1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [
2 <!entity % dummy "IGNORE">
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 license SYSTEM "license.sgml">
12 <!entity p-authors SYSTEM "p-authors.sgml">
13 <!entity config SYSTEM "p-config.sgml">
14 <!entity p-version "3.0.6">
15 <!entity p-status "UNRELEASED">
16 <!entity % p-authors-formal "INCLUDE"> <!-- include additional text, etc -->
17 <!entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE">
18 <!entity % p-stable "IGNORE">
19 <!entity % p-text "IGNORE"> <!-- define we are not a text only doc -->
20 <!entity % p-doc "INCLUDE"> <!-- and we are a formal doc -->
21 <!entity % p-readme "IGNORE">
22 <!entity % user-man "IGNORE">
23 <!entity % config-file "IGNORE">
24 <!entity % p-supp-userman "IGNORE"> <!-- Omit some from supported.sgml -->
25 <!entity my-copy "©"> <!-- kludge for docbook2man -->
26 <!entity % draft "IGNORE"> <!-- WIP stuff -->
27 <!entity my-app "<application>Privoxy</application>">
30 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
33 This file belongs into
34 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
36 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9 Exp $
38 Copyright (C) 2001- 2006 Privoxy Developers http://www.privoxy.org
41 ========================================================================
42 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
43 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
44 ========================================================================
51 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
55 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
56 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
57 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001 - 2006 by
58 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
62 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9 Exp $</pubdate>
66 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
67 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
68 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
69 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
82 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
83 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
84 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
90 The <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
91 install, configure and use <ulink
92 url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy</ulink>.
95 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
97 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
100 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>Privoxy User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
101 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
102 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
103 contact the developers.
107 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
113 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
114 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
116 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
117 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
118 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
119 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
120 configuration files. Development of a new version is currently nearing
121 completion, and includes significant changes and enhancements over
122 earlier versions. ]]>.
125 <!-- include only in non-stable versions -->
128 Since this is a &p-status; version, not all new features are well tested. This
129 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
130 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
135 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
136 <sect2 id="features"><title>Features</title>
138 In addition to the core
139 features of ad blocking and
140 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> management,
141 <application>Privoxy</application> provides many supplemental
142 features<![%p-not-stable;[, some of them currently under development]]>,
143 that give the end-user more control, more privacy and more freedom:
145 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
147 <!-- end boilerplate -->
152 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
155 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
156 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
159 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
160 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
161 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
162 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
168 On some platforms, the installer may remove previously installed versions, if
169 found. (See below for your platform). In any case <emphasis>be sure to backup
170 your old configuration if it is valuable to you.</emphasis> See the <link
171 linkend="upgradersnote">note to upgraders</link> section below.
174 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
175 <sect2 id="installation-packages"><title>Binary Packages</title>
177 How to install the binary packages depends on your operating system:
180 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
181 <sect3 id="installation-pack-rpm"><title>Red Hat, SuSE and Conectiva RPMs</title>
184 RPMs can be installed with <literal>rpm -Uvh privoxy-&p-version;-1.rpm</literal>,
185 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location
186 of configuration files.
190 Note that on Red Hat, <application>Privoxy</application> will
191 <emphasis>not</emphasis> be automatically started on system boot. You will
192 need to enable that using <command>chkconfig</command>,
193 <command>ntsysv</command>, or similar methods.
197 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
198 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
199 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
203 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
204 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
205 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
206 automatically if found, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
210 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
211 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
213 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
214 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
219 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
220 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
223 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
224 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
225 in the same directory as you installed <application>Privoxy</application> in.
228 Version 3.0.4 introduced full <application>Windows</application> service
229 functionality. On Windows only, the <application>Privoxy</application>
230 program has two new command line arguments to install and uninstall
231 <application>Privoxy</application> as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
235 <term>Arguments:</term>
238 <replaceable class="parameter">--install</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
241 <replaceable class="parameter">--uninstall</replaceable>[:<replaceable class="parameter">service_name</replaceable>]
247 After invoking <application>Privoxy</application> with
248 <command>--install</command>, you will need to bring up the
249 <application>Windows</application> service console to assign the user you
250 want <application>Privoxy</application> to run under, and whether or not you
251 want it to run whenever the system starts. You can start the
252 <application>Windows</application> services console with the following
253 command: <command>services.msc</command>. If you do not take the manual step
254 of modifying <application>Privoxy's</application> service settings, it will
255 not start. Note too that you will need to give Privoxy a user account that
256 actually exists, or it will not be permitted to
257 write to its log and configuration files.
262 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
263 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX</title>
266 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
267 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
268 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
272 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
273 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
276 First, make sure that no previous installations of
277 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
278 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
279 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
280 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
286 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
287 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
288 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
289 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
293 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
294 into will contain all of the configuration files.
298 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
299 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OSX</title>
301 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file
302 from the finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
303 Then, double-click on the package installer icon named
304 <literal>Privoxy.pkg</literal>
305 and follow the installation process.
306 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the folder
307 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal>.
308 It will start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from
309 starting automatically, remove or rename the folder
310 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
313 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on
314 <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> in the
315 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder.
316 Or, type this command in the Terminal:
320 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
324 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
328 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
329 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
331 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
332 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
333 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
334 remove this directory.
338 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
339 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
341 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
342 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
343 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
344 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
347 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
348 first <literal>emerge rsync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
349 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
353 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
354 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
355 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
361 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
362 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
365 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
366 is to download the source tarball from our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project
371 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
372 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
373 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
374 CVS repository</ulink>.
376 deprecated...out of business.
377 or simply download <ulink
378 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
383 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
385 <!-- end boilerplate -->
388 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
389 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
391 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
392 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
393 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
394 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
399 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
400 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
401 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
402 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
406 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
407 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
408 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> and
409 <literal>user.filter</literal> for your local
410 customizations of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
411 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
419 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
421 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
422 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
423 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
425 There are many improvements and new features since the last <application>Privoxy</application> stable release:
432 Multiple <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link> can now be specified in <filename>config</filename>. This allows for
433 locally defined filters that can be maintained separately from the filters as
434 supplied by the developers, i.e. <filename>default.filter</filename>.
440 There are a number of new <link linkend="actions-file">actions</link>:
448 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>
453 <literal><link linkend="crunch-client-header">crunch-client-header</link></literal>
458 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>
463 <literal><link linkend="crunch-server-header">crunch-server-header</link></literal>
468 <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
473 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
478 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>
483 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>
488 <literal><link linkend="hide-accept-language">hide-accept-language</link></literal>
493 <literal><link linkend="hide-content-disposition">hide-content-disposition</link></literal>
498 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
503 <literal><link linkend="inspect-jpegs">inspect-jpegs</link></literal>
508 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
513 <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal>
518 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
525 In addition, <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
526 has been significantly improved with enhanced syntax.
529 And <literal><link linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal>
530 has a new option, <literal>conditional block</literal>.
537 <application>MS-Windows</application> versions can now be
539 linkend="installation-pack-win">installed and
540 started as a <emphasis>Windows service</emphasis></link>.
546 <filename>config</filename> has two new options:
548 linkend="enable-remote-http-toggle">enable-remote-http-toggle</link>,
550 linkend="forwarded-connect-retries">forwarded-connect-retries</link>.
553 And there is improved handling of the <link
554 linkend="user-manual">user-manual</link>
555 option, for placing documentation and help files on the local system.
561 There are six new <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>.
567 Actions files problems and suggestions are now being directed to:
568 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288">http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288</ulink>.
569 Please use this to report such configuration related problems as missed
570 ads, sites that don't function properly due to one action or another,
571 innocent images being blocked, etc.
577 In addition, there are numerous bug fixes and significant enhancements,
578 including error pages should no longer be cached if the problem is fixed,
579 much better DNS error handling, and various logging improvements.
585 The default actions setting is now <literal>Cautious</literal>. Previous
586 releases had a default setting of <literal>Medium</literal>. Experienced
587 users may want to adjust this, as it is fairly conservative by &my-app;
588 standards and past practices. See <ulink
589 url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
590 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>. New users
591 should try the default settings for a while before turning up the volume.
598 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
600 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
601 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
604 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
605 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
613 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely, including
614 configuration files. Save any important configuration files!
619 On the other hand, other installers may not overwrite any existing configuration
620 files, thinking you will want to do that. You may want to manually check
621 your saved files against the newer versions to see if the improvements have
622 merit, or whether there are new options that you may want to consider.
623 There are a number of new features, but most won't be available unless
624 these features are incorporated into your configuration somehow.
629 See the full documentation on
630 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
631 which has changed syntax, and will require adjustments to local configs,
632 such as <filename>user.action</filename>. You must reference the new
637 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
646 The <filename>jarfile</filename>,
647 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookie</ulink> logger, is off by default now.
653 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
654 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
655 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
656 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
657 There are also a number of new actions and filters you may want to
658 consider, most of which are not incorporated into the default settings as
665 <!-- I think it is best to keep this somewhat vague, in case -->
666 <!-- the situation changes under our feet. -->
667 Some installers may not automatically start
668 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
677 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
678 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using Privoxy</title>
684 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
685 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
692 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
693 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
694 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
695 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
702 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
703 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
704 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
710 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
711 HTTPS (SSL) <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>
712 by setting the proxy configuration for address of
713 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
714 <emphasis>DO NOT</emphasis> activate proxying for <literal>FTP</literal> or
715 any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)! It won't work!
721 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
722 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage
723 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
724 you should remove any currently stored cookies too.
730 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
731 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
732 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
733 to no initial configuration is required in most cases.
736 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
737 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
738 You might also want to look at the <link
739 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
740 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
747 If you experience ads that slip through, innocent images that are
748 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
749 <application>Privoxy's</application> behavior, take a look at the <link
750 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
751 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
752 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
753 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
754 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an
755 Action</link></quote> has hints on how to understand and debug actions that
756 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
762 For easy access to &my-app;'s most important controls, drag the provided
763 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
770 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
771 Developers</link> on how to report bugs, problems with websites or to get
778 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
786 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
788 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
789 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
791 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
792 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
795 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
796 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
797 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
800 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
801 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
802 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
805 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
806 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
807 things that were not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
808 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
809 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
810 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
811 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
812 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
813 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
814 habits and preferences.
817 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
818 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
819 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
820 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
821 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
822 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
823 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
824 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
825 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
826 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
829 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
830 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
831 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
832 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
833 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
836 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
837 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
838 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
839 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
840 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
841 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
842 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
843 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
844 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
849 The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: <literal><link
850 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
851 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>, and
852 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
860 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this action stops
861 any contact between your browser and any URL patterns that match this
862 action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads, but also anything
863 that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply stops any
864 communication with the remote server and sends <application>Privoxy</application>'s
865 own built-in BLOCKED page instead to let you now what has happened.
871 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
872 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
873 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
874 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
875 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
876 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
877 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
878 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
879 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
880 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
881 an entire HTML page in most situations.
