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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 "3.0.4">
15 <!entity p-status "BETA">
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 -->
29 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
32 This file belongs into
33 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
35 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9 Exp $
37 Copyright (C) 2001- 2006 Privoxy Developers <developers@privoxy.org>
40 ========================================================================
41 NOTE: Please read developer-manual/documentation.html before touching
42 anything in this, or other Privoxy documentation.
43 ========================================================================
50 <title>Privoxy &p-version; User Manual</title>
54 <!-- Completely the wrong markup, but very little is allowed -->
55 <!-- in this part of an article. FIXME -->
56 <link linkend="copyright">Copyright</link> &my-copy; 2001 - 2004 by
57 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">Privoxy Developers</ulink>
61 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9 Exp $</pubdate>
65 Note: the following should generate a separate page, and a live link to it,
66 all nicely done. But it doesn't for some mysterious reason. Please leave
67 commented unless it can be fixed proper. For the time being, the
68 copyright/license declarations will be in their own sgml.
81 This is here to keep vim syntax file from breaking :/
82 If I knew enough to fix it, I would.
83 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE! HB: hal@foobox.net
89 The <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> gives users information on how to
90 install, configure and use <ulink
91 url="http://www.privoxy.org/"><application>Privoxy</application></ulink>.
94 <!-- Include privoxy.sgml boilerplate: -->
96 <!-- end privoxy.sgml -->
99 You can find the latest version of the <citetitle>User Manual</citetitle> at <ulink
100 url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
101 Please see the <link linkend="contact">Contact section</link> on how to
102 contact the developers.
106 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
112 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
113 <sect1 label="1" id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
115 This documentation is included with the current &p-status; version of
116 <application>Privoxy</application>, v.&p-version;<![%p-not-stable;[,
117 and is mostly complete at this point. The most up to date reference for the
118 time being is still the comments in the source files and in the individual
119 configuration files. Development of version 3.0 is currently nearing
120 completion, and includes many significant changes and enhancements over
121 earlier versions. The target release date for
122 stable v3.0 is <quote>soon</quote> ;-)]]>.
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 <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
139 features of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
140 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features<![%p-not-stable;[,
141 some of them currently under development]]>:
143 <!-- Include newfeatures.sgml boilerplate here: -->
145 <!-- end boilerplate -->
150 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
153 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
154 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
157 <application>Privoxy</application> is available both in convenient pre-compiled
158 packages for a wide range of operating systems, and as raw source code.
159 For most users, we recommend using the packages, which can be downloaded from our
160 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Project
165 Note: If you have a previous <application>Junkbuster</application> or
166 <application>Privoxy</application> installation on your system, you
167 will need to remove it. On some platforms, this may be done for you as part
168 of their installation procedure. (See below for your platform). In any case
169 <emphasis>be sure to backup your old configuration if it is valuable to
170 you.</emphasis> See the <link linkend="upgradersnote">note to
171 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. Note that SuSE will
194 automatically start Privoxy in the boot process.
198 If you have problems with failed dependencies, try rebuilding the SRC RPM:
199 <literal>rpm --rebuild privoxy-&p-version;-1.src.rpm</literal>. This
200 will use your locally installed libraries and RPM version.
204 Also note that if you have a <application>Junkbuster</application> RPM installed
205 on your system, you need to remove it first, because the packages conflict.
206 Otherwise, RPM will try to remove <application>Junkbuster</application>
207 automatically, before installing <application>Privoxy</application>.
211 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
212 <sect3 id="installation-deb"><title>Debian</title>
214 DEBs can be installed with <literal>apt-get install privoxy</literal>,
215 and will use <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename> for the location of
220 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
221 <sect3 id="installation-pack-win"><title>Windows</title>
224 Just double-click the installer, which will guide you through
225 the installation process. You will find the configuration files
226 in the same directory as you installed Privoxy in.
230 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
231 <sect3 id="installation-pack-bintgz"><title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX</title>
234 Create a new directory, <literal>cd</literal> to it, then unzip and
235 untar the archive. For the most part, you'll have to figure out where
236 things go. <!-- FIXME, more info needed? -->
240 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
241 <sect3 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
244 First, make sure that no previous installations of
245 <application>Junkbuster</application> and / or
246 <application>Privoxy</application> are left on your
247 system. Check that no <application>Junkbuster</application>
248 or <application>Privoxy</application> objects are in
254 Then, just double-click the WarpIN self-installing archive, which will
255 guide you through the installation process. A shadow of the
256 <application>Privoxy</application> executable will be placed in your
257 startup folder so it will start automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
261 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
262 into will contain all of the configuration files.
266 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
267 <sect3 id="installation-mac"><title>Mac OSX</title>
269 Unzip the downloaded file (you can either double-click on the file
270 from the finder, or from the desktop if you downloaded it there).
271 Then, double-click on the package installer icon named
272 <literal>Privoxy.pkg</literal>
273 and follow the installation process.
274 <application>Privoxy</application> will be installed in the folder
275 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal>.
276 It will start automatically whenever you start up. To prevent it from
277 starting automatically, remove or rename the folder
278 <literal>/Library/StartupItems/Privoxy</literal>.
281 To start Privoxy by hand, double-click on
282 <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> in the
283 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder.
284 Or, type this command in the Terminal:
288 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
292 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
296 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
297 <sect3 id="installation-amiga"><title>AmigaOS</title>
299 Copy and then unpack the <filename>lha</filename> archive to a suitable location.
300 All necessary files will be installed into <application>Privoxy</application>
301 directory, including all configuration and log files. To uninstall, just
302 remove this directory.
306 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
307 <sect3 id="installattion-gentoo"><title>Gentoo</title>
309 Gentoo source packages (Ebuilds) for <application>Privoxy</application> are
310 contained in the Gentoo Portage Tree (they are not on the download page,
311 but there is a Gentoo section, where you can see when a new
312 <application>Privoxy</application> Version is added to the Portage Tree).
315 Before installing <application>Privoxy</application> under Gentoo just do
316 first <literal>emerge rsync</literal> to get the latest changes from the
317 Portage tree. With <literal>emerge privoxy</literal> you install the latest
321 Configuration files are in <filename>/etc/privoxy</filename>, the
322 documentation is in <filename>/usr/share/doc/privoxy-&p-version;</filename>
323 and the Log directory is in <filename>/var/log/privoxy</filename>.
329 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
330 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Building from Source</title>
333 The most convenient way to obtain the <application>Privoxy</application> sources
334 is to download the source tarball from our <ulink url="http://sf.net/projects/ijbswa/">project
339 If you like to live on the bleeding edge and are not afraid of using
340 possibly unstable development versions, you can check out the up-to-the-minute
341 version directly from <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=11118">the
342 CVS repository</ulink>.
344 deprecated...out of business.
345 or simply download <ulink
346 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/ijbswa-cvsroot.tar.bz2">the nightly CVS
351 <!-- include buildsource.sgml boilerplate: -->
353 <!-- end boilerplate -->
356 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
357 <sect2 id="installation-keepupdated"><title>Keeping your Installation Up-to-Date</title>
359 As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions
360 of both the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link> (as a <ulink
361 url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&release_id=103670">separate
362 package</ulink>) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for
367 If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of
368 <application>Privoxy</application> or the actions file, <ulink
369 url="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ijbswa-announce/">subscribe
370 to our announce mailing list</ulink>, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
374 In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating
375 to the latest <literal>default.action</literal> file we <emphasis>strongly
376 recommend</emphasis> that you use <literal>user.action</literal> for your
377 customization of <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
378 linkend="actions-file">Chapter on actions files</link> for details.
386 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
388 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
389 <sect1 id="whatsnew">
390 <title>What's New in this Release</title>
392 There are many improvements and new features in <application>Privoxy</application> &p-version;
400 Mulitiple <link linkend="filter-file">filter files</link> can now be specifed in <filename>config</filename>. This allows for
401 locally defined filters that can be maintained separately from the filters as
402 supplied by the developers.
