters</quote> to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
3656 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
3657 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
3658 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
3659 is causing us a problem inadvertantly. It can be a little daunting to look at
3660 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
3661 <quote>regular expressions</quote> whose consequences are not always
3662 so obvious. <application>Privoxy</application> provides the
3663 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
3664 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
3665 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
3669 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
3670 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
3671 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
3672 help with filtering effects from the <filename>default.filter</filename> file! It
3673 also will not tell you about any other URLs that may be embedded within the
3674 URL you are testing. For instance, images such as ads are expressed as URLs
3675 within the raw page source of HTML pages. So you will only get info for the
3676 actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area -- not any sub-URLs. If you
3677 want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you will have to dig those out of
3678 the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View Page Source</quote> option
3679 for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the URL.
3683 Let's look at an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
3684 one section at a time:
3689 System default actions:
3691 { -add-header -block -deanimate-gifs -downgrade -fast-redirects -filter
3692 -hide-forwarded -hide-from -hide-referer -hide-user-agent -image
3693 -image-blocker -limit-connect -no-compression -no-cookies-keep
3694 -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set -no-popups -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3700 This is the top section, and only tells us of the compiled in defaults. This
3701 is basically what <application>Privoxy</application> would do if there
3702 were not any <quote>actions</quote> defined, i.e. it does nothing. Every action
3703 is disabled. This is not particularly informative for our purposes here. OK,
3710 Matches for http://google.com:
3712 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade +fast-redirects
3713 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3714 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3715 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3716 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} +no-compression
3717 +no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups
3718 -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3721 { -no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set }
3731 This is much more informative, and tells us how we have defined our
3732 <quote>actions</quote>, and which ones match for our example,
3733 <quote>google.com</quote>. The first grouping shows our default
3734 settings, which would apply to all URLs. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote>
3735 file, this would be the section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section
3736 near the top. This applies to all URLs as signified by the single forward
3737 slash -- <quote>/</quote>.
3742 These are the default actions we have enabled. But we can define additional
3743 actions that would be exceptions to these general rules, and then list
3744 specific URLs that these exceptions would apply to. Last match wins.
3745 Just below this then are two explict matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>.
3746 The first is negating our various cookie blocking actions (i.e. we will allow
3747 cookies here). The second is allowing <quote>fast-redirects</quote>. Note
3748 that there is a leading dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will
3749 match any hosts and sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
3750 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these actions defined
3751 somewhere in the lower part of our actions file, and
3752 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced in these sections.
3757 And now we pull it altogether in the bottom section and summarize how
3758 <application>Privoxy</application> is appying all its <quote>actions</quote>
3759 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
3768 -add-header -block -deanimate-gifs -downgrade -fast-redirects
3769 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3770 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3771 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3772 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} -limit-connect +no-compression
3773 -no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups -vanilla-wafer
3780 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
3799 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
3800 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +image</quote>,
3801 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
3802 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<quote>Aliases</quote> are defined in the
3803 first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
3808 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
3809 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
3810 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
3811 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
3812 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
3813 is done here -- as both a <quote>+block</quote> <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
3814 <quote>+image</quote>. The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> does this
3819 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
3820 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm...
3826 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
3828 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade +fast-redirects
3829 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3830 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3831 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3832 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} +no-compression
3833 +no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups
3834 -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3844 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
3845 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
3846 now add a new action below this that explictly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
3847 block (-block) pages with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are various ways to
3848 handle such exceptions. Example:
3861 Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when
3862 making such changes. Or, try using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
3866 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
3880 That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem
3881 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
3882 rules in the first section is causing the problem. This would require some
3883 guesswork, and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule.
3884 One likely cause would be one of the <quote>{+filter}</quote> actions. Try
3885 adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off <quote>+filter</quote>:
3893 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
3902 <quote>{shop}</quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
3903 <quote>{ -filter -no-cookies -no-cookies-keep }</quote>. Or you could do
3904 your own exception to negate filtering:
3918 <quote>{fragile}</quote> is an alias that disables most actions. This can be
3919 used as a last resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this
3920 still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by
3921 one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
3930 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
3931 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
3932 Public License as published by the Free Software
3933 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
3934 your option) any later version.
3936 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
3937 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
3938 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
3939 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
3940 License for more details.
3942 The GNU General Public License should be included with
3943 this file. If not, you can view it at
3944 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
3945 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
3946 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
3948 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
3949 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
3950 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
3951 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
3952 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
3953 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
3955 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
3956 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
3958 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
3959 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
3961 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
3962 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
3963 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
3964 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
3965 eventually be set by Makefile.
3966 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
3968 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
3969 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
3971 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
3972 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
3974 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
3975 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
3977 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
3978 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
3979 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
3980 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
3982 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
3985 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
3986 Added more to Anatomy section.
3988 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
3989 Touch up intro for new name.
3991 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
3992 we have a new homepage!
3994 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
3995 A few minor catch ups with name change.
3997 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
3998 configure needs to be generated.
4000 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
4001 we are too lazy to make a block-built
4002 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
4004 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
4005 name change related issue.
4007 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
4008 name change. changed filenames.
4010 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
4013 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
4014 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
4015 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
4016 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
4017 comments and remarks to history untouched.
4019 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
4022 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
4023 New section in Appendix.
4025 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
4026 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
4028 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
4029 correct feedback channels
4031 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
4032 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
4034 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
4037 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
4038 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
4040 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
4041 Added imageblock{pattern}.
4043 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
4046 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
4047 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
4049 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
4050 provide correct feedback channels
4052 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
4053 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
4055 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
4056 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
4058 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
4059 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
4061 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
4062 Add new - - user option.
4064 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
4065 Added section on command line options.
4067 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
4068 Changed default port to 8118
4070 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
4071 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
4073 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
4074 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
4075 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
4078 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
4081 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
4082 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
4084 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
4085 Update OS/2 build section
4087 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
4088 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
4089 will work - no other changes are needed.
4091 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
4092 Added a very short section on Templates
4094 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
4095 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
4097 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
4098 Touch ups for *.action files.
4100 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
4103 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
4104 Updates for recent changes.
4106 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
4107 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
4109 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
4110 Correct 2 minor errors
4112 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
4113 *** empty log message ***
4115 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
4116 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
4118 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
4119 wrong url in documentation
4121 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
4122 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
4124 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
4127 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
4130 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
4133 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
4134 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
4136 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
4137 Some additions, and re-arranging.
4139 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
4142 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
4143 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
4145 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
4148 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
4149 source files for junkbuster documentation
4151 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
4152 first proposal of a structure.
4154 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
4155 docs should have an author.
4157 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
4158 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.