888 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
889 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
890 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
891 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
892 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
893 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
896 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
900 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
901 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
906 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
907 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
912 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
913 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
922 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
923 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
924 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
925 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
926 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access. Select the
927 appropriate <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
928 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
929 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
930 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
931 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
932 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
933 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
937 A quick and simple step by step example:
945 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
946 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
954 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
959 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
960 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
963 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
965 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
968 <imagedata fileref="files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
971 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
980 You should have a section with only
981 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
982 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
983 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
984 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
985 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
986 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
987 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
988 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
994 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
995 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
996 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
997 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
998 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
999 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
1004 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
1005 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
1013 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
1014 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
1015 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
1016 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
1021 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
1022 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
1023 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
1030 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1033 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1034 <sect1 id="startup">
1035 <title>Starting Privoxy</title>
1037 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
1038 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
1039 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)
1040 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server">proxy</ulink>. The default is
1041 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
1042 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step <emphasis>that must be done
1046 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
1047 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
1050 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
1052 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1053 Mozilla/Netscape HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) Settings</title>
1056 <imagedata fileref="proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
1059 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1067 With <application>Firefox</application>, this can be set under:
1071 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>General</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
1077 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
1078 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
1083 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1084 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1085 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton> -> <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1090 For <application>Internet Explorer v.5-6</application>:
1094 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Internet Options</guibutton> -> <guibutton>Connections</guibutton> -> <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1098 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1099 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1100 proxy support too (sometimes labeled <quote>Secure</quote>). Make sure any
1101 checkboxes like <quote>Use the same proxy server for all protocols</quote> is
1102 <emphasis>UNCHECKED</emphasis>. You want only HTTP and HTTPS (SSL)!
1105 <!-- image of IE Proxy configuration -->
1107 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration Showing
1108 Internet Explorer HTTP and HTTPS (Secure) Settings</title>
1111 <imagedata fileref="proxy2.jpg" format="jpg">
1114 <phrase>[ Screenshot of IE Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
1122 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1123 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. Remove
1124 any <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_cookie">cookies</ulink>,
1125 if you want <application>Privoxy</application> to manage that. You are now
1126 ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1127 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1131 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1132 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1133 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1134 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1135 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1138 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1139 <title>Red Hat, Fedora and Conectiva</title>
1141 A default Red Hat installation may not start &my-app; upon boot. It will use
1142 the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1147 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1155 # service privoxy start
1160 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1161 <title>Debian</title>
1163 We use a script. Note that Debian typically starts &my-app; upon booting per
1164 default. It will use the file
1165 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1170 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1175 <sect2 id="start-suse">
1178 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
1179 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
1189 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1190 <title>Windows</title>
1192 Click on the &my-app; Icon to start <application>Privoxy</application>. If no configuration file is
1193 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1194 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1195 automatically start &my-app; when the system starts if you chose that option
1199 <application>Privoxy</application> can run with full Windows service functionality.
1200 On Windows only, the &my-app; program has two new command line arguments
1201 to install and uninstall &my-app; as a service. See the
1202 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Windows Installation
1203 instructions</link> for details.
1207 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1208 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1210 Example Unix startup command:
1214 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1219 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1222 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1223 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1224 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1225 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1229 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1230 <title>Mac OSX</title>
1232 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1233 start automatically when the system restarts. To start &my-app; manually,
1234 double-click on the <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> icon in the
1235 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder. Or, type this command
1240 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
1244 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
1249 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1250 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1252 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1253 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1254 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1255 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1256 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1257 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1258 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1262 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1263 <title>Gentoo</title>
1265 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1266 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1270 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1274 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1275 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1280 rc-update add privoxy default
1288 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1292 must find a better place for this paragraph
1295 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1296 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1297 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1298 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1299 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1300 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1304 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1305 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1306 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1307 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1308 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1309 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1310 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1311 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1312 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1316 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1317 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
1318 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
1320 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
1321 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1322 popups (explained below).
1326 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of
1327 the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that
1328 you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1329 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1330 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1331 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1332 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1333 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1334 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1338 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1339 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1340 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1341 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1342 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1343 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1344 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1345 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1346 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1350 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1351 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1352 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1353 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1354 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1355 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1356 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1360 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1361 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1362 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1363 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1364 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1365 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1370 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1371 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1372 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1377 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1378 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1379 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1380 Developers</quote></link> below.
1385 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1386 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1387 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1389 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1390 command-line options:
1398 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1401 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1406 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1409 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1414 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1417 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1418 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1423 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1427 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1428 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1429 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1430 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1435 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1439 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1440 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1441 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1446 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1450 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1451 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the &my-app;
1452 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1453 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in &my-app; to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1459 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1462 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1463 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1464 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1465 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1466 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1467 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1475 On <application>MS Windows</application> only there are two additional
1476 command-line options to allow <application>Privoxy</application> to install and
1477 run as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>. See the
1478 <link linkend="installation-pack-win">Window Installation section</link>
1486 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1489 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1490 <sect1 id="configuration"><title>Privoxy Configuration</title>
1492 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1493 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1494 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1495 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1499 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1502 <title>Controlling Privoxy with Your Web Browser</title>
1504 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1505 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1506 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1507 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1508 You will see the following section:
1512 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1515 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1519 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1522 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1525 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1528 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1531 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1534 ▪ <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/
1535 &p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1543 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1544 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1545 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1546 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1547 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1548 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1552 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1553 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1554 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1555 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1556 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1557 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1558 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1559 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1565 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1570 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1572 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1573 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1575 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1576 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1577 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1578 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1579 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1580 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1584 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1585 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1586 principle configuration files are:
1594 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1595 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1596 on Windows. This is a required file.
1602 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1603 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1604 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1605 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1606 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1607 as many websites as possible.
1610 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1611 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1612 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1613 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1614 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1615 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1616 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is for
1617 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1620 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1622 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1624 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1625 various actions files.
1631 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1632 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1633 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1634 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1635 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1636 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1637 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1638 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1639 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1640 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1641 locally defined filters or customizations.
1649 The syntax of all configuration files has remained the same throughout the
1650 3.x series. There have been enhancements, but no changes that would preclude
1651 the use of any configuration file from one version to the next. (There is
1652 one exception: <link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">+fast-redirects</link> which
1653 has enhanced syntax and will require updating any local configs from earlier
1658 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1659 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1660 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1661 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1662 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1663 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1664 out" that line. Blank lines are ignored.
1668 The actions files and filter files
1669 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1670 maximum flexibility.
1674 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1675 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1676 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1677 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1678 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1679 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1680 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1685 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1686 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1687 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1688 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1694 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1697 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1699 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1700 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1701 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1703 <!-- end include -->
1706 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1710 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1712 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1715 The actions files are used to define what <emphasis>actions</emphasis>
1716 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determines
1717 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1718 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof).
1719 There are a number of such actions, with a wide range of functionality.
1720 Each action does something a little different.
1721 These actions give us a veritable arsenal of tools with which to exert
1722 our control, preferences and independence. Actions can be combined so that
1723 their effects are aggregated when applied against a given set of URLs.
1727 are three action files included with <application>Privoxy</application> with
1735 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
1736 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
1737 provide a base level of functionality for
1738 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
1739 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well as-is for most users.
1740 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
1741 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
1742 The user's preferences as set in <filename>standard.action</filename>,
1743 e.g. either <literal>Cautious</literal> (the default),
1744 <literal>Medium</literal>, or <literal>Advanced</literal> (see
1750 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1751 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1752 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1753 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1758 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used by the web based editor
1759 at <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default">
1760 http://config.privoxy.org/edit-actions-list?f=default</ulink>,
1761 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
1762 in <filename>default.action</filename>.
1765 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Cautious</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Medium</guibutton> <guibutton>Set to Advanced</guibutton>
1768 These have increasing levels of aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no
1769 influence on your browsing unless you select them explicitly in the
1770 editor</emphasis>. A default installation should be pre-set to
1771 <literal>Cautious</literal> (versions prior to 3.0.5 were set to
1772 <literal>Medium</literal>). New users should try this for a while before
1773 adjusting the settings to more aggressive levels. The more aggressive
1774 the settings, then the more likelihood there is of problems such as sites
1775 not working as they should.
1778 The <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button allows you to turn each
1779 action on/off individually for fine-tuning. The <guibutton>Cautious</guibutton>
1780 button changes the actions list to low/safe settings which will activate
1781 a minimal set of &my-app;'s features, and subsequently there will be
1782 less of a chance for accidental problems. The <guibutton>Medium</guibutton>
1783 button sets the list to a medium level of ad blocking and a low level set of
1784 privacy features. The <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton> button
1785 sets the list to a high level of ad blocking and medium level of
1786 privacy. See the chart below. The latter three buttons over-ride
1787 any changes via with the <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button. More
1788 fine-tuning can be done in the lower sections of this internal page.
1791 It is not recommend to edit the <filename>standard.action</filename> file
1795 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1796 <filename>standard.action</filename> are:
1799 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1800 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1801 <colspec colname=c1>
1802 <colspec colname=c2>
1803 <colspec colname=c3>
1804 <colspec colname=c4>
1807 <entry>Feature</entry>
1808 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1809 <entry>Medium</entry>
1810 <entry>Advanced</entry>
1815 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1816 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1817 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1818 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1824 <entry>Ad-blocking Aggressiveness</entry>
1825 <entry>medium</entry>
1831 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
1838 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
1844 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
1845 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1846 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1847 <entry>blocks only</entry>
1851 <entry>Privacy Features</entry>
1853 <entry>medium</entry>
1854 <entry>medium/high</entry>
1858 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
1860 <entry>session-only</entry>
1865 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
1873 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
1881 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
1888 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
1895 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
1902 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
1909 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
1925 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1926 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
1927 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically process before
1928 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
1930 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1931 The over-riding principle when applying actions, is that the last action that
1932 matches a given URL, wins. The broadest, most general rules go first
1933 (defined in <filename>default.action</filename>),
1934 followed by any exceptions (typically also in
1935 <filename>default.action</filename>), which are then followed lastly by any
1936 local preferences (typically in <emphasis>user</emphasis><filename>.action</filename>).
1937 Generally, <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word.
1941 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
1942 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
1943 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
1944 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
1945 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
1946 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
1947 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
1948 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
1949 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
1950 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
1951 with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
1952 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
1956 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
1957 just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
1958 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
1959 written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
1960 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
1964 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1966 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
1968 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
1969 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
1970 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
1971 certainly a matter of personal taste. And, things can always change, requiring
1972 refinements in the configuration. In general, it can be said that the more
1973 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
1974 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
1975 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
1976 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
1977 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful purposes, like maybe
1978 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
1982 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
1983 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
1984 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
1985 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
1989 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1991 <title>How to Edit</title>
1993 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
1994 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
1995 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1996 The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
1997 per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
1998 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or <quote>Advanced</quote>.
1999 Warning: the <quote>Advanced</quote> setting is more aggressive, and
2000 will be more likely to cause problems for some sites. Experienced users only!
2004 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
2005 the actions files with your favorite text editor. Look at
2006 <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly commented with many
2012 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
2013 <title>How Actions are Applied to URLs</title>
2015 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
2016 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
2017 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
2018 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
2019 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
2020 Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line.
2024 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
2025 compared to all patterns in each <quote>action file</quote> file. Every time it matches, the list of
2026 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
2027 of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
2028 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
2029 the effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with
2030 a heading line of <literal>{
2031 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
2032 then later another one with just <literal>{
2033 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
2034 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply. And there may well be
2035 cases where you will want to combine actions together. Such a section then
2041 { +<literal>handle-as-image</literal> +<literal>block</literal> }
2042 # Block these as if they were images. Send no block page.
2044 media.example.com/.*banners
2045 .example.com/images/ads/</screen>
2049 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting <ulink
2050 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
2054 Examples and more detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
2055 Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</link> section.
2059 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2060 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
2061 <title>Patterns</title>
2063 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
2064 to determine what <emphasis>actions</emphasis> might apply to which sites and
2065 pages your browser attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild
2066 card type <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
2067 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
2068 against many similar patterns.
2072 Generally, a <application>Privoxy</application> pattern has the form
2073 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
2074 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
2075 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
2076 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
2077 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
2078 the pattern. This is assumed already!