408 There are a number of new <link linkend="actions-file">actions</link>:
416 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>
421 <literal><link linkend="crunch-client-header">crunch-client-header</link></literal>
426 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>
431 <literal><link linkend="crunch-server-header">crunch-server-header</link></literal>
436 <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
441 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
446 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>
451 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-empty-document">handle-as-empty-document</link></literal>
456 <literal><link linkend="hide-accept-language">hide-accept-language</link></literal>
461 <literal><link linkend="hide-content-disposition">hide-content-disposition</link></literal>
466 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
471 <literal><link linkend="inspect-jpegs">inspect-jpegs</link></literal>
476 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
481 <literal><link linkend="redirect">redirect</link></literal>
486 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
493 In addition, <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
494 has been significantly improved with enhanced syntax.
497 And <literal><link linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal>
498 has a new option, <literal>conditional block</literal>.
505 <application>MS-Windows</application> versions can now be installed and
506 started as a <emphasis>service</emphasis>.
512 In addition, there are various bug fixes and significant enhancements, including
513 error pages are no longer cached, better DNS error handling, and various logging
522 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
524 <sect2 id="upgradersnote">
525 <title>Note to Upgraders</title>
528 A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
529 versions of <application>Privoxy</application>:
537 Some installers may remove earlier versions completely, including
538 configuration files. Save any important configuration files!
543 See the full documentation on
544 <literal><link linkend="fast-redirects">fast-redirects</link></literal>
545 which has changed syntax, and may require adjustments to local configs.
550 The <filename>jarfile</filename>, cookie logger, is off by default now.
556 What constitutes a <quote>default</quote> configuration has changed,
557 and you may want to review which actions are <quote>on</quote> by
558 default. This is primarily a matter of emphasis, but some features
559 you may have been used to, may now be <quote>off</quote> by default.
565 <!-- I think it is best to keep this somewhat vague, in case -->
566 <!-- the situation changes under our feet. -->
567 Some installers may not automatically start
568 <application>Privoxy</application> after installation.
577 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
578 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
584 Install <application>Privoxy</application>. See the <link
585 linkend="installation">Installation Section</link> below for platform specific
592 Advanced users and those who want to offer <application>Privoxy</application>
593 service to more than just their local machine should check the <link
594 linkend="config">main config file</link>, especially the <link
595 linkend="access-control">security-relevant</link> options. These are
602 Start <application>Privoxy</application>, if the installation program has
603 not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section
604 <link linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link>.
610 Set your browser to use <application>Privoxy</application> as HTTP and
611 HTTPS (SSL) proxy by setting the proxy configuration for address of
612 <literal>127.0.0.1</literal> and port <literal>8118</literal>.
613 (<application>Junkbuster</application> and earlier versions of
614 <application>Privoxy</application> used port 8000.) See the section <link
615 linkend="startup">Starting <application>Privoxy</application></link> below
616 for more details on this.
622 Flush your browser's disk and memory caches, to remove any cached ad images.
623 If using <application>Privoxy</application> to manage cookies, you should
624 remove any currently stored cookies too.
630 A default installation should provide a reasonable starting point for
631 most. There will undoubtedly be occasions where you will want to adjust the
632 configuration, but that can be dealt with as the need arises. Little
633 to no initial configuration is required in most cases.
636 See the <link linkend="configuration">Configuration section</link> for more
637 configuration options, and how to customize your installation.
638 <![%draft;[ You might also want to look at the <link
639 linkend="quickstart-ad-blocking">next section</link> for a quick
640 introduction to how <application>Privoxy</application> blocks ads and
647 If you experience ads that slipped through, innocent images that are
648 blocked, or otherwise feel the need to fine-tune
649 <application>Privoxy's</application> behaviour, take a look at the <link
650 linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>. As a quick start, you might
651 find the <link linkend="act-examples">richly commented examples</link>
652 helpful. You can also view and edit the actions files through the <ulink
653 url="http://config.privoxy.org">web-based user interface</ulink>. The
654 Appendix <quote><link linkend="actionsanat">Anatomy of an
655 Action</link></quote> has hints how to debug actions that
656 <quote>misbehave</quote>.
662 For easy access to Privoxy's most important controls, drag the provided
663 <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklets</link> into your browser's
670 Please see the section <link linkend="contact">Contacting the
671 Developers</link> on how to report bugs or problems with websites or to get
678 Now enjoy surfing with enhanced control, comfort and privacy!
686 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
688 <sect2 id="quickstart-ad-blocking">
689 <title>Quickstart to Ad Blocking</title>
691 NOTE: This section is deliberately redundant for those that don't
692 want to read the whole thing (which is getting lengthy).
695 Ad blocking is but one of <application>Privoxy's</application>
696 array of features. Many of these features are for the technically minded advanced
697 user. But, ad and banner blocking is surely common ground for everybody.
700 This section will provide a quick summary of ad blocking so
701 you can get up to speed quickly without having to read the more extensive
702 information provided below, though this is highly recommended.
705 First a bit of a warning ... blocking ads is much like blocking SPAM: the
706 more aggressive you are about it, the more likely you are to block
707 things that were not intended. So there is a trade off here. If you want
708 extreme ad free browsing, be prepared to deal with more
709 <quote>problem</quote> sites, and to spend more time adjusting the
710 configuration to solve these unintended consequences. In short, there is
711 not an easy way to eliminate <emphasis>all</emphasis> ads. Either take
712 the easy way and settle for <emphasis>most</emphasis> ads blocked with the
713 default configuration, or jump in and tweak it for your personal surfing
714 habits and preferences.
717 Secondly, a brief explanation of <application>Privoxy's </application>
718 <quote>actions</quote>. <quote>Actions</quote> in this context, are
719 the directives we use to tell <application>Privoxy</application> to perform
720 some task relating to HTTP transactions (i.e. web browsing). We tell
721 <application>Privoxy</application> to take some <quote>action</quote>. Each
722 action has a unique name and function. While there are many potential
723 <application>actions</application> in <application>Privoxy's</application>
724 arsenal, only a few are used for ad blocking. <link
725 linkend="actions">Actions</link>, and <link linkend="actions-file">action
726 configuration files</link>, are explained in depth below.
729 Actions are specified in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
730 followed by one or more URLs to which the action should apply. URLs
731 can actually be URL type <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> that use
732 wildcards so they can apply potentially to a range of similar URLs. The
733 actions, together with the URL patterns are called a section.
736 When you connect to a website, the full URL will either match one or more
737 of the sections as defined in <application>Privoxy's</application> configuration,
738 or not. If so, then <application>Privoxy</application> will perform the
739 respective actions. If not, then nothing special happens. Furthermore, web
740 pages may contain embedded, secondary URLs that your web browser will
741 use to load additional components of the page, as it parses the
742 original page's HTML content. An ad image for instance, is just an URL
743 embedded in the page somewhere. The image itself may be on the same server,
744 or a server somewhere else on the Internet. Complex web pages will have many
749 The actions we need to know about for ad blocking are: <literal><link
750 linkend="block">block</link></literal>, <literal><link
751 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>, and
752 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>:
760 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> - this action stops
761 any contact between your browser and any URL patterns that match this
762 action's configuration. It can be used for blocking ads, but also anything
763 that is determined to be unwanted. By itself, it simply stops any
764 communication with the remote server and sends <application>Privoxy</application>'s
765 own built-in BLOCKED page instead to let you now what has happened.
771 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> -
772 tells <application>Privoxy</application> to treat this URL as an image.
773 <application>Privoxy</application>'s default configuration already does this
774 for all common image types (e.g. GIF), but there are many situations where this
775 is not so easy to determine. So we'll force it in these cases. This is particularly
776 important for ad blocking, since only if we know that it's an image of
777 some kind, can we replace it with an image of our choosing, instead of the
778 <application>Privoxy</application> BLOCKED page (which would only result in
779 a <quote>broken image</quote> icon). There are some limitations to this
780 though. For instance, you can't just brute-force an image substitution for
781 an entire HTML page in most situations.
788 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> - tells
789 <application>Privoxy</application> what to display in place of an ad image that
790 has hit a block rule. For this to come into play, the URL must match a
791 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action somewhere in the
792 configuration, <emphasis>and</emphasis>, it must also match an
793 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action.
796 The configuration options on what to display instead of the ad are:
800 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> - a checkerboard pattern, so that an ad
801 replacement is obvious. This is the default.
806 <emphasis>blank</emphasis> - A very small empty GIF image is displayed.
807 This is the so-called <quote>invisible</quote> configuration option.
812 <emphasis>http://<URL></emphasis> - A redirect to any image anywhere
813 of the user's choosing (advanced usage).
822 The quickest way to adjust any of these settings is with your browser through
823 the special <application>Privoxy</application> editor at <ulink
824 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
825 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>). This
826 is an internal page, and does not require Internet access. Select the
827 appropriate <quote>actions</quote> file, and click
828 <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>. It is best to put personal or
829 local preferences in <filename>user.action</filename> since this is not
830 meant to be overwritten during upgrades, and will over-ride the settings in
831 other files. Here you can insert new <quote>actions</quote>, and URLs for ad
832 blocking or other purposes, and make other adjustments to the configuration.
833 <application>Privoxy</application> will detect these changes automatically.
837 A quick and simple step by step example:
845 Right click on the ad image to be blocked, then select
846 <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote> from the
854 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
859 Find <filename>user.action</filename> in the top section, and click
860 on <quote><guibutton>Edit</guibutton></quote>:
863 <!-- image of editor and actions files selections -->
865 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Actions Files in Use</title>
868 <imagedata fileref="../images/files-in-use.jpg" format="jpg">
871 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Actions Files in Use ]</phrase>
880 You should have a section with only
881 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> listed under
882 <quote>Actions:</quote>.
883 If not, click a <quote><guibutton>Insert new section below</guibutton></quote>
884 button, and in the new section that just appeared, click the
885 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton> button right under the word <quote>Actions:</quote>.
886 This will bring up a list of all actions. Find
887 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> near the top, and click
888 in the <quote>Enabled</quote> column, then <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote>
894 Now, in the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> actions section,
895 click the <quote><guibutton>Add</guibutton></quote> button, and paste the URL the
896 browser got from <quote><guimenuitem>Copy Link Location</guimenuitem></quote>.
897 Remove the <literal>http://</literal> at the beginning of the URL. Then, click
898 <quote><guibutton>Submit</guibutton></quote> (or
899 <quote><guibutton>OK</guibutton></quote> if in a pop-up window).
904 Now go back to the original page, and press <keycap>SHIFT-Reload</keycap>
905 (or flush all browser caches). The image should be gone now.
913 This is a very crude and simple example. There might be good reasons to use a
914 wildcard pattern match to include potentially similar images from the same
915 site. For a more extensive explanation of <quote>patterns</quote>, and
916 the entire actions concept, see <link linkend="actions-file">the Actions
921 For advanced users who want to hand edit their config files, you might want
922 to now go to the <link linkend="act-examples">Actions Files Tutorial</link>.
923 The ideas explained therein also apply to the web-based editor.
930 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
933 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
935 <title>Starting <application>Privoxy</application></title>
937 Before launching <application>Privoxy</application> for the first time, you
938 will want to configure your browser(s) to use
939 <application>Privoxy</application> as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is
940 127.0.0.1 (or localhost) for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions
941 used port 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!
944 Please note that <application>Privoxy</application> can only proxy HTTP and
945 HTTPS traffic. It will not work with FTP or other protocols.
948 <!-- image of Mozilla Proxy configuration -->
950 <figure pgwide="0" float="0"><title>Proxy Configuration (Mozilla)</title>
953 <imagedata fileref="../images/proxy_setup.jpg" format="jpg">
956 <phrase>[ Screenshot of Mozilla Proxy Configuration ]</phrase>
964 With <application>Firefox</application>, this can be set under:
968 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
969 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
970 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton>
972 <guibutton>Options</guibutton>
974 <guibutton>General</guibutton>
976 <guibutton>Connection Settings</guibutton>
978 <guibutton>Manual Proxy Configuration</guibutton>
983 With <application>Netscape</application> (and
984 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under:
989 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
990 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
991 <guibutton>Edit</guibutton>
993 <guibutton>Preferences</guibutton>
995 <guibutton>Advanced</guibutton>
997 <guibutton>Proxies</guibutton>
999 <guibutton>HTTP Proxy</guibutton>
1003 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>:
1007 <!-- Mix ascii and gui art, something for everybody -->
1008 <!-- spacing on this is tricky -->
1009 <guibutton>Tools</guibutton>
1011 <guibutton>Internet Properties</guibutton>
1013 <guibutton>Connections</guibutton>
1015 <guibutton>LAN Settings</guibutton>
1019 Then, check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info
1020 (Address: 127.0.0.1, Port: 8118). Include HTTPS (SSL), if you want HTTPS
1025 After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a
1026 re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You
1027 are now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using
1028 <application>Privoxy</application>!
1032 <application>Privoxy</application> itself is typically started by specifying the
1033 main configuration file to be used on the command line. If no configuration
1034 file is specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application>
1035 will look for a file named <filename>config</filename> in the current
1036 directory. Except on Win32 where it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>.
1039 <sect2 id="start-redhat">
1040 <title>Red Hat and Conectiva</title>
1042 We use a script. Note that Red Hat does not start Privoxy upon booting per
1043 default. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as
1044 its main configuration file.
1048 # /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
1053 <sect2 id="start-debian">
1054 <title>Debian</title>
1056 We use a script. Note that Debian starts Privoxy upon booting per
1057 default. It will use the file
1058 <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename> as its main configuration
1063 # /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1068 <sect2 id="start-suse">
1071 We use a script. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config</filename>
1072 as its main configuration file. Note that SuSE starts Privoxy upon booting
1082 <sect2 id="start-windows">
1083 <title>Windows</title>
1085 Click on the Privoxy Icon to start Privoxy. If no configuration file is
1086 specified on the command line, <application>Privoxy</application> will look
1087 for a file named <filename>config.txt</filename>. Note that Windows will
1088 automatically start Privoxy upon booting you PC.
1092 <sect2 id="start-unices">
1093 <title>Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX and others</title>
1095 Example Unix startup command:
1099 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
1104 <sect2 id="start-os2">
1107 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1108 start automatically when the system restarts. You can start it manually by
1109 double-clicking on the <application>Privoxy</application> icon in the
1110 <application>Privoxy</application> folder.
1114 <sect2 id="start-macosx">
1115 <title>Mac OSX</title>
1117 During installation, <application>Privoxy</application> is configured to
1118 start automatically when the system restarts. To start Privoxy by hand,
1119 double-click on the <literal>StartPrivoxy.command</literal> icon in the
1120 <literal>/Library/Privoxy</literal> folder. Or, type this command
1125 /Library/Privoxy/StartPrivoxy.command
1129 You will be prompted for the administrator password.
1134 <sect2 id="start-amigaos">
1135 <title>AmigaOS</title>
1137 Start <application>Privoxy</application> (with RUN <>NIL:) in your
1138 <filename>startnet</filename> script (AmiTCP), in
1139 <filename>s:user-startup</filename> (RoadShow), as startup program in your
1140 startup script (Genesis), or as startup action (Miami and MiamiDx).
1141 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically quit when you quit your
1142 TCP/IP stack (just ignore the harmless warning your TCP/IP stack may display that
1143 <application>Privoxy</application> is still running).
1147 <sect2 id="start-gentoo">
1148 <title>Gentoo</title>
1150 A script is again used. It will use the file <filename>/etc/privoxy/config
1151 </filename> as its main configuration file.