2081 The pattern matching syntax is different for the domain and path parts of
2082 the URL. The domain part uses a simple globbing type matching technique,
2083 while the path part uses a more flexible
2084 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2085 Expressions (PCRE)</quote></ulink> based syntax.
2090 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
2093 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2094 regardless of which document on that server is requested. So ALL pages in
2095 this domain would be covered by the scope of this action. Note that a
2096 simple <literal>example.com</literal> is different and would NOT match.
2101 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
2104 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
2110 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
2113 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
2114 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
2119 <term><literal>/index.html</literal></term>
2122 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
2123 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server anywhere.
2128 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
2131 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
2132 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>. So its
2140 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2141 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
2144 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
2145 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
2151 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
2154 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
2155 <literal>.example.com</literal>
2160 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
2163 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
2164 <literal>www.</literal>
2169 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
2172 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>.
2173 And, by the way, also included would be any files or documents that exist
2174 within that domain since no path limitations are specified. (Correctly
2175 speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as
2176 a domain.) This might be <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
2177 <literal>news.example.de</literal>, or
2178 <literal>www.example.net/cgi/testing.pl</literal> for instance. All these
2186 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
2187 themselves. These work similarly to shell globbing type wild-cards:
2188 <quote>*</quote> represents zero or more arbitrary characters (this is
2190 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2191 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax of <quote>.*</quote>),
2192 <quote>?</quote> represents any single character (this is equivalent to the
2193 regular expression syntax of a simple <quote>.</quote>), and you can define
2194 <quote>character classes</quote> in square brackets which is similar to
2195 the same regular expression technique. All of this can be freely mixed:
2200 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2203 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
2204 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2209 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2212 matches all of the above, and then some.
2217 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2220 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2221 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2226 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2229 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2230 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2231 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2232 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2239 While flexibile, this is not the sophistication of full regular expression based syntax.
2244 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2247 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2248 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2251 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible (PCRE)
2252 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
2253 Expression</quote></ulink> based syntax
2254 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
2255 matching the path portion (after the slash), and is thus more flexible.
2259 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2260 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
2261 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
2262 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
2263 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
2264 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>.
2268 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2269 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2270 for the beginning of a line).
2274 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2275 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2276 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2277 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2278 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2283 <term><literal>.example.com/.*</literal></term>
2286 Is equivalent to just <quote>.example.com</quote>, since any documents
2287 within that domain are matched with or without the <quote>.*</quote>
2288 regular expression. This is redundant
2293 <term><literal>.example.com/.*/index.html</literal></term>
2296 Will match any page in the domain of <quote>example.com</quote> that is
2297 named <quote>index.html</quote>, and that is part of some path. For
2298 example, it matches <quote>www.example.com/testing/index.html</quote> but
2299 NOT <quote>www.example.com/index.html</quote> because the regular
2300 expression called for at least two <quote>/'s</quote>, thus the path
2301 requirement. It also would match
2302 <quote>www.example.com/testing/index_html</quote>, because of the
2303 special meta-character <quote>.</quote>.
2308 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)?index\.html</literal></term>
2311 This regular expression is conditional so it will match any page
2312 named <quote>index.html</quote> regardless of path which in this case can
2313 have one or more <quote>/'s</quote>. And this one must contain exactly
2314 <quote>.html</quote> (but does not have to end with that!).
2319 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)</literal></term>
2322 This regular expression will match any path of <quote>example.com</quote>
2323 that contains any of the words <quote>ads</quote>, <quote>banner</quote>,
2324 <quote>banners</quote> (because of the <quote>?</quote>) or <quote>junk</quote>.
2325 The path does not have to end in these words, just contain them.
2330 <term><literal>.example.com/(.*/)(ads|banners?|junk)/.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$</literal></term>
2333 This is very much the same as above, except now it must end in either
2334 <quote>.jpg</quote>, <quote>.jpeg</quote>, <quote>.gif</quote> or <quote>.png</quote>. So this
2335 one is limited to common image formats.
2342 There are many, many good examples to be found in <filename>default.action</filename>,
2343 and more tutorials below in <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>.
2350 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2353 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2355 <sect2 id="actions">
2356 <title>Actions</title>
2358 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2359 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2360 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2361 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2362 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2363 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2364 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2365 previously applied.</quote>
2370 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2371 separated by whitespace, like in
2372 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2373 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2374 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2375 of the actions file.
2379 Actions fall into three categories:
2386 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2387 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2391 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2392 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2395 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
2402 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2407 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2408 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2409 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2412 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2413 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2416 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }</literal>
2422 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2423 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2424 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2425 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2426 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2427 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2431 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2432 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2433 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2434 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2437 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2438 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2446 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2447 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2448 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
2449 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2450 files will give a good starting point).
2454 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
2455 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2456 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files such
2457 as <filename>user.action</filename>). For multi-valued actions, the actions
2458 are applied in the order they are specified. Actions files are processed in
2459 the order they are defined in <filename>config</filename> (the default
2460 installation has three actions files). It also quite possible for any given
2461 URL to match more than one <quote>pattern</quote> (because of wildcards and
2462 regular expressions), and thus to trigger more than one set of actions! Last
2466 <!-- start actions listing -->
2468 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2472 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2473 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2474 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2476 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2479 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2481 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2482 <title>add-header</title>
2486 <term>Typical use:</term>
2488 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2493 <term>Effect:</term>
2496 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2503 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2505 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2510 <term>Parameter:</term>
2513 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2514 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2524 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2525 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2526 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2533 <term>Example usage:</term>
2536 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2544 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2545 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2546 <title>block</title>
2550 <term>Typical use:</term>
2552 <para>Block ads or other unwanted content</para>
2557 <term>Effect:</term>
2560 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the
2561 requests are trapped by &my-app; and the requested URL is never retrieved,
2562 but is answered locally with a substitute page or image, as determined by
2564 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2566 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>, and
2568 linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal> actions.
2576 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2578 <para>Boolean.</para>
2583 <term>Parameter:</term>
2593 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2594 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
2595 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2596 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
2597 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
2598 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
2599 right now, you can take a look at the
2600 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
2604 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2605 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2606 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2607 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2608 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2609 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2612 It is important to understand this process, in order
2613 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2614 ads and other unwanted content. Blocking is a core feature, and one
2615 upon which various other features depend.
2618 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2619 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2620 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2621 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2622 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2628 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2632 # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2633 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2635 {+block +handle-as-image}
2636 # Block and replace with image
2640 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
2641 # Block and then ignore
2642 adserver.exampleclick.net/.*\.js$</screen>
2652 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2653 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
2657 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
2661 <term>Typical use:</term>
2663 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
2668 <term>Effect:</term>
2671 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
2678 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2680 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2685 <term>Parameter:</term>
2697 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
2698 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
2699 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
2700 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
2701 supported by the browser.
2704 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
2705 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
2706 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
2707 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
2708 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
2711 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
2712 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use &my-app;
2713 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
2714 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
2715 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
2718 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
2719 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
2720 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
2721 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
2724 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
2725 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
2726 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
2727 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
2728 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
2731 Most of the time it's easier to enable
2732 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
2733 and replace this action with a custom regular expression. It allows you
2734 to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
2735 only replace the content types you aimed at.
2738 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
2739 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
2740 more work to get the same precision.
2746 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
2749 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
2750 {+content-type-overwrite {application/xml}}
2753 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
2754 {-content-type-overwrite}
2755 www.example.net/*.\.css$
2756 www.example.net/*.style
2765 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2766 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
2770 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
2774 <term>Typical use:</term>
2776 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
2781 <term>Effect:</term>
2784 Deletes every header sent by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
2791 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2793 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2798 <term>Parameter:</term>
2810 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
2811 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
2812 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
2813 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
2816 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
2817 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
2818 they contain the same string.
2821 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
2822 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
2823 parts of them, you should enable
2824 <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
2825 and create your own filter.
2829 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
2836 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2839 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
2840 {+crunch-client-header {Privacy-Violation:}}
2850 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2851 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
2852 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
2858 <term>Typical use:</term>
2860 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
2865 <term>Effect:</term>
2868 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
2875 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2877 <para>Boolean.</para>
2882 <term>Parameter:</term>
2894 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
2895 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
2896 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
2897 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
2900 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
2904 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
2905 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
2906 isn't blocked as well.
2909 It is recommended to use this action together with
2910 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
2912 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
2918 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2921 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents without being tracked across sessions
2922 {+hide-if-modified-since {-60} \
2923 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize} \
2924 +crunch-if-none-match}
2933 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2934 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
2935 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
2939 <term>Typical use:</term>
2942 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
2948 <term>Effect:</term>
2951 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
2958 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2960 <para>Boolean.</para>
2965 <term>Parameter:</term>
2977 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies. For
2978 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies, use
2979 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
2980 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2983 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2984 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2985 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
2986 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
2992 <term>Example usage:</term>
2995 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
3003 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3004 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
3005 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
3011 <term>Typical use:</term>
3013 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
3018 <term>Effect:</term>
3021 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
3028 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3030 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3035 <term>Parameter:</term>
3047 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
3048 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
3049 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
3052 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
3053 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
3054 they contain the same string.
3057 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
3058 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
3059 parts of them, you should enable
3060 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
3061 and create your own filter.
3065 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
3072 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3075 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
3076 {+crunch-server-header {no-cache}}
3085 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3086 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
3087 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
3091 <term>Typical use:</term>
3094 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
3100 <term>Effect:</term>
3103 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
3110 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3112 <para>Boolean.</para>
3117 <term>Parameter:</term>
3129 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies. For
3130 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies, use
3131 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
3132 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
3135 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
3136 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
3137 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
3143 <term>Example usage:</term>
3146 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
3155 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3156 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
3157 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
3161 <term>Typical use:</term>
3163 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
3168 <term>Effect:</term>
3171 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
3178 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3180 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3185 <term>Parameter:</term>
3188 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
3197 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
3198 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
3199 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
3200 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
3201 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
3202 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
3205 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
3206 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
3213 <term>Example usage:</term>
3216 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
3223 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3224 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
3225 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
3229 <term>Typical use:</term>
3231 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
3236 <term>Effect:</term>
3239 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
3246 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3248 <para>Boolean.</para>
3253 <term>Parameter:</term>
3265 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
3266 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
3267 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
3268 out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
3269 is a chance you might need this action.
3275 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3278 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
3279 problem-host.example.com</screen>
3287 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3288 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
3289 <title>fast-redirects</title>
3293 <term>Typical use:</term>
3295 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3300 <term>Effect:</term>
3303 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3304 the redirection server first.
3311 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3313 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3318 <term>Parameter:</term>
3323 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3324 to detect redirection URLs.
3329 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3330 for redirection URLs.
3341 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3342 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3343 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3344 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3345 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3348 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3349 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3350 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3351 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3352 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3356 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3357 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3358 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3361 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3362 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3363 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3364 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3365 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3366 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3367 the user gets redirected anyway.
3370 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3372 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3373 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3374 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3375 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3376 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3377 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. It is possible to fix these redirected
3378 requests with <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
3379 but it requires a little effort.
3382 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3383 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3384 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3385 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3386 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3387 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3388 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3394 <term>Example usage:</term>
3398 { +fast-redirects{simple-check} }
3401 { +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} }
3402 another.example.com/testing</screen>
3411 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3412 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3413 <title>filter</title>
3417 <term>Typical use:</term>
3419 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size),
3420 do fun text replacements, add personalized effects, etc.</para>
3425 <term>Effect:</term>
3428 All files of text-based type, most notably HTML and
3429 JavaScript, to which this action applies, can be filtered on-the-fly
3430 through the specified regular expression based substitutions. (Note: as of
3431 version 3.0.3 plain text documents are exempted from filtering, because
3432 web servers often use the <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all
3433 files whose type they don't know.) By default, filtering works only on the
3434 raw document content itself (that which can be seen with <literal>View
3443 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3445 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3450 <term>Parameter:</term>
3453 The name of a filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3454 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3455 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3456 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3457 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3458 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3459 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3462 When used in its negative form,
3463 and without parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> filtering is completely disabled.