1155 /etc/init.d/privoxy start
1159 Note that <application>Privoxy</application> is not automatically started at
1160 boot time by default. You can change this with the <literal>rc-update</literal>
1165 rc-update add privoxy default
1173 See the section <link linkend="cmdoptions">Command line options</link> for
1177 must find a better place for this paragraph
1180 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
1181 point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the
1182 <ulink url="actions-file.html"><quote>actions</quote></ulink> files. These are
1183 where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other
1184 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. There are several
1185 such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.
1189 You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer
1190 persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By
1191 default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser
1192 session (aka <quote>session cookies</quote>), unless you add them to the
1193 configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need
1194 to edit <filename>user.action</filename> (or through the web based interface)
1195 and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make
1196 more sense to let <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which
1197 case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
1201 Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted
1202 sites is the popup-killing (through the <ulink
1203 url="actions-file.html#KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></ulink> and
1205 url="actions-file.html#FILTER-POPUPS"><quote>+filter{popups}</quote></ulink>
1206 actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need
1207 popups (explained below).
1211 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of
1212 the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that
1213 you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default
1214 (like <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.), you might
1215 try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under <literal>Edit ->
1216 Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
1217 Alternatively, set the <quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote> config option in
1218 <filename>default.action</filename> which will downgrade your browser's HTTP
1219 requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.
1223 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
1224 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
1225 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
1226 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote>
1227 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
1228 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1229 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1230 and then follow the link to <quote>View & Change the Current Configuration</quote>.
1231 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
1235 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
1236 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
1237 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
1238 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
1239 to a given URL. In addition to the actions file
1240 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
1241 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> (toggled) from this page.
1245 If you encounter problems, try loading the page without
1246 <application>Privoxy</application>. If that helps, enter the URL where
1247 you have the problems into <ulink url="http://p.p/show-url-info">the browser
1248 based rule tracing utility</ulink>. See which rules apply and why, and
1249 then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem
1250 is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on
1255 If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to <link
1256 linkend="actions-file">read more about the actions concept</link>
1257 or even dive deep into the <link linkend="actionsanat">Appendix
1262 If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in
1263 Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the
1264 section <link linkend="contact"><quote>Contacting the
1265 Developers</quote></link> below.
1270 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1271 <sect2 id="cmdoptions">
1272 <title>Command Line Options</title>
1274 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
1275 command-line options:
1283 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
1286 Print version info and exit. Unix only.
1291 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
1294 Print short usage info and exit. Unix only.
1299 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
1302 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
1303 leader, and don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
1308 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
1312 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
1313 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failure to create or delete the
1314 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
1315 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
1320 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
1324 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
1325 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
1326 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
1331 <emphasis>--chroot</emphasis>
1335 Before changing to the user ID given in the <emphasis>--user</emphasis> option,
1336 chroot to that user's home directory, i.e. make the kernel pretend to the Privoxy
1337 process that the directory tree starts there. If set up carefully, this can limit
1338 the impact of possible vulnerabilities in Privoxy to the files contained in that hierarchy.
1344 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
1347 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
1348 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
1349 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
1350 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
1351 full path to avoid confusion. If no config file is found,
1352 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
1363 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1366 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1367 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
1369 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is stored
1370 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
1371 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
1372 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
1376 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1379 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
1381 <application>Privoxy</application>'s user interface can be reached through the special
1382 URL <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
1383 (shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>),
1384 which is a built-in page and works without Internet access.
1385 You will see the following section:
1389 <!-- Needs to be put in a table and colorized -->
1392 <bridgehead renderas="sect2"> Privoxy Menu</bridgehead>
1396 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">View & change the current configuration</ulink>
1399 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">View the source code version numbers</ulink>
1402 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">View the request headers.</ulink>
1405 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">Look up which actions apply to a URL and why</ulink>
1408 ▪ <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">Toggle Privoxy on or off</ulink>
1411 ▪ <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/
1412 &p-version;/user-manual/">Documentation</ulink>
1420 This should be self-explanatory. Note the first item leads to an editor for the
1421 <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, which is where the ad, banner,
1422 cookie, and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
1423 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
1424 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
1425 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
1429 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
1430 have problems with your current actions and filters. You can in fact use
1431 it as a test to see whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
1432 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
1433 to run as a proxy in this case, but all manipulation is disabled, i.e.
1434 <application>Privoxy</application> acts like a normal forwarding proxy. There
1435 is even a toggle <link linkend="bookmarklets">Bookmarklet</link> offered, so
1436 that you can toggle <application>Privoxy</application> with one click from
1442 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1447 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1449 <sect2 id="confoverview">
1450 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
1452 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
1453 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
1454 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
1455 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. <![%p-not-stable;[ The name
1456 and number of configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is
1457 subject to change as development progresses.]]>
1461 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though
1462 some settings may be aggressive by some standards. For the time being, the
1463 principle configuration files are:
1471 The <link linkend="config">main configuration file</link> is named <filename>config</filename>
1472 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
1473 on Windows. This is a required file.
1479 <filename>default.action</filename> (the main <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>)
1480 is used to define which <quote>actions</quote> relating to banner-blocking, images, pop-ups,
1481 content modification, cookie handling etc should be applied by default. It also defines many
1482 exceptions (both positive and negative) from this default set of actions that enable
1483 <application>Privoxy</application> to selectively eliminate the junk, and only the junk, on
1484 as many websites as possible.
1487 Multiple actions files may be defined in <filename>config</filename>. These
1488 are processed in the order they are defined. Local customizations and locally
1489 preferred exceptions to the default policies as defined in
1490 <filename>default.action</filename> (which you will most probably want
1491 to define sooner or later) are probably best applied in
1492 <filename>user.action</filename>, where you can preserve them across
1493 upgrades. <filename>standard.action</filename> is for
1494 <application>Privoxy's</application> internal use.
1497 There is also a web based editor that can be accessed from
1499 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
1501 url="http://p.p/show-status">http://p.p/show-status</ulink>) for the
1502 various actions files.
1508 <quote>Filter files</quote> (the <link linkend="filter-file">filter
1509 file</link>) can be used to re-write the raw page content, including
1510 viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript, and whatever else
1511 lurks on any given web page. The filtering jobs are only pre-defined here;
1512 whether to apply them or not is up to the actions files.
1513 <filename>default.filter</filename> includes various filters made
1514 available for use by the developers. Some are much more intrusive than
1515 others, and all should be used with caution. You may define additional
1516 filter files in <filename>config</filename> as you can with
1517 actions files. We suggest <filename>user.filter</filename> for any
1518 locally defined filters or customizations.
1526 All files use the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a
1527 comment (the rest of the line will be ignored) and understand line continuation
1528 through placing a backslash ("<literal>\</literal>") as the very last character
1529 in a line. If the <literal>#</literal> is preceded by a backslash, it looses
1530 its special function. Placing a <literal>#</literal> in front of an otherwise
1531 valid configuration line to prevent it from being interpreted is called "commenting
1536 The actions files and filter files
1537 can use Perl style <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> for
1538 maximum flexibility.
1542 After making any changes, there is no need to restart
1543 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
1544 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> detects such changes
1545 automatically. Note, however, that it may take one or two additional
1546 requests for the change to take effect. When changing the listening address
1547 of <application>Privoxy</application>, these <quote>wake up</quote> requests
1548 must obviously be sent to the <emphasis>old</emphasis> listening address.
1553 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
1554 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
1555 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
1556 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
1562 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1565 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1567 <!-- **************************************************** -->
1568 <!-- Include config.sgml here -->
1569 <!-- This is where the entire config file is detailed. -->
1571 <!-- end include -->
1574 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1578 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
1580 <sect1 id="actions-file"><title>Actions Files</title>
1583 The actions files are used to define what actions
1584 <application>Privoxy</application> takes for which URLs, and thus determine
1585 how ad images, cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and
1586 transactions are handled, and on which sites (or even parts thereof). There
1587 are three such files included with <application>Privoxy</application>
1588 with differing purposes:
1595 <filename>default.action</filename> - is the primary action file
1596 that sets the initial values for all actions. It is intended to
1597 provide a base level of functionality for
1598 <application>Privoxy's</application> array of features. So it is
1599 a set of broad rules that should work reasonably well for users everywhere.
1600 This is the file that the developers are keeping updated, and <link
1601 linkend="installation-keepupdated">making available to users</link>.
1606 <filename>user.action</filename> - is intended to be for local site
1607 preferences and exceptions. As an example, if your ISP or your bank
1608 has specific requirements, and need special handling, this kind of
1609 thing should go here. This file will not be upgraded.
1614 <filename>standard.action</filename> - is used by the web based editor,
1615 to set various pre-defined sets of rules for the default actions section
1616 in <filename>default.action</filename>. These have increasing levels of
1617 aggressiveness <emphasis>and have no influence on your browsing unless
1618 you select them explicitly in the editor</emphasis>. It is not recommend
1622 The default profiles, and their associated actions, as pre-defined in
1623 <filename>standard.action</filename> are:
1626 <table frame=all><title>Default Configurations</title>
1627 <tgroup cols=4 align=left colsep=1 rowsep=1>
1628 <colspec colname=c1>
1629 <colspec colname=c2>
1630 <colspec colname=c3>
1631 <colspec colname=c4>
1634 <entry>Feature</entry>
1635 <entry>Cautious</entry>
1636 <entry>Medium</entry>
1637 <entry>Adventuresome</entry>
1642 <!-- <entry>f1</entry> -->
1643 <!-- <entry>f2</entry> -->
1644 <!-- <entry>f3</entry> -->
1645 <!-- <entry>f4</entry> -->
1651 <entry>Ad-blocking by URL</entry>
1658 <entry>Ad-filtering by size</entry>
1665 <entry>GIF de-animation</entry>
1672 <entry>Referer forging</entry>
1679 <entry>Cookie handling</entry>
1681 <entry>session-only</entry>
1686 <entry>Pop-up killing</entry>
1687 <entry>unsolicited</entry>
1688 <entry>unsolicited</entry>
1693 <entry>Fast redirects</entry>
1700 <entry>HTML taming</entry>
1707 <entry>JavaScript taming</entry>
1714 <entry>Web-bug killing</entry>
1721 <entry>Fun text replacements</entry>
1728 <entry>Image tag reordering</entry>
1735 <entry>Ad-filtering by link</entry>
1742 <entry>Demoronizer</entry>
1759 The list of actions files to be used are defined in the main configuration
1760 file, and are processed in the order they are defined (e.g.
1761 <filename>default.action</filename> is typically process before
1762 <filename>user.action</filename>). The content of these can all be viewed and
1764 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1768 An actions file typically has multiple sections. If you want to use
1769 <quote>aliases</quote> in an actions file, you have to place the (optional)
1770 <link linkend="aliases">alias section</link> at the top of that file.
1771 Then comes the default set of rules which will apply universally to all
1772 sites and pages (be <emphasis>very careful</emphasis> with using such a
1773 universal set in <filename>user.action</filename> or any other actions file after
1774 <filename>default.action</filename>, because it will override the result
1775 from consulting any previous file). And then below that,
1776 exceptions to the defined universal policies. You can regard
1777 <filename>user.action</filename> as an appendix to <filename>default.action</filename>,
1778 with the advantage that is a separate file, which makes preserving your
1779 personal settings across <application>Privoxy</application> upgrades easier.
1783 Actions can be used to block anything you want, including ads, banners, or
1784 just some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
1785 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e. not
1786 written to disk), content can be modified, JavaScripts tamed, user-tracking
1787 fooled, and much more. See below for a <link linkend="actions">complete list
1791 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1793 <title>Finding the Right Mix</title>
1795 Note that some <link linkend="actions">actions</link>, like cookie suppression
1796 or script disabling, may render some sites unusable that rely on these
1797 techniques to work properly. Finding the right mix of actions is not always easy and
1798 certainly a matter of personal taste. In general, it can be said that the more
1799 <quote>aggressive</quote> your default settings (in the top section of the
1800 actions file) are, the more exceptions for <quote>trusted</quote> sites you
1801 will have to make later. If, for example, you want to crunch all cookies per
1802 default, you'll have to make exceptions from that rule for sites that you
1803 regularly use and that require cookies for actually useful puposes, like maybe
1804 your bank, favorite shop, or newspaper.
1808 We have tried to provide you with reasonable rules to start from in the
1809 distribution actions files. But there is no general rule of thumb on these
1810 things. There just are too many variables, and sites are constantly changing.
1811 Sooner or later you will want to change the rules (and read this chapter again :).
1815 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1817 <title>How to Edit</title>
1819 The easiest way to edit the actions files is with a browser by
1820 using our browser-based editor, which can be reached from <ulink
1821 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>.
1822 The editor allows both fine-grained control over every single feature on a
1823 per-URL basis, and easy choosing from wholesale sets of defaults like
1824 <quote>Cautious</quote>, <quote>Medium</quote> or <quote>Adventuresome</quote>.
1825 Warning: the <quote>Adventuresome</quote> setting is not only more aggressive,
1826 but includes settings that are fun and subversive, and which some may find of
1831 If you prefer plain text editing to GUIs, you can of course also directly edit the
1832 the actions files. Look at <filename>default.action</filename> which is richly
1838 <sect2 id="actions-apply">
1839 <title>How Actions are Applied to URLs</title>
1841 Actions files are divided into sections. There are special sections,
1842 like the <quote><link linkend="aliases">alias</link></quote> sections which will
1843 be discussed later. For now let's concentrate on regular sections: They have a
1844 heading line (often split up to multiple lines for readability) which consist
1845 of a list of actions, separated by whitespace and enclosed in curly braces.
1846 Below that, there is a list of URL patterns, each on a separate line.
1850 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
1851 compared to all patterns in each <quote>action file</quote> file. Every time it matches, the list of
1852 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated, using the heading
1853 of the section in which the pattern is located. If multiple matches for
1854 the same URL set the same action differently, the last match wins. If not,
1855 the effects are aggregated. E.g. a URL might match a regular section with
1856 a heading line of <literal>{
1857 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link> }</literal>,
1858 then later another one with just <literal>{
1859 +<link linkend="block">block</link> }</literal>, resulting
1860 in <emphasis>both</emphasis> actions to apply.
1864 You can trace this process for any given URL by visiting <ulink
1865 url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>.
1869 More detail on this is provided in the Appendix, <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">
1870 Anatomy of an Action</link>.
1874 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1875 <sect2 id="af-patterns">
1876 <title>Patterns</title>
1878 As mentioned, <application>Privoxy</application> uses <quote>patterns</quote>
1879 to determine what actions might apply to which sites and pages your browser
1880 attempts to access. These <quote>patterns</quote> use wild card type
1881 <emphasis>pattern</emphasis> matching to achieve a high degree of
1882 flexibility. This allows one expression to be expanded and potentially match
1883 against many similar patterns.
1887 Generally, a <application>Privoxy</application> pattern has the form
1888 <literal><domain>/<path></literal>, where both the
1889 <literal><domain></literal> and <literal><path></literal> are
1890 optional. (This is why the special <literal>/</literal> pattern matches all
1891 URLs). Note that the protocol portion of the URL pattern (e.g.
1892 <literal>http://</literal>) should <emphasis>not</emphasis> be included in
1893 the pattern. This is assumed already!
1898 <term><literal>www.example.com/</literal></term>
1901 is a domain-only pattern and will match any request to <literal>www.example.com</literal>,
1902 regardless of which document on that server is requested.