3472 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3473 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3477 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3478 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3479 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3480 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3481 noticeable on slower connections.
3484 <quote>Rolling your own</quote>
3485 filters requires a knowledge of
3486 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
3487 Expressions</quote></ulink> and
3488 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html"><quote>HTML</quote></ulink>.
3489 This is very powerful feature, and potentially very intrusive.
3490 Filters should be used with caution, and where an equivalent
3491 <quote>action</quote> is not available.
3494 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3495 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3496 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3497 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3498 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
3501 Inappropriate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3502 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
3503 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
3504 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
3505 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
3506 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> exceptions.
3509 At this time, <application>Privoxy</application> cannot uncompress compressed
3510 documents. If you want filtering to work on all documents, even those that
3511 would normally be sent compressed, you must use the
3512 <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3513 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3516 Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
3517 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3518 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
3519 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
3520 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
3524 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
3525 improved filters is particularly welcome!
3528 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3529 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
3530 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
3531 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
3537 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
3538 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
3539 more explanation on each:</term>
3542 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3543 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
3546 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
3547 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)</screen>
3550 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3551 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse</screen>
3554 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
3555 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content</screen>
3558 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
3559 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
3562 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
3563 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
3566 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
3567 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML. Useful if your browser lacks this ability.</screen>
3570 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
3571 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective</screen>
3574 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
3575 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size</screen>
3578 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
3579 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers</screen>
3582 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
3583 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
3586 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
3587 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap</screen>
3590 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
3591 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves</screen>
3594 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
3595 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizeable</screen>
3598 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
3599 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets</screen>
3602 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
3603 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
3606 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
3607 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies savable</screen>
3610 <anchor id="filter-fun">
3611 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
3614 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
3615 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)</screen>
3618 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
3619 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits</screen>
3622 <anchor id="filter-site-specifics">
3623 <screen>+filter{site-specifics} # Custom filters for specific site related problems</screen>
3626 <anchor id="filter-google">
3627 <screen>+filter{google} # Removes text ads and other Google specific improvements</screen>
3630 <anchor id="filter-yahoo">
3631 <screen>+filter{yahoo} # Removes text ads and other Yahoo specific improvements</screen>
3634 <anchor id="filter-msn">
3635 <screen>+filter{msn} # Removes text ads and other MSN specific improvements</screen>
3638 <anchor id="filter-blogspot">
3639 <screen>+filter{blogspot} # Cleans up Blogspot blogs</screen>
3642 <anchor id="filter-html-to-xml">
3643 <screen>+filter{html-to-xml} # Header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml</screen>
3646 <anchor id="filter-xml-to-html">
3647 <screen>+filter{xml-to-html} # Header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html</screen>
3655 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3656 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter-client-headers">
3657 <title>filter-client-headers</title>
3661 <term>Typical use:</term>
3664 To apply filtering to the client's (browser's) headers
3670 <term>Effect:</term>
3673 By default, <application>Privoxy's</application> filters only apply
3674 to the document content itself. This will extend those filters to
3675 include the client's headers as well.
3682 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3684 <para>Boolean.</para>
3689 <term>Parameter:</term>
3701 Regular expressions can be used to filter headers as well. Check your
3702 filters closely before activating this action, as it can easily lead to broken
3706 These filters are applied to each header on its own, not to them
3707 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3708 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is
3712 The filters are used after the other header actions have finished and can
3713 use their output as input.
3717 Whenever possible one should specify <literal>^</literal>,
3718 <literal>$</literal>, the whole header name and the colon, to make sure
3719 the filter doesn't cause havoc to other headers or the
3720 page itself. For example if you want to transform
3721 <application>Galeon</application> User-Agents to
3722 <application>Firefox</application> User-Agents you
3727 s@Galeon/\d\.\d\.\d @@
3733 s@^(User-Agent:.*) Galeon/\d\.\d\.\d (Firefox/\d\.\d\.\d\.\d)$@$1 $2@
3740 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3744 {+filter-client-headers +filter{test_filter}}
3745 problem-host.example.com
3755 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3756 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter-server-headers">
3757 <title>filter-server-headers</title>
3761 <term>Typical use:</term>
3764 To apply filtering to the server's headers
3770 <term>Effect:</term>
3773 By default, <application>Privoxy's</application> filters only apply
3774 to the document content itself. This will extend those filters to
3775 include the server's headers as well.
3782 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3784 <para>Boolean.</para>
3789 <term>Parameter:</term>
3801 Similar to <literal>filter-client-headers</literal>, but works on
3802 the server instead. To filter both server and client, use both.
3805 As with <literal>filter-client-headers</literal>, check your
3806 filters before activating this action, as it can easily lead to broken
3810 These filters are applied to each header on its own, not to them
3811 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3812 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is
3816 The filters are used after the other header actions have finished and can
3817 use their output as input.
3820 Remember too, whenever possible one should specify <literal>^</literal>,
3821 <literal>$</literal>, the whole header name and the colon, to make sure
3822 the filter doesn't cause havoc to other headers or the
3823 page itself. See above for example.
3830 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3834 {+filter-server-headers +filter{test_filter}}
3835 problem-host.example.com
3845 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3846 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
3847 <title>force-text-mode</title>
3853 <term>Typical use:</term>
3855 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
3860 <term>Effect:</term>
3863 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
3870 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3872 <para>Boolean.</para>
3877 <term>Parameter:</term>
3889 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
3890 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
3891 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
3892 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
3893 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
3894 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
3898 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
3899 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
3906 <term>Example usage:</term>
3919 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3920 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
3921 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
3927 <term>Typical use:</term>
3929 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
3934 <term>Effect:</term>
3937 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
3938 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
3939 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
3940 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
3941 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
3948 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3950 <para>Boolean.</para>
3955 <term>Parameter:</term>
3967 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
3968 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
3969 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
3972 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
3973 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
3974 but usually this isn't necessary.
3980 <term>Example usage:</term>
3983 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
3984 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
3985 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
3995 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3996 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
3997 <title>handle-as-image</title>
4001 <term>Typical use:</term>
4003 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by images <emphasis>if they do get blocked</emphasis>, rather than HTML pages)</para>
4008 <term>Effect:</term>
4011 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
4012 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
4013 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
4014 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
4015 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
4016 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
4023 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4025 <para>Boolean.</para>
4030 <term>Parameter:</term>
4042 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
4043 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
4047 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
4048 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
4049 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
4052 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
4053 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
4054 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
4055 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
4061 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4064 <screen># Generic image extensions:
4067 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
4069 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
4070 # blocked as images:
4072 {+block +handle-as-image}
4073 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
4075 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
4085 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4086 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
4087 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
4093 <term>Typical use:</term>
4095 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
4100 <term>Effect:</term>
4103 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
4110 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4112 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4117 <term>Parameter:</term>
4120 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4129 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
4130 foreign User-Agent set with
4131 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
4135 However some sites with content in different languages check the
4136 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
4137 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
4138 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
4141 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
4142 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
4143 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
4146 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
4147 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
4148 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
4149 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
4150 you should stick to a common language.
4156 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4159 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
4160 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
4161 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
4171 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4172 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
4173 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
4179 <term>Typical use:</term>
4181 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
4186 <term>Effect:</term>
4189 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
4196 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4198 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4203 <term>Parameter:</term>
4206 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4215 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
4216 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
4217 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
4218 the browser is supposed to use by default.
4221 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
4222 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
4223 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
4226 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
4227 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
4228 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
4229 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
4230 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
4234 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
4235 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
4242 <term>Example usage:</term>
4245 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
4247 +content-type-overwrite {text/plain}\
4248 +hide-content-disposition {block} }
4249 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php</screen>
4257 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4258 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
4259 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
4265 <term>Typical use:</term>
4267 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4272 <term>Effect:</term>
4275 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
4282 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4284 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4289 <term>Parameter:</term>
4292 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
4301 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
4302 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
4303 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
4306 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
4307 also add or subtract a random amount of time to/from the header's value.
4308 You specify a range of minutes where the random factor should be chosen from and
4309 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
4310 subtracting, a positive value adding.
4313 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
4314 sure it isn't used as a cookie replacement, but you will run into
4315 caching problems if the random range is too high.
4318 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
4319 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
4320 handle the greater changes.
4323 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4324 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
4330 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4333 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
4334 {+hide-if-modified-since {-60}\
4335 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize}\
4336 +crunch-if-none-match}
4345 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4346 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
4347 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
4353 <term>Typical use:</term>
4355 <para>Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request</para>
4360 <term>Effect:</term>
4363 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
4364 and prevents adding a new one.
4371 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4373 <para>Boolean.</para>
4378 <term>Parameter:</term>
4390 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
4393 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
4394 <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
4395 to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
4396 users sharing the same proxy.
4402 <term>Example usage:</term>
4405 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
4413 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4414 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4415 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4419 <term>Typical use:</term>
4421 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4426 <term>Effect:</term>
4429 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4437 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4439 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4444 <term>Parameter:</term>
4447 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4456 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4457 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4461 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4462 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4463 is actually used by a real person.
4466 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4467 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4473 <term>Example usage:</term>
4476 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4477 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4485 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4486 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4487 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4488 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4491 <term>Typical use:</term>
4493 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4498 <term>Effect:</term>
4501 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4502 or replaces it with a forged one.
4509 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4511 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4516 <term>Parameter:</term>
4520 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4523 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4526 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4529 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4539 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4540 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4541 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4542 typed in the address directly.
4545 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4546 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4547 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4548 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4549 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4553 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4554 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4555 requests, in an attempt to prevent their valuable content from being
4556 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4559 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4560 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4561 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4564 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4565 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4566 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4567 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4568 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4574 <term>Example usage:</term>
4577 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4578 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4586 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4587 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4588 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4592 <term>Typical use:</term>
4594 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4599 <term>Effect:</term>
4602 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4603 in client requests with the specified value.
4610 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4612 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4617 <term>Parameter:</term>
4620 Any user-defined string.
4630 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4631 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4632 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
4633 work browser-independently).
4635 <ulink url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
4641 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
4642 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
4643 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
4644 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
4645 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
4646 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
4647 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
4648 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
4649 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
4650 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
4651 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
4654 This action is scheduled for improvement.
4660 <term>Example usage:</term>
4663 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
4671 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4672 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="inspect-jpegs">
4673 <title>inspect-jpegs</title>
4679 <term>Typical use:</term>
4681 <para>To protect against the MS buffer over-run in JPEG processing</para>
4686 <term>Effect:</term>
4689 Protect against a known exploit
4696 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4698 <para>Boolean.</para>
4703 <term>Parameter:</term>
4715 See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-028. JPEG images are one of the most
4716 common image types found across the Internet. The exploit as described can
4717 allow execution of code on the target system, giving an attacker access
4718 to the system in question by merely planting an altered JPEG image, which
4719 would have no obvious indications of what lurks inside. This action
4720 prevents unwanted intrusion.