1907 <term><literal>www.example.com</literal></term>
1910 means exactly the same. For domain-only patterns, the trailing <literal>/</literal> may
1916 <term><literal>www.example.com/index.html</literal></term>
1919 matches only the single document <literal>/index.html</literal>
1920 on <literal>www.example.com</literal>.
1925 <term><literal>/index.html</literal></term>
1928 matches the document <literal>/index.html</literal>, regardless of the domain,
1929 i.e. on <emphasis>any</emphasis> web server.
1934 <term><literal>index.html</literal></term>
1937 matches nothing, since it would be interpreted as a domain name and
1938 there is no top-level domain called <literal>.html</literal>.
1945 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1946 <sect3><title>The Domain Pattern</title>
1949 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
1950 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
1956 <term><literal>.example.com</literal></term>
1959 matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
1960 <literal>.example.com</literal>
1965 <term><literal>www.</literal></term>
1968 matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
1969 <literal>www.</literal>
1974 <term><literal>.example.</literal></term>
1977 matches any domain that <emphasis>CONTAINS</emphasis> <literal>.example.</literal>
1978 (Correctly speaking: It matches any FQDN that contains <literal>example</literal> as a domain.)
1985 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
1986 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
1987 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
1988 any single character, you can define character classes in square
1989 brackets and all of that can be freely mixed:
1994 <term><literal>ad*.example.com</literal></term>
1997 matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
1998 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>
2003 <term><literal>*ad*.example.com</literal></term>
2006 matches all of the above, and then some.
2011 <term><literal>.?pix.com</literal></term>
2014 matches <literal>www.ipix.com</literal>,
2015 <literal>pictures.epix.com</literal>, <literal>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</literal> etc.
2020 <term><literal>www[1-9a-ez].example.c*</literal></term>
2023 matches <literal>www1.example.com</literal>,
2024 <literal>www4.example.cc</literal>, <literal>wwwd.example.cy</literal>,
2025 <literal>wwwz.example.com</literal> etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2026 <literal>wwww.example.com</literal>.
2034 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2037 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2038 <sect3><title>The Path Pattern</title>
2041 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl compatible regular expressions
2042 (through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> library) for
2047 There is an <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link> with a brief quick-start into regular
2048 expressions, and full (very technical) documentation on PCRE regex syntax is available on-line
2049 at <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/man.txt">http://www.pcre.org/man.txt</ulink>.
2050 You might also find the Perl man page on regular expressions (<literal>man perlre</literal>)
2051 useful, which is available on-line at <ulink
2052 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>.
2056 Note that the path pattern is automatically left-anchored at the <quote>/</quote>,
2057 i.e. it matches as if it would start with a <quote>^</quote> (regular expression speak
2058 for the beginning of a line).
2062 Please also note that matching in the path is <emphasis>CASE INSENSITIVE</emphasis>
2063 by default, but you can switch to case sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2064 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch: <literal>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</literal> will match
2065 only documents whose path starts with <literal>PaTtErN</literal> in
2066 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2072 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2075 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2077 <sect2 id="actions">
2078 <title>Actions</title>
2080 All actions are disabled by default, until they are explicitly enabled
2081 somewhere in an actions file. Actions are turned on if preceded with a
2082 <quote>+</quote>, and turned off if preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. So a
2083 <literal>+action</literal> means <quote>do that action</quote>, e.g.
2084 <literal>+block</literal> means <quote>please block URLs that match the
2085 following patterns</quote>, and <literal>-block</literal> means <quote>don't
2086 block URLs that match the following patterns, even if <literal>+block</literal>
2087 previously applied.</quote>
2092 Again, actions are invoked by placing them on a line, enclosed in curly braces and
2093 separated by whitespace, like in
2094 <literal>{+some-action -some-other-action{some-parameter}}</literal>,
2095 followed by a list of URL patterns, one per line, to which they apply.
2096 Together, the actions line and the following pattern lines make up a section
2097 of the actions file.
2101 There are three classes of actions:
2108 Boolean, i.e the action can only be <quote>enabled</quote> or
2109 <quote>disabled</quote>. Syntax:
2113 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # enable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
2114 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable></screen>
2117 Example: <literal>+block</literal>
2124 Parameterized, where some value is required in order to enable this type of action.
2129 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and set parameter to <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>,
2130 # overwriting parameter from previous match if necessary
2131 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable> # disable action. The parameter can be omitted</screen>
2134 Note that if the URL matches multiple positive forms of a parameterized action,
2135 the last match wins, i.e. the params from earlier matches are simply ignored.
2138 Example: <literal>+hide-user-agent{ Mozilla 1.0 }</literal>
2144 Multi-value. These look exactly like parameterized actions,
2145 but they behave differently: If the action applies multiple times to the
2146 same URL, but with different parameters, <emphasis>all</emphasis> the parameters
2147 from <emphasis>all</emphasis> matches are remembered. This is used for actions
2148 that can be executed for the same request repeatedly, like adding multiple
2149 headers, or filtering through multiple filters. Syntax:
2153 +<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # enable action and add <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> to the list of parameters
2154 -<replaceable class="function">name</replaceable>{<replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable>} # remove the parameter <replaceable class="parameter">param</replaceable> from the list of parameters
2155 # If it was the last one left, disable the action.
2156 <replaceable class="parameter">-name</replaceable> # disable this action completely and remove all parameters from the list</screen>
2159 Examples: <literal>+add-header{X-Fun-Header: Some text}</literal> and
2160 <literal>+filter{html-annoyances}</literal>
2168 If nothing is specified in any actions file, no <quote>actions</quote> are
2169 taken. So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2170 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically enable the
2171 privacy and blocking features you need (although the provided default actions
2172 files will give a good starting point).
2176 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. So exceptions
2177 to any rules you make, should come in the latter part of the file (or
2178 in a file that is processed later when using multiple actions files). For
2179 multi-valued actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
2180 Actions files are processed in the order they are defined in
2181 <filename>config</filename> (the default installation has three actions
2182 files). It also quite possible for any given URL pattern to match more than
2183 one pattern and thus more than one set of actions!
2186 <!-- start actions listing -->
2188 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> actions are:
2192 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2193 <!-- Please note the below defined actions use id's that are -->
2194 <!-- probably linked from other places, so please don't change. -->
2196 <!-- ********************************************************** -->
2199 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2201 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="add-header">
2202 <title>add-header</title>
2206 <term>Typical use:</term>
2208 <para>Confuse log analysis, custom applications</para>
2213 <term>Effect:</term>
2216 Sends a user defined HTTP header to the web server.
2223 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2225 <para>Multi-value.</para>
2230 <term>Parameter:</term>
2233 Any string value is possible. Validity of the defined HTTP headers is not checked.
2234 It is recommended that you use the <quote><literal>X-</literal></quote> prefix
2244 This action may be specified multiple times, in order to define multiple
2245 headers. This is rarely needed for the typical user. If you don't know what
2246 <quote>HTTP headers</quote> are, you definitely don't need to worry about this
2253 <term>Example usage:</term>
2256 <screen>+add-header{X-User-Tracking: sucks}</screen>
2264 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2265 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="block">
2266 <title>block</title>
2270 <term>Typical use:</term>
2272 <para>Block ads or other obnoxious content</para>
2277 <term>Effect:</term>
2280 Requests for URLs to which this action applies are blocked, i.e. the requests are not
2281 forwarded to the remote server, but answered locally with a substitute page or image,
2282 as determined by the <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>
2283 and <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> actions.
2290 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2292 <para>Boolean.</para>
2297 <term>Parameter:</term>
2307 <application>Privoxy</application> sends a special <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page
2308 for requests to blocked pages. This page contains links to find out why the request
2309 was blocked, and a click-through to the blocked content (the latter only if compiled with the
2310 force feature enabled). The <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page adapts to the available
2311 screen space -- it displays full-blown if space allows, or miniaturized and text-only
2312 if loaded into a small frame or window. If you are using <application>Privoxy</application>
2313 right now, you can take a look at the
2314 <ulink url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
2318 A very important exception occurs if <emphasis>both</emphasis>
2319 <literal>block</literal> and <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal>,
2320 apply to the same request: it will then be replaced by an image. If
2321 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
2322 (see below) also applies, the type of image will be determined by its parameter,
2323 if not, the standard checkerboard pattern is sent.
2326 It is important to understand this process, in order
2327 to understand how <application>Privoxy</application> deals with
2328 ads and other unwanted content.
2331 The <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>
2332 action can perform a very similar task, by <quote>blocking</quote>
2333 banner images and other content through rewriting the relevant URLs in the
2334 document's HTML source, so they don't get requested in the first place.
2335 Note that this is a totally different technique, and it's easy to confuse the two.
2341 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2344 <screen>{+block} # Block and replace with "blocked" page
2345 .nasty-stuff.example.com
2347 {+block +handle-as-image} # Block and replace with image
2359 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2360 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="content-type-overwrite">
2364 <title>content-type-overwrite</title>
2368 <term>Typical use:</term>
2370 <para>Stop useless download menus from popping up, or change the browser's rendering mode</para>
2375 <term>Effect:</term>
2378 Replaces the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header.
2385 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2387 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2392 <term>Parameter:</term>
2404 The <quote>Content-Type:</quote> HTTP server header is used by the
2405 browser to decide what to do with the document. The value of this
2406 header can cause the browser to open a download menu instead of
2407 displaying the document by itself, even if the document's format is
2408 supported by the browser.
2411 The declared content type can also affect which rendering mode
2412 the browser chooses. If XHTML is delivered as <quote>text/html</quote>,
2413 many browsers treat it as yet another broken HTML document.
2414 If it is send as <quote>application/xml</quote>, browsers with
2415 XHTML support will only display it, if the syntax is correct.
2418 If you see a web site that proudly uses XHTML buttons, but sets
2419 <quote>Content-Type: text/html</quote>, you can use Privoxy
2420 to overwrite it with <quote>application/xml</quote> and validate
2421 the web master's claim inside your XHTML-supporting browser.
2422 If the syntax is incorrect, the browser will complain loudly.
2425 You can also go the opposite direction: if your browser prints
2426 error messages instead of rendering a document falsely declared
2427 as XHTML, you can overwrite the content type with
2428 <quote>text/html</quote> and have it rendered as broken HTML document.
2431 By default <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal> only replaces
2432 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> headers that look like some kind of text.
2433 If you want to overwrite it unconditionally, you have to combine it with
2434 <literal><link linkend="force-text-mode">force-text-mode</link></literal>.
2435 This limitation exists for a reason, think twice before circumventing it.
2438 Most of the time it's easier to enable
2439 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
2440 and replace this action with a custom regular expression. It allows you
2441 to activate it for every document of a certain site and it will still
2442 only replace the content types you aimed at.
2445 Of course you can apply <literal>content-type-overwrite</literal>
2446 to a whole site and then make URL based exceptions, but it's a lot
2447 more work to get the same precision.
2453 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
2456 <screen># Check if www.example.net/ really uses valid XHTML
2457 {+content-type-overwrite {application/xml}}
2459 # but leave the content type unmodified if the URL looks like a style sheet
2460 {-content-type-overwrite}
2461 www.example.net/*.\.css$
2462 www.example.net/*.style
2471 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2472 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-client-header">
2476 <title>crunch-client-header</title>
2480 <term>Typical use:</term>
2482 <para>Remove a client header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
2487 <term>Effect:</term>
2490 Deletes every header send by the client that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
2497 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2499 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2504 <term>Parameter:</term>
2516 This action allows you to block client headers for which no dedicated
2517 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists.
2518 <application>Privoxy</application> will remove every client header that
2519 contains the string you supplied as parameter.
2522 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
2523 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
2524 they contain the same string.
2527 <literal>crunch-client-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
2528 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
2529 parts of them, you should enable
2530 <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
2531 and create your own filter.
2535 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
2542 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2545 <screen># Block the non-existent "Privacy-Violation:" client header
2546 {+crunch-client-header {Privacy-Violation:}}
2556 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2557 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-if-none-match">
2558 <title>crunch-if-none-match</title>
2564 <term>Typical use:</term>
2566 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
2571 <term>Effect:</term>
2574 Deletes the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header.
2581 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2583 <para>Boolean.</para>
2588 <term>Parameter:</term>
2600 Removing the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> HTTP client header
2601 is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
2602 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote> which
2603 would cause the browser to use a cached copy of the page.
2606 It is also useful to make sure the header isn't used as a cookie
2610 Blocking the <quote>If-None-Match:</quote> header shouldn't cause any
2611 caching problems, as long as the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> header
2612 isn't blocked as well.
2615 It is recommended to use this action together with
2616 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hide-if-modified-since</link></literal>
2618 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>.
2624 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2627 <screen># Let the browser revalidate cached documents without being tracked across sessions
2628 {+hide-if-modified-since {-1} \
2629 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize} \
2630 +crunch-if-none-match}
2639 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2640 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-incoming-cookies">
2641 <title>crunch-incoming-cookies</title>
2645 <term>Typical use:</term>
2648 Prevent the web server from setting any cookies on your system
2654 <term>Effect:</term>
2657 Deletes any <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from server replies.
2664 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2666 <para>Boolean.</para>
2671 <term>Parameter:</term>
2683 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies. For
2684 <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies, use
2685 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>.
2686 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2689 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2690 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2691 since it would prevent the session cookies from being set. See also
2692 <literal><link linkend="filter-content-cookies">filter-content-cookies</link></literal>.
2698 <term>Example usage:</term>
2701 <screen>+crunch-incoming-cookies</screen>
2709 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2710 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-server-header">
2711 <title>crunch-server-header</title>
2717 <term>Typical use:</term>
2719 <para>Remove a server header <application>Privoxy</application> has no dedicated action for.</para>
2724 <term>Effect:</term>
2727 Deletes every header sent by the server that contains the string the user supplied as parameter.
2734 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2736 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2741 <term>Parameter:</term>
2753 This action allows you to block server headers for which no dedicated
2754 <application>Privoxy</application> action exists. <application>Privoxy</application>
2755 will remove every server header that contains the string you supplied as parameter.
2758 Regular expressions are <emphasis>not supported</emphasis> and you can't
2759 use this action to block different headers in the same request, unless
2760 they contain the same string.
2763 <literal>crunch-server-header</literal> is only meant for quick tests.
2764 If you have to block several different headers, or only want to modify
2765 parts of them, you should enable
2766 <literal><link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link></literal>
2767 and create your own filter.
2771 Don't block any header without understanding the consequences.
2778 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2781 <screen># Crunch server headers that try to prevent caching
2782 {+crunch-server-header {no-cache}}
2791 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2792 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="crunch-outgoing-cookies">
2793 <title>crunch-outgoing-cookies</title>
2797 <term>Typical use:</term>
2800 Prevent the web server from reading any cookies from your system
2806 <term>Effect:</term>
2809 Deletes any <quote>Cookie:</quote> HTTP headers from client requests.
2816 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
2818 <para>Boolean.</para>
2823 <term>Parameter:</term>
2835 This action is only concerned with <emphasis>outgoing</emphasis> cookies. For
2836 <emphasis>incoming</emphasis> cookies, use
2837 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>.
2838 Use <emphasis>both</emphasis> to disable cookies completely.
2841 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use this action in conjunction
2842 with the <literal><link linkend="session-cookies-only">session-cookies-only</link></literal> action,
2843 since it would prevent the session cookies from being read.