4727 <term>Example usage:</term>
4729 <para><screen>+inspect-jpegs</screen></para>
4738 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4739 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
4740 <title>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></title>
4744 <term>Typical use:</term>
4746 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)</para>
4751 <term>Effect:</term>
4754 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
4755 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
4762 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4764 <para>Boolean.</para>
4769 <term>Parameter:</term>
4781 This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
4782 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
4783 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
4784 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
4786 linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>all-popups</replaceable>}</link></literal>
4787 does and is not as smart as <literal><link
4788 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
4792 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
4793 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
4794 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
4795 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
4796 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
4797 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
4800 Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks rely on
4801 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the <literal><link
4802 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
4803 </literal> does a better job of catching only the unwanted ones.
4806 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
4807 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
4808 one), you might want to use
4810 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
4814 This action is most appropriate for browsers that don't have any controls
4815 for unwanted pop-ups. Not recommended for general usage.
4820 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
4828 <term>Example usage:</term>
4830 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
4837 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4838 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
4839 <title>limit-connect</title>
4843 <term>Typical use:</term>
4845 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
4850 <term>Effect:</term>
4853 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
4860 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4862 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4867 <term>Parameter:</term>
4870 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
4871 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
4880 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
4881 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
4882 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
4883 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
4884 for some or all destinations.
4887 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
4888 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
4889 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
4890 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
4891 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
4892 abused as TCP relays very easily.
4895 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
4896 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent &my-app;'s
4897 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
4898 If you plan to disable SSL by default, consider enabling
4899 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks ">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
4900 as well, to be able to quickly create exceptions.
4906 <term>Example usages:</term>
4908 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
4909 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
4910 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
4912 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
4913 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
4914 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
4915 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
4916 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS/SSL traffic is allowed</screen>
4923 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4924 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
4925 <title>prevent-compression</title>
4929 <term>Typical use:</term>
4932 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
4933 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
4939 <term>Effect:</term>
4942 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
4949 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4951 <para>Boolean.</para>
4956 <term>Parameter:</term>
4968 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
4969 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the <literal><link
4970 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
4971 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions to work,
4972 <application>Privoxy</application> needs access to the uncompressed data.
4973 Unfortunately, <application>Privoxy</application> can't yet(!) uncompress, filter, and
4974 re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all websites, including
4975 those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need to use this action.
4978 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any of the above-mentioned
4979 actions, you will typically want to use <literal>prevent-compression</literal> in conjunction
4983 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
4984 documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you use <literal>prevent-compression</literal>
4985 per default, you'll have to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
4991 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4994 <screen># Set default:
4996 {+prevent-compression}
4999 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
5001 {-prevent-compression}
5003 www.pclinuxonline.com</screen>
5012 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5013 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
5014 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
5020 <term>Typical use:</term>
5022 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
5027 <term>Effect:</term>
5030 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
5037 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5039 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5044 <term>Parameter:</term>
5047 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
5048 and <quote>randomize</quote>
5057 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
5058 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
5059 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
5060 version of the page.
5063 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
5064 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
5065 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
5066 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
5067 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
5068 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
5071 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
5072 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
5073 this option together with
5074 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>
5075 to further customize your random range.
5078 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
5079 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
5080 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
5081 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
5082 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
5083 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
5087 It is also recommended to use this action together with
5088 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
5094 <term>Example usage:</term>
5097 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
5098 {+hide-if-modified-since {-60}\
5099 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize}\
5100 +crunch-if-none-match}
5109 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5110 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
5111 <title>redirect</title>
5117 <term>Typical use:</term>
5120 Redirect requests to other sites.
5126 <term>Effect:</term>
5129 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
5130 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
5137 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5139 <para>Parameterized</para>
5144 <term>Parameter:</term>
5156 This action is useful to replace whole documents with ones of your
5157 choosing. This can be used to enforce safe surfing, or just as a simple
5161 You can do the same by combining the actions
5162 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
5163 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> and
5164 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{URL}</link></literal>.
5165 It doesn't sound right for non-image documents, and that's why this action
5169 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
5170 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
5176 <term>Example usages:</term>
5179 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
5180 { +redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css} }
5181 example.com/stylesheet.css
5183 # Create a short, easy to remember nickname for a favorite site
5184 { +redirect{http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/actions-file.html} }
5194 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5195 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
5196 <title>send-vanilla-wafer</title>
5200 <term>Typical use:</term>
5203 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
5209 <term>Effect:</term>
5212 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
5213 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
5220 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5222 <para>Boolean.</para>
5227 <term>Parameter:</term>
5239 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
5242 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
5248 <term>Example usage:</term>
5251 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
5260 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5261 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
5262 <title>send-wafer</title>
5266 <term>Typical use:</term>
5269 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
5275 <term>Effect:</term>
5278 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
5285 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5287 <para>Multi-value.</para>
5292 <term>Parameter:</term>
5295 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
5296 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
5305 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
5306 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
5309 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
5314 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
5317 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
5318 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
5326 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5327 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
5328 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
5332 <term>Typical use:</term>
5335 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
5336 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
5342 <term>Effect:</term>
5345 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5346 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5347 forget them in between sessions.
5354 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5356 <para>Boolean.</para>
5361 <term>Parameter:</term>
5373 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5374 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5375 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5378 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5379 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5380 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5381 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5382 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5385 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5386 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5387 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5388 will be plainly killed.
5391 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5392 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5395 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5396 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5397 These would have to be removed manually.
5400 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5401 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5402 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5403 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5409 <term>Example usage:</term>
5412 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5420 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5421 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5422 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5426 <term>Typical use:</term>
5428 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5433 <term>Effect:</term>
5436 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5437 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5438 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5439 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5440 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5441 sent as a replacement.
5448 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5450 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5455 <term>Parameter:</term>
5460 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5461 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5466 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5467 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5468 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5469 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5474 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5475 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5476 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5477 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5480 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5481 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5482 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5483 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5484 it over and over again.
5495 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5496 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5497 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5500 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5501 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5502 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5508 <term>Example usage:</term>
5514 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5517 Redirect to the BSD devil:
5520 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5523 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5526 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5534 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5535 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">
5536 <title>treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</title>
5542 <term>Typical use:</term>
5544 <para>Block forbidden connects with an easy to find error message.</para>
5549 <term>Effect:</term>
5552 If this action is enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> no longer
5553 makes a difference between forbidden connects and ordinary blocks.
5560 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5562 <para>Boolean</para>
5567 <term>Parameter:</term>
5577 By default <application>Privoxy</application> answers
5578 <link linkend="limit-connect">forbidden <quote>Connect</quote> requests</link>
5579 with a short error message inside the headers. If the browser doesn't display
5580 headers (most don't), you just see an empty page.
5583 With this action enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> displays
5584 the message that is used for ordinary blocks instead. If you decide
5585 to make an exception for the page in question, you can do so by
5586 following the <quote>See why</quote> link.
5589 For <quote>Connect</quote> requests the clients tell
5590 <application>Privoxy</application> which host they are interested
5591 in, but not which document they plan to get later. As a result, the
5592 <quote>Go there anyway</quote> link becomes rather useless:
5593 it lets the client request the home page of the forbidden host
5594 through unencrypted HTTP, still using the port of the last request.
5597 If you previously configured <application>Privoxy</application> to do the
5598 request through a SSL tunnel, everything will work. Most likely you haven't
5599 and the server will respond with an error message because it is expecting
5606 <term>Example usage:</term>
5609 <screen>+treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</screen>
5617 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5619 <title>Summary</title>
5621 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5622 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5623 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5624 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5625 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5626 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5632 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5633 <sect2 id="aliases">
5634 <title>Aliases</title>
5636 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5637 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5638 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5639 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5641 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5642 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5643 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5644 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5645 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5649 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5650 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5651 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5652 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5656 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5657 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5658 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5659 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5660 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5661 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5662 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5665 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5666 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5667 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5668 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5669 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5671 This is likely to change in future versions of <application>Privoxy</application>.
5675 Now let's define some aliases...
5680 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5682 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5683 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5687 # These aliases just save typing later:
5688 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5690 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5691 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5692 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5693 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5695 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5696 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5698 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
5699 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
5701 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5703 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5704 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5708 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5709 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5710 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5715 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5716 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5719 .office.microsoft.com
5720 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5724 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5728 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5731 # These shops require pop-ups:
5733 {shop -kill-popups -filter{all-popups}}
5735 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5739 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are often used for
5740 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require some actions to be disabled
5741 in order to function properly.
5747 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5748 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5749 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5751 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5752 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5753 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5754 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5755 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5756 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
5757 file and see how all these pieces come together:
5760 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
5763 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
5767 <screen># Sample default.action file <ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net></screen>
5771 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
5772 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
5773 change or worry about:
5778 ##########################################################################
5779 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5780 ##########################################################################
5783 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
5787 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5788 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5789 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5794 ##########################################################################
5796 ##########################################################################
5799 # These aliases just save typing later:
5800 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5802 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5803 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5804 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5805 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5807 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5808 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5810 fragile = -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
5811 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></screen>
5815 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
5816 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
5817 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
5818 enable the ones we want.
5822 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
5823 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5824 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
5825 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5826 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5827 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
5828 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
5833 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5834 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
5835 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
5836 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5837 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5838 multiple lines with line continuation.
5843 ##########################################################################
5844 # "Defaults" section:
5845 ##########################################################################
5847 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
5848 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
5849 -<link linkend="CONTENT-TYPE-OVERWRITE">content-type-overwrite</link> \
5850 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-CLIENT-HEADER">crunch-client-header</link> \
5851 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-IF-NONE-MATCH">crunch-if-none-match</link> \
5852 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
5853 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-SERVER-HEADER">crunch-server-header</link> \
5854 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
5855 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
5856 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
5857 -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</link> \
5858 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
5859 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-EVENTS">filter{js-events}</link> \
5860 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
5861 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
5862 +<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
5863 -<link linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{unsolicited-popups}</link> \
5864 -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> \
5865 -<link linkend="FILTER-IMG-REORDER">filter{img-reorder}</link> \
5866 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
5867 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">filter{banners-by-link}</link> \
5868 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
5869 -<link linkend="FILTER-TINY-TEXTFORMS">filter{tiny-textforms}</link> \
5870 -<link linkend="FILTER-JUMPING-WINDOWS">filter{jumping-windows}</link> \
5871 -<link linkend="FILTER-FRAMESET-BORDERS">filter{frameset-borders}</link> \
5872 -<link linkend="FILTER-DEMORONIZER">filter{demoronizer}</link> \
5873 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
5874 -<link linkend="FILTER-QUICKTIME-KIOSKMODE">filter{quicktime-kioskmode}</link> \
5875 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
5876 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
5877 +<link linkend="FILTER-IE-EXPLOITS">filter{ie-exploits}</link> \
5878 -<link linkend="FILTER-CLIENT-HEADERS">filter-client-headers</link> \
5879 -<link linkend="FILTER-SERVER-HEADERS">filter-server-headers</link> \
5880 -<link linkend="FILTER-GOOGLE">filter-google</link> \
5881 -<link linkend="FILTER-YAHOO">filter-yahoo</link> \
5882 -<link linkend="FILTER-MSN">filter-msn</link> \
5883 -<link linkend="FILTER-BLOGSPOT">filter-blogspot</link> \
5884 -<link linkend="FILTER-XML-TO-HTML">filter-xml-to-html</link> \
5885 -<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-TO-XML">filter-html-to-xml</link> \
5886 -<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> \
5887 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-EMPTY-DOCUMENT">handle-as-empty-document</link> \
5888 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
5889 -<link linkend="HIDE-ACCEPT-LANGUAGE">hide-accept-language</link> \
5890 -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link> \
5891 -<link linkend="HIDE-IF-MODIFIED-SINCE">hide-if-modified-since</link> \
5892 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
5893 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5894 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
5895 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
5896 -<link linkend="INSPECT-JPEGS">inspect-jpegs</link> \
5897 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
5898 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
5899 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
5900 -<link linkend="OVERWRITE-LAST-MODIFIED">overwrite-last-modified</link> \
5901 -<link linkend="REDIRECT">redirect</link> \
5902 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
5903 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
5904 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
5905 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5906 -<link linkend="TREAT-FORBIDDEN-CONNECTS-LIKE-BLOCKS">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link> \
5908 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
5912 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
5913 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
5914 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
5915 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
5916 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
5917 want to block in later sections.
5921 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
5922 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
5923 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
5924 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
5925 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
5926 of actions explicitly:
5931 ##########################################################################
5932 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
5933 ##########################################################################
5935 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
5938 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
5939 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5940 mail.google.com</screen>
5944 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
5945 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
5946 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
5955 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5957 .scan.co.uk</screen>
5960 <!-- No longer needed BEGIN OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK
5963 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
5964 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
5965 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
5966 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
5968 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
5969 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
5970 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
5971 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
5972 chosen in the defaults section:
5977 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
5979 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
5982 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
5985 END OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK -->
5988 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
5989 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
5990 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
5995 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
5999 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
6000 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
6001 .nytimes.com</screen>
6005 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
6006 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
6007 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
6008 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
6009 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
6010 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6011 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
6012 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
6013 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
6019 ##########################################################################
6021 ##########################################################################
6023 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
6024 # blocked further down this file:
6026 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
6027 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
6031 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
6032 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
6033 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
6034 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
6035 <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
6036 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
6037 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
6038 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
6039 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
6040 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
6041 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
6042 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
6047 # Known ad generators:
6052 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
6053 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6054 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
6060 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
6061 is to block banners. Many of these can be <quote>blocked</quote>
6062 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
6063 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
6064 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
6065 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
6066 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
6067 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
6068 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
6071 First comes many generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
6072 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
6073 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
6074 to keep the example short:
6079 ##########################################################################
6080 # Block these fine banners:
6081 ##########################################################################
6082 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
6090 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
6091 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
6093 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
6095 .hitbox.com</screen>
6099 It's quite remarkable how many advertisers actually call their banner
6100 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
6101 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
6102 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
6105 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
6106 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
6107 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
6108 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
6109 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
6110 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6114 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
6115 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
6116 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
6117 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
6118 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
6119 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
6120 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
6121 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
6122 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
6123 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
6128 ##########################################################################
6129 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
6130 ##########################################################################
6134 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6135 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
6136 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
6137 adobe. # (has nothing to do with ads either)
6138 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
6139 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
6140 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
6148 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
6149 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
6153 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
6154 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
6155 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
6156 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
6157 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
6162 # Don't filter code!
6164 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6169 .sourceforge.net</screen>
6173 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course much more
6174 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
6179 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
6182 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
6183 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
6184 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
6185 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
6186 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
6187 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
6188 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
6189 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
6190 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
6191 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
6192 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
6193 to install updated versions from time to time.
6197 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
6198 <filename>user.action</filename>:
6202 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
6206 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
6210 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
6211 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
6212 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
6217 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
6218 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
6222 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
6223 # be self explanatory.
6225 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
6226 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
6227 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
6228 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
6229 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
6230 -block-as-image = -block
6232 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
6233 # certain types of sites:
6235 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
6236 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
6238 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
6240 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}
6242 # Alias for specific file types that are text, but might have conflicting
6243 # MIME types. We want the browser to force these to be text documents.
6244 handle-as-text = -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> +-<link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{text/plain}</link> +-<link linkend="FORCE-TEXT-MODE">force-text-mode</link> -<link linkend="HIDE-CONTENT-DISPOSITION">hide-content-disposition</link></screen>
6249 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
6250 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
6251 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
6252 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
6253 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
6254 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
6259 { allow-all-cookies }
6263 .redhat.com</screen>
6267 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
6272 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
6273 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
6277 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
6282 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
6283 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
6288 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
6289 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
6291 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
6295 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
6296 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
6297 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
6298 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
6299 <literal>{ +block }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
6300 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
6301 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
6302 in default.action anyway:
6307 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
6308 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
6309 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
6313 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
6314 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
6315 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
6316 the file type just by looking at the URL.
6317 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
6319 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
6320 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
6321 browser. Use cautiously.
6330 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
6334 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
6335 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
6336 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
6337 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
6338 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
6339 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
6340 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
6341 that is causing the problem or not. We later find other regular sites
6342 that misbehave, and add those to our personalized list of troublemakers:
6350 .mybank.com</screen>
6354 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
6355 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
6356 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
6357 update-safe config, once and for all:
6362 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
6363 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
6367 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
6368 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
6369 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
6370 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
6371 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
6375 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6376 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6377 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6378 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6390 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6391 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6392 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6393 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6397 Invoke another alias here to force an over-ride of the MIME type <literal>
6398 application/x-sh</literal> which typically would open a download type
6399 dialog. In my case, I want to look at the shell script, and then I can save
6400 it should I choose to.
6410 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6411 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6412 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6413 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6414 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6415 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6421 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6422 / # ALL sites</screen>
6428 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6432 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6434 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6436 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6437 <title>Filter Files</title>
6440 On-the-fly text substitutions that can be invoked through the
6441 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action need
6442 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6443 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>. Multiple filter files can be
6444 defined through the <literal> <link
6445 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6446 as supplied by the developers will be found in
6447 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6448 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6449 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6454 Typical reasons for doing these kinds of substitutions are to eliminate
6455 common annoyances in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6456 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6457 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6458 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6459 or just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
6463 Filtering works on any text-based document type, including
6464 HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
6465 MIME types, <emphasis>except</emphasis> <literal>text/plain</literal>).
6466 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6467 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6468 and, of course, regular expressions. By default, filters are only applied
6469 to the raw document content, but can be extended to the HTTP headers with
6470 the supplemental actions:
6471 <link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link> and
6472 <link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link>.
6476 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6477 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6478 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with the
6479 <emphasis>keyword</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>, followed by
6480 the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6481 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6482 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6483 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6484 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6485 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6486 user interface</ulink>.
6490 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6491 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6492 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6493 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6497 A filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6502 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6506 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6507 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6508 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6509 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6510 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6511 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6512 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6513 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6518 <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions"><quote>Regular
6519 Expressions</quote></ulink>, you might want to take a look at
6520 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6521 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl
6523 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html">the
6524 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6525 url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6526 expressions</ulink> in general.
6527 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6531 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6533 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6535 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> filter. We have already defined
6536 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6537 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6542 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6546 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6547 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6548 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6549 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6553 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6557 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6560 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6561 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6565 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6566 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6567 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6573 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6575 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6577 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6581 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6582 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6583 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6584 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6588 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6589 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6590 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6591 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6592 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6596 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6597 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6598 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6599 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6600 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6601 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6602 in the page (and appear in that order).
6606 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6607 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6608 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6609 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6610 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6614 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6615 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6616 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6617 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6618 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6619 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6620 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6621 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6622 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6623 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6624 substitution is global.
6628 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6629 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6630 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6631 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6632 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6636 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6637 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6638 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6639 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6640 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6641 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6642 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6643 Business!"</literal>.
6647 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6648 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6649 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6650 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6651 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6652 information anymore.
6656 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6657 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6662 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6664 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6668 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6669 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6670 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6671 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6672 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6673 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6674 a back-reference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6675 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6676 a back-reference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6680 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6681 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6682 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6683 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6684 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6685 you move your mouse over links.
6690 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6692 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6697 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6698 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6699 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6700 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6701 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6702 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6703 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6704 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6705 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6706 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6711 The last example is from the fun department:
6716 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6718 # Spice the daily news:
6720 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6724 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6725 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6726 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6727 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6728 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6733 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6735 s* industry[ -]leading \
6737 | customer[ -]focused \
6738 | market[ -]driven \
6739 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6740 | high[ -]performance \
6741 | solutions[ -]based \
6745 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6750 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6751 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6759 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6761 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6765 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6766 keep these listings in sync.
6771 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6772 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6777 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6780 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6785 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6786 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6787 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6792 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6793 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6794 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6795 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6800 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6801 full-screen, non-resizeable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6807 Use with caution. This is an aggressive filter, and can break sites that
6808 rely heavily on JavaScript.
6814 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6817 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6818 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6819 resizing etc, anymore. Use with caution!
6822 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6823 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
6830 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6833 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
6836 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
6837 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
6838 resizeable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
6839 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
6845 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
6848 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialog, where they can be intercepted
6850 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
6851 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
6852 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
6853 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
6856 This filter disables most HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets
6857 cookies. It cannot detect all clever uses of these types of code, so it
6858 should not be relied on as an absolute fix. Use it wherever you would also
6859 use the cookie crunch actions.
6865 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
6868 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
6869 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
6870 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
6877 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
6880 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
6881 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
6882 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
6883 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
6886 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
6887 function to a dummy function, <literal>PrivoxyWindowOpen()</literal>,
6888 during the loading and rendering phase of each HTML page access, and
6889 restoring the function afterward.
6892 This is recommended only for browsers that cannot perform this function
6893 reliably themselves. And be aware that some sites require such windows
6894 in order to function normally. Use with caution.
6900 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
6903 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
6904 Note this should be used with even more discretion than the above, since
6905 it is more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal
6906 usage. Use with caution.
6912 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
6915 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
6916 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
6917 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
6923 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
6926 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
6927 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
6928 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
6931 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
6932 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
6935 Recommended only for those who require extreme ad blocking. The default
6936 block rules should catch 95+% of all ads <emphasis>without</emphasis> this filter enabled.
6942 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
6945 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
6946 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
6947 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
6953 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
6956 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
6957 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
6958 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
6959 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
6960 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
6961 the user ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
6962 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
6965 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
6971 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
6974 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
6975 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
6976 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
6977 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
6980 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
6986 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
6989 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
6990 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
6991 or behave as intended when using this filter. Use with caution.
6997 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
7000 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
7001 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
7002 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
7003 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
7004 small to show their whole content.
7007 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
7014 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
7017 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
7018 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
7019 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
7022 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
7023 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
7024 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
7025 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if weird garbage characters
7026 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
7029 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
7030 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
7031 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
7038 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
7041 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
7042 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
7050 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
7053 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
7054 prevents saving, is disabled.
7060 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
7063 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
7064 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
7070 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
7073 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
7074 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
7080 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
7083 An experimental collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
7084 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
7087 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
7088 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
7094 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
7097 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
7098 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
7101 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
7102 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
7103 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
7104 anything regarding this filter.
7110 <term><emphasis>google</emphasis></term>
7113 A CSS based block for Google text ads. Also removes a width limitation
7114 and the toolbar advertisement.
7120 <term><emphasis>yahoo</emphasis></term>
7123 Another CSS based block, this time for Yahoo text ads. And removes
7124 a width limitation as well.
7130 <term><emphasis>msn</emphasis></term>
7133 Another CSS based block, this time for MSN text ads. And removes
7134 tracking URLs, as well as a width limitation.
7140 <term><emphasis>blogspot</emphasis></term>
7143 Cleans up some Blogspot blogs. Read the fine print before using this one!
7146 This filter also intentionally removes some navigation stuff and sets the
7147 page width to 100%. As a result, some rounded <quote>corners</quote> would
7148 appear to early or not at all and as fixing this would require a browser
7149 that understands background-size (CSS3), they are removed instead.
7155 <term><emphasis>xml-to-html</emphasis></term>
7158 Header filter to change the Content-Type from xml to html.
7163 <term><emphasis>html-to-xml</emphasis></term>
7166 Header filter to change the Content-Type from html to xml.
7173 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
7187 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7191 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7193 <sect1 id="templates">
7194 <title>Privoxy's Template Files</title>
7196 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
7197 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
7198 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
7199 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
7201 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
7202 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
7203 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
7208 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
7209 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
7211 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
7215 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
7216 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. You can
7217 edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them.
7218 (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual user</emphasis>). Note that
7219 just like in configuration files, lines starting with <literal>#</literal> are
7220 ignored when the templates are filled in.
7224 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
7225 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
7226 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
7227 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
7228 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
7232 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
7233 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
7234 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
7235 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
7236 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
7241 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
7243 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
7245 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
7249 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
7250 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
7251 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
7255 <screen><!-- --></screen>
7259 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
7260 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
7265 All templates refer to a style located at
7266 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
7267 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
7268 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
7269 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
7274 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7278 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7280 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
7283 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
7285 <!-- end boilerplate -->
7289 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7292 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7293 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Privoxy Copyright, License and History</title>
7295 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7297 <!-- end copyright -->
7299 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7300 <sect2><title>License</title>
7301 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
7303 <!-- end copyright -->
7305 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7308 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7310 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
7311 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
7313 <!-- end history -->
7316 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
7317 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
7319 <!-- end authors -->
7324 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7327 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7328 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
7329 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
7331 <!-- end seealso -->
7336 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7337 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
7340 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7342 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
7344 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
7345 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
7346 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
7347 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
7350 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
7352 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
7356 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
7357 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
7358 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
7359 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
7363 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
7364 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
7365 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
7366 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
7367 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
7368 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
7369 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
7370 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
7374 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
7375 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
7376 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
7377 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
7378 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
7379 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
7380 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
7381 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
7385 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
7386 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
7387 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
7388 and then some examples:
7393 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
7394 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
7396 </simplelist></para>
7400 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
7403 </simplelist></para>
7407 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
7410 </simplelist></para>
7414 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
7417 </simplelist></para>
7421 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
7422 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
7423 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
7424 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
7425 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
7426 meta-character meaning of any single character).
7428 </simplelist></para>
7432 <emphasis>[ ]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
7433 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
7434 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
7435 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
7437 </simplelist></para>
7441 <emphasis>( )</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
7442 or multiple sub-expressions.
7444 </simplelist></para>
7448 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
7449 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
7450 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
7451 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
7452 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
7453 example</quote>, and nothing else.
7455 </simplelist></para>
7458 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
7459 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
7460 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
7461 be more illuminating:
7465 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
7466 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
7467 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
7468 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7469 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7470 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7471 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7472 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7473 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7474 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7475 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7476 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7477 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7478 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7483 And now something a little more complex:
7487 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7488 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7489 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7490 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7491 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7492 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7493 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7498 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7499 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7500 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7501 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7502 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7503 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7504 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7505 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7506 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7507 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7508 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7509 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7510 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7511 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7512 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7513 changing our regular expression to:
7514 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7519 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7520 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7521 <quote>[ ]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7522 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7523 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7524 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7525 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7526 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7527 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7528 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7529 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7530 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7531 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7532 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7533 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7534 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7535 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7536 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7537 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7538 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7539 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7540 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7541 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7542 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7543 in the expression anywhere).
7547 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7548 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7549 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7550 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7551 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7556 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7557 <ulink url="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html">http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html</ulink>
7561 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7562 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7567 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7570 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7572 <title>Privoxy's Internal Pages</title>
7575 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7576 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7577 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7578 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7579 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7580 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7581 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7587 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7588 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7589 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7590 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7603 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7607 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7608 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7609 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7615 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7616 editing of actions files:
7620 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7627 Show the source code version numbers:
7631 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7638 Show the browser's request headers:
7642 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7649 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7653 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7660 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
7661 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
7665 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7669 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7673 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7678 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7687 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7691 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7692 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7694 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7695 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7696 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7697 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7698 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7699 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7702 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7703 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7704 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7705 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7706 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7707 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7716 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());">Privoxy - Enable</ulink>
7723 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());">Privoxy - Disable</ulink>
7730 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());">Privoxy - Toggle Privoxy</ulink> (Toggles between enabled and disabled)
7737 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());">Privoxy- View Status</ulink>
7743 <ulink url="javascript:w=Math.floor(screen.width/2);h=Math.floor(screen.height*0.9);void(window.open('http://www.privoxy.org/actions/index.php?url='+escape(location.href),'Feedback','screenx='+w+',width='+w+',height='+h+',scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no').focus());">Privoxy - Submit Actions File Feedback</ulink>
7749 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7756 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7757 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7758 have more information about bookmarklets.
7767 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7769 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7771 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
7772 requested by your browser and <application>Privoxy</application> is on duty:
7779 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
7780 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
7781 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
7787 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
7788 pages (e.g <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
7793 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
7795 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
7796 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
7797 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
7798 is then checked and if it does not match, an
7799 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match,
7800 an image is returned. The type of image depends on the setting of <link
7801 linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
7802 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
7807 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
7808 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
7813 If the URL pattern matches the <link
7814 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
7815 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
7820 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
7821 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
7822 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
7823 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
7829 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web page and related
7835 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
7836 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
7837 filtered as determined by the
7838 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
7839 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
7840 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
7846 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
7847 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
7848 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
7853 If a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
7855 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7856 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
7857 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
7858 <filename>default.filter</filename> and any other filter files) are
7859 processed against the buffered content. Filters are applied in the order
7860 they are specified in one of the filter files. Animated GIFs, if present,
7861 are reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
7862 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
7863 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
7866 If neither <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
7868 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7869 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
7870 to the client browser as it becomes available.
7875 As the browser receives the now (possibly filtered) page content, it
7876 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
7877 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
7878 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
7879 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
7880 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
7890 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7891 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
7892 <title>Troubleshooting: Anatomy of an Action</title>
7895 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
7896 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
7897 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
7898 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
7899 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
7900 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
7901 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
7902 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
7903 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
7908 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
7909 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
7910 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
7911 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
7912 logs is a good idea too.
7915 Another easy troubleshooting step to try is if you have done any
7916 customization of your installation, revert back to the installed
7917 defaults and see if that helps. There are times the developers get complaints
7918 about one thing or another, and the problem is more related to a customized
7919 configuration issue.
7923 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
7924 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7925 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
7926 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
7930 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
7931 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
7932 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
7933 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
7934 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
7935 one of the filter files since this is handled very
7936 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
7937 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
7938 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
7939 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
7940 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
7941 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
7942 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
7947 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
7948 and look at it one section at a time in a sample configuration (your real
7949 configuration may vary):
7954 Matches for http://google.com:
7956 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
7960 -content-type-overwrite
7961 -crunch-client-header
7962 -crunch-if-none-match
7963 -crunch-incoming-cookies
7964 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
7965 -crunch-server-header
7966 +deanimate-gifs {last}
7967 -downgrade-http-version
7968 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
7970 -filter {content-cookies}
7971 -filter {all-popups}
7972 -filter {banners-by-link}
7973 -filter {tiny-textforms}
7974 -filter {frameset-borders}
7975 -filter {demoronizer}
7976 -filter {shockwave-flash}
7977 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
7979 -filter {crude-parental}
7980 -filter {site-specifics}
7981 -filter {js-annoyances}
7982 -filter {html-annoyances}
7983 +filter {refresh-tags}
7984 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
7985 +filter {img-reorder}
7986 +filter {banners-by-size}
7988 +filter {jumping-windows}
7989 +filter {ie-exploits}
7994 -filter {xml-to-html}
7995 -filter {html-to-xml}
7996 -filter-client-headers
7997 -filter-server-headers
7999 -handle-as-empty-document
8001 -hide-accept-language
8002 -hide-content-disposition
8003 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8004 +hide-from-header {block}
8005 -hide-if-modified-since
8006 +hide-referrer {forge}
8011 -overwrite-last-modified
8012 +prevent-compression
8016 +session-cookies-only
8017 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8018 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
8021 { -session-cookies-only }
8027 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8028 (no matches in this file)
8033 This is telling us how we have defined our
8034 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
8035 which ones match for our test case, <quote>google.com</quote>.
8036 Displayed is all the actions that are available to us. Remember,
8037 the <literal>+</literal> sign denotes <quote>on</quote>. <literal>-</literal>
8038 denotes <quote>off</quote>. So some are <quote>on</quote> here, but many
8039 are <quote>off</quote>. Each example we try may provide a slightly different
8040 end result, depending on our configuration directives.
8044 is for our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line
8045 listing, is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default
8046 settings. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the
8047 section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This
8048 will apply to all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end
8049 of the listing -- <quote> / </quote>.
8053 But we have defined additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
8054 rules, and then we list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions
8055 would apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit
8056 matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous
8057 cookie setting, which was for <link
8058 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
8059 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google, at
8060 least that is how it is in this example. The second turns
8061 <emphasis>off</emphasis> any <link
8062 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
8063 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
8064 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
8065 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
8066 <quote>www.google.com</quote> or <quote>mail.google.com</quote>. But it would not
8067 match <quote>www.google.de</quote>! So, apparently, we have these two actions
8068 defined as exceptions to the general rules at the top somewhere in the lower
8069 part of our <filename>default.action</filename> file, and
8070 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter sections.
8074 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
8075 So there is nothing google-specific that we might have added to our own, local
8076 configuration. If there was, those actions would over-rule any actions from
8077 previously processed files, such as <filename>default.action</filename>.
8078 <filename>user.action</filename> typically has the last word. This is the
8079 best place to put hard and fast exceptions,
8083 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
8084 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
8085 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
8096 -content-type-overwrite
8097 -crunch-client-header
8098 -crunch-if-none-match
8099 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8100 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8101 -crunch-server-header
8102 +deanimate-gifs {last}
8103 -downgrade-http-version
8104 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8106 -filter {content-cookies}
8107 -filter {all-popups}
8108 -filter {banners-by-link}
8109 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8110 -filter {frameset-borders}
8111 -filter {demoronizer}
8112 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8113 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8115 -filter {crude-parental}
8116 -filter {site-specifics}
8117 -filter {js-annoyances}
8118 -filter {html-annoyances}
8119 +filter {refresh-tags}
8120 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8121 +filter {img-reorder}
8122 +filter {banners-by-size}
8124 +filter {jumping-windows}
8125 +filter {ie-exploits}
8130 -filter {xml-to-html}
8131 -filter {html-to-xml}
8132 -filter-client-headers
8133 -filter-server-headers
8135 -handle-as-empty-document
8137 -hide-accept-language
8138 -hide-content-disposition
8139 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8140 +hide-from-header {block}
8141 -hide-if-modified-since
8142 +hide-referrer {forge}
8147 -overwrite-last-modified
8148 +prevent-compression
8152 -session-cookies-only
8153 +set-image-blocker {pattern}
8154 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks </screen>
8158 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
8159 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
8160 which are activated specifically for this site in our configuration,
8161 and thus show in the <quote>Final Results</quote>.
8165 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
8177 { +block +handle-as-image }
8178 .[a-vx-z]*.doubleclick.net
8183 We'll just show the interesting part here - the explicit matches. It is
8184 matched three different times. Two <quote>+block</quote> sections,
8185 and a <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
8186 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
8187 <quote>+block-as-image</quote>. (<link
8188 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
8189 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
8194 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
8195 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
8196 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
8197 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
8198 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
8199 is done here -- as both a <link
8200 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
8201 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
8202 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
8203 The custom alias <quote><literal>+block-as-image</literal></quote> just
8204 simplifies the process and make it more readable.
8208 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
8209 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
8215 Matches for http://www.example.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
8217 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
8221 -content-type-overwrite
8222 -crunch-client-header
8223 -crunch-if-none-match
8224 -crunch-incoming-cookies
8225 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
8226 -crunch-server-header
8228 -downgrade-http-version
8229 +fast-redirects {check-decoded-url}
8231 -filter {content-cookies}
8232 -filter {all-popups}
8233 -filter {banners-by-link}
8234 -filter {tiny-textforms}
8235 -filter {frameset-borders}
8236 -filter {demoronizer}
8237 -filter {shockwave-flash}
8238 -filter {quicktime-kioskmode}
8240 -filter {crude-parental}
8241 -filter {site-specifics}
8242 -filter {js-annoyances}
8243 -filter {html-annoyances}
8244 +filter {refresh-tags}
8245 -filter {unsolicited-popups}
8246 +filter {img-reorder}
8247 +filter {banners-by-size}
8249 +filter {jumping-windows}
8250 +filter {ie-exploits}
8255 -filter {xml-to-html}
8256 -filter {html-to-xml}
8257 -filter-client-headers
8258 -filter-server-headers
8260 -handle-as-empty-document
8262 -hide-accept-language
8263 -hide-content-disposition
8264 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
8265 +hide-from-header{block}
8266 +hide-referer{forge}
8270 -overwrite-last-modified
8271 +prevent-compression
8275 +session-cookies-only
8276 +set-image-blocker{blank}
8277 -treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks }
8280 { +block +handle-as-image }
8286 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote> in our
8287 configuration! But we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the
8288 blank page. It is actually triggering two different actions here, and
8289 the effects are aggregated so that the URL is blocked, and &my-app; is told
8290 to treat the block as if it were an image. But this is, of course, all wrong.
8291 We could now add a new action below this (or better in our own
8292 <filename>user.action</filename> file) that explicitly
8293 <emphasis>un</emphasis> blocks (
8294 <link linkend="BLOCK"><quote>{-block}</quote></link>) paths with
8295 <quote>adsl</quote> in them (remember, last match in the configuration
8296 wins). There are various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
8308 Now the page displays ;-)
8309 Remember to flush your browser's caches when making these kinds of changes to
8310 your configuration to insure that you get a freshly delivered page! Or, try
8311 using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
8315 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
8322 { +block +handle-as-image }
8328 That actually was very helpful and pointed us quickly to where the problem
8329 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
8330 rules in the first section of <filename>default.action</filename> is causing
8331 the problem. This would require some guesswork, and maybe a little trial and
8332 error to isolate the offending rule. One likely cause would be one of the
8333 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> actions.
8334 These tend to be harder to troubleshoot.
8335 Try adding the URL for the site to one of aliases that turn off
8336 <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>:
8344 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
8352 <quote><literal>{ shop }</literal></quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
8353 <quote><literal>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</literal></quote>.
8354 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
8362 # Disable ALL filter actions for sites in this section
8370 This would turn off all filtering for these sites. This is best
8371 put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
8372 exceptions. Note that when a simple domain pattern is used by itself (without
8373 the subsequent path portion), all sub-pages within that domain are included
8374 automatcially in the scope of the action.
8378 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
8379 <link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE"><quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote></link>
8381 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well
8382 <emphasis>most of the time</emphasis> since these tend to be standardized).
8386 <quote><literal>{ fragile }</literal></quote> is an alias that disables most
8387 actions that are the most likely to cause trouble. This can be used as a
8388 last resort for problem sites.
8394 # Handle with care: easy to break
8396 mybank.example.com</screen>
8401 <emphasis>Remember to flush caches!</emphasis> Note that the
8402 <literal>mail.google</literal> reference lacks the TLD portion (e.g.
8403 <quote>.com</quote>. This will effectively match any TLD with
8404 <literal>google</literal> in it, such as <literal>mail.google.de</literal>,
8408 If this still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining
8409 actions one by one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
8418 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
8419 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
8420 Public License as published by the Free Software
8421 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
8422 your option) any later version.
8424 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
8425 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
8426 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
8427 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
8428 License for more details.
8430 The GNU General Public License should be included with
8431 this file. If not, you can view it at
8432 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
8433 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
8434 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,
8437 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
8438 Revision 2.23 2006/10/02 22:43:53 hal9
8439 Contains new filter definitions from Fabian, and few other miscellaneous
8442 Revision 2.22 2006/09/22 01:27:55 hal9
8443 Final commit of probably various minor changes here and there. Unless
8444 something changes this should be ready for pending release.
8446 Revision 2.21 2006/09/20 03:21:36 david__schmidt
8447 Just the tiniest tweak. Wafer thin!
8449 Revision 2.20 2006/09/10 14:53:54 hal9
8450 Results of spell check. User manual has some updates to standard.actions file
8453 Revision 2.19 2006/09/08 12:19:02 fabiankeil
8454 Adjust hide-if-modified-since example values
8455 to reflect the recent changes.
8457 Revision 2.18 2006/09/08 02:38:57 hal9
8459 -Fix a number of broken links.
8460 -Migrate the new Windows service command line options, and reference as
8462 -Rebuild so that can be used with the new "user-manual" config capabilities.
8465 Revision 2.17 2006/09/05 13:25:12 david__schmidt
8466 Add Windows service invocation stuff (duplicated) in FAQ and in user manual under Windows startup. One probably ought to reference the other.
8468 Revision 2.16 2006/09/02 12:49:37 hal9
8469 Various small updates for new actions, filterfiles, etc.
8471 Revision 2.15 2006/08/30 11:15:22 hal9
8472 More work on the new actions, especially filter-*-headers, and What's New
8473 section. User Manual is close to final form for 3.0.4 release. Some tinkering
8474 and proof reading left to do.
8476 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
8477 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
8478 files, and assorted other minor changes.
8480 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
8481 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
8482 stubbed in. More to be done.
8484 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
8485 Documented new actions that were part of
8486 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
8488 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
8489 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
8490 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
8492 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
8495 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
8496 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
8498 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
8501 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
8502 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
8503 is dependent on browser.
8505 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
8506 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
8508 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
8509 Some minor clarifications
8511 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
8512 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
8513 and copyright notice dates.
8515 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
8516 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
8518 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
8519 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
8521 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
8522 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
8524 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
8525 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
8526 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
8528 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
8529 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
8532 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
8533 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
8535 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
8536 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
8538 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
8539 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
8541 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
8542 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
8543 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
8546 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
8547 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
8549 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
8550 Added documentation for new chroot option
8552 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
8553 Adapted to the new filters
8555 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
8556 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
8559 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
8560 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
8562 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
8563 Add demoronizer to filter section.
8565 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
8566 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
8568 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
8569 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
8570 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
8572 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
8573 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
8575 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
8576 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
8579 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
8580 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
8582 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
8583 Update to Mac OSX startup script name
8585 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
8586 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
8588 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
8589 Nits re: actions file download
8591 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
8592 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
8594 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
8595 Added 2 Gentoo sections
8597 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
8598 - Added version info to title
8599 - Added info on new filters
8600 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
8601 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
8603 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
8604 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
8606 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
8608 Updated Mac OSX sections due to installation location change
8610 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
8611 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
8613 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
8614 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
8616 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
8617 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
8619 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
8620 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
8621 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
8622 so that these are in sync with each other.
8624 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
8625 Ooops missed something from David.
8627 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
8628 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and OSX startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
8629 That's a wrap, I think.
8631 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
8632 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
8634 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
8635 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
8637 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
8638 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
8639 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
8641 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
8642 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
8644 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
8645 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
8646 <literal><link> style.
8647 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
8648 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
8649 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
8650 renders them red (bad in TOC).
8652 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
8653 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
8655 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
8658 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
8659 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
8660 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
8662 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
8663 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
8664 - Small changes to Regex appendix
8665 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
8667 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
8668 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
8670 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
8671 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
8673 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
8674 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
8676 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
8677 Extended and further commented the example actions files
8679 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
8680 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
8683 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
8686 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
8687 Restored alphabetical order of actions
8689 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
8690 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
8692 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
8693 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
8695 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
8696 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
8697 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
8699 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
8700 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
8701 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
8702 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
8704 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
8705 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
8707 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
8710 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
8711 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
8712 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
8714 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
8715 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
8717 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
8718 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
8719 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
8721 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
8722 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
8724 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
8725 more structure in starting section
8727 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
8728 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
8729 will probably break links elsewhere :(
8731 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
8732 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
8733 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
8735 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
8736 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
8737 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
8739 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
8740 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
8742 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
8743 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
8744 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
8746 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
8747 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
8748 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
8750 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
8751 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
8753 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
8754 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
8756 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
8757 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
8759 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
8760 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
8762 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
8763 Updated OSX installation section
8764 Added a few English tweaks here an there
8766 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
8767 Re-write actions section.
8769 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
8770 Fix ugly typo (mine).
8772 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
8773 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
8775 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
8776 Added RPM install detail
8778 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
8781 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
8782 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
8784 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
8785 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
8787 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
8788 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
8790 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
8793 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
8794 Proofreading, part one
8796 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
8797 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
8798 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
8800 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
8801 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
8803 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
8804 Add small section on submitting actions.
8806 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
8809 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
8810 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
8812 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
8813 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
8815 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
8818 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
8819 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
8820 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
8821 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
8822 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
8824 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
8825 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
8827 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
8828 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
8830 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
8831 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
8832 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
8833 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
8834 eventually be set by Makefile.
8835 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
8837 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
8838 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
8840 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
8841 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
8843 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
8844 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
8846 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
8847 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
8848 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
8849 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
8851 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
8854 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
8855 Added more to Anatomy section.
8857 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
8858 Touch up intro for new name.
8860 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
8861 we have a new homepage!
8863 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
8864 A few minor catch ups with name change.
8866 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
8867 configure needs to be generated.
8869 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
8870 we are too lazy to make a block-built
8871 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
8873 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
8874 name change related issue.
8876 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
8877 name change. changed filenames.
8879 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
8882 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
8883 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
8884 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
8885 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
8886 comments and remarks to history untouched.
8888 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
8891 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
8892 New section in Appendix.
8894 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
8895 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
8897 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
8898 correct feedback channels
8900 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
8901 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
8903 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
8906 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
8907 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
8909 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
8910 Added imageblock{pattern}.
8912 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
8915 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
8916 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
8918 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
8919 provide correct feedback channels
8921 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
8922 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
8924 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
8925 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
8927 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
8928 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
8930 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
8931 Add new - - user option.
8933 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
8934 Added section on command line options.
8936 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
8937 Changed default port to 8118
8939 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
8940 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
8942 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
8943 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
8944 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
8947 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
8950 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
8951 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
8953 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
8954 Update OS/2 build section
8956 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
8957 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
8958 will work - no other changes are needed.
8960 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
8961 Added a very short section on Templates
8963 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
8964 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
8966 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
8967 Touch ups for *.action files.
8969 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
8972 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
8973 Updates for recent changes.
8975 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
8976 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
8978 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
8979 Correct 2 minor errors
8981 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
8982 *** empty log message ***
8984 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
8985 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
8987 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
8988 wrong url in documentation
8990 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
8991 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
8993 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
8996 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
8999 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
9002 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
9003 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
9005 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
9006 Some additions, and re-arranging.
9008 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
9011 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
9012 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
9014 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
9017 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
9018 source files for junkbuster documentation
9020 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
9021 first proposal of a structure.
9023 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
9024 docs should have an author.
9026 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
9027 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.