2849 <term>Example usage:</term>
2852 <screen>+crunch-outgoing-cookies</screen>
2861 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2862 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="deanimate-gifs">
2863 <title>deanimate-gifs</title>
2867 <term>Typical use:</term>
2869 <para>Stop those annoying, distracting animated GIF images.</para>
2874 <term>Effect:</term>
2877 De-animate GIF animations, i.e. reduce them to their first or last image.
2884 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2886 <para>Parameterized.</para>
2891 <term>Parameter:</term>
2894 <quote>last</quote> or <quote>first</quote>
2903 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2904 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
2905 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last
2906 frame of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for
2907 most banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire
2908 last frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
2911 You can safely use this action with patterns that will also match non-GIF
2912 objects, because no attempt will be made at anything that doesn't look like
2919 <term>Example usage:</term>
2922 <screen>+deanimate-gifs{last}</screen>
2929 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2930 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="downgrade-http-version">
2931 <title>downgrade-http-version</title>
2935 <term>Typical use:</term>
2937 <para>Work around (very rare) problems with HTTP/1.1</para>
2942 <term>Effect:</term>
2945 Downgrades HTTP/1.1 client requests and server replies to HTTP/1.0.
2952 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
2954 <para>Boolean.</para>
2959 <term>Parameter:</term>
2971 This is a left-over from the time when <application>Privoxy</application>
2972 didn't support important HTTP/1.1 features well. It is left here for the
2973 unlikely case that you experience HTTP/1.1 related problems with some server
2974 out there. Not all (optional) HTTP/1.1 features are supported yet, so there
2975 is a chance you might need this action.
2981 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
2984 <screen>{+downgrade-http-version}
2985 problem-host.example.com</screen>
2993 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2994 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="fast-redirects">
2995 <title>fast-redirects</title>
2999 <term>Typical use:</term>
3001 <para>Fool some click-tracking scripts and speed up indirect links.</para>
3006 <term>Effect:</term>
3009 Detects redirection URLs and redirects the browser without contacting
3010 the redirection server first.
3017 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3019 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3024 <term>Parameter:</term>
3029 <quote>simple-check</quote> to just search for the string <quote>http://</quote>
3030 to detect redirection URLs.
3035 <quote>check-decoded-url</quote> to decode URLs (if necessary) before searching
3036 for redirection URLs.
3047 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
3048 will link to some script on their own servers, giving the destination as a
3049 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs
3050 resulting from this scheme typically look like:
3051 <quote>http://www.example.org/click-tracker.cgi?target=http%3a//www.example.net/</quote>.
3054 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
3055 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
3056 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go
3057 to. Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your
3058 browser asks the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds
3062 This feature is currently not very smart and is scheduled for improvement.
3063 If it is enabled by default, you will have to create some exceptions to
3064 this action. It can lead to failures in several ways:
3067 Not every URLs with other URLs as parameters is evil.
3068 Some sites offer a real service that requires this information to work.
3069 For example a validation service needs to know, which document to validate.
3070 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> assumes that every URL parameter that
3071 looks like another URL is a redirection target, and will always redirect to
3072 the last one. Most of the time the assumption is correct, but if it isn't,
3073 the user gets redirected anyway.
3076 Another failure occurs if the URL contains other parameters after the URL parameter.
3078 <quote>http://www.example.org/?redirect=http%3a//www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3079 contains the redirection URL <quote>http://www.example.net/</quote>,
3080 followed by another parameter. <literal>fast-redirects</literal> doesn't know that
3081 and will cause a redirect to <quote>http://www.example.net/&foo=bar</quote>.
3082 Depending on the target server configuration, the parameter will be silently ignored
3083 or lead to a <quote>page not found</quote> error. It is possible to fix these redirected
3084 requests with <literal><link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link></literal>
3085 but it requires a little effort.
3088 To detect a redirection URL, <literal>fast-redirects</literal> only
3089 looks for the string <quote>http://</quote>, either in plain text
3090 (invalid but often used) or encoded as <quote>http%3a//</quote>.
3091 Some sites use their own URL encoding scheme, encrypt the address
3092 of the target server or replace it with a database id. In theses cases
3093 <literal>fast-redirects</literal> is fooled and the request reaches the
3094 redirection server where it probably gets logged.
3100 <term>Example usage:</term>
3103 <screen>+fast-redirects{simple-check}</screen>
3106 <screen>+fast-redirects{check-decoded-url}</screen>
3115 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3116 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter">
3117 <title>filter</title>
3121 <term>Typical use:</term>
3123 <para>Get rid of HTML and JavaScript annoyances, banner advertisements (by size), do fun text replacements, etc.</para>
3128 <term>Effect:</term>
3131 All files of text-based type, most notably HTML and JavaScript, to which this
3132 action applies, are filtered on-the-fly through the specified regular expression
3133 based substitutions. (Note: as of version 3.0.3 plain text documents
3134 are exempted from filtering, because web servers often use the
3135 <literal>text/plain</literal> MIME type for all files whose type they
3136 don't know.) By default, filtering works only on the document content
3137 itself, not the headers.
3144 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3146 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3151 <term>Parameter:</term>
3154 The name of a filter, as defined in the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>.
3155 Filters can be defined in one or more files as defined by the
3156 <literal><link linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal>
3157 option in the <link linkend="config">config file</link>.
3158 <filename>default.filter</filename> is the collection of filters
3159 supplied by the developers. Locally defined filters should go
3160 in their own file, such as <filename>user.filter</filename>.
3163 When used in its negative form,
3164 and without parameters, filtering is completely disabled.
3173 For your convenience, there are a number of pre-defined filters available
3174 in the distribution filter file that you can use. See the examples below for
3178 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to
3179 slow down page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has
3180 passed the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way
3181 since the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more
3182 noticeable on slower connections.
3185 This is very powerful feature, and <quote>rolling your own</quote>
3186 filters requires a knowledge of regular expressions and HTML.
3189 The amount of data that can be filtered is limited to the
3190 <literal><link linkend="buffer-limit">buffer-limit</link></literal>
3191 option in the main <link linkend="config">config file</link>. The
3192 default is 4096 KB (4 Megs). Once this limit is exceeded, the buffered
3193 data, and all pending data, is passed through unfiltered.
3196 Inadequate MIME types, such as zipped files, are not filtered at all.
3197 (Again, only text-based types except plain text). Encrypted SSL data
3198 (from HTTPS servers) cannot be filtered either, since this would violate
3199 the integrity of the secure transaction. In some situations it might
3200 be necessary to protect certain text, like source code, from filtering
3201 by defining appropriate <literal>-filter</literal> sections.
3204 At this time, <application>Privoxy</application> cannot (yet!) uncompress compressed
3205 documents. If you want filtering to work on all documents, even those that
3206 would normally be sent compressed, use the
3207 <literal><link linkend="prevent-compression">prevent-compression</link></literal>
3208 action in conjunction with <literal>filter</literal>.
3211 Filtering can achieve some of the same effects as the
3212 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
3213 action, i.e. it can be used to block ads and banners. But the mechanism
3214 works quite differently. One effective use, is to block ad banners
3215 based on their size (see below), since many of these seem to be somewhat
3219 <link linkend="contact">Feedback</link> with suggestions for new or
3220 improved filters is particularly welcome!
3223 The below list has only the names and a one-line description of each
3224 predefined filter. There are <link linkend="predefined-filters">more
3225 verbose explanations</link> of what these filters do in the <link
3226 linkend="filter-file">filter file chapter</link>.
3232 <term>Example usage (with filters from the distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file).
3233 See <link linkend="PREDEFINED-FILTERS">the Predefined Filters section</link> for
3234 more explanation on each:</term>
3237 <anchor id="filter-js-annoyances">
3238 <screen>+filter{js-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse</screen>
3241 <anchor id="filter-js-events">
3242 <screen>+filter{js-events} # Kill all JS event bindings (Radically destructive! Only for extra nasty sites)</screen>
3245 <anchor id="filter-html-annoyances">
3246 <screen>+filter{html-annoyances} # Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse</screen>
3249 <anchor id="filter-content-cookies">
3250 <screen>+filter{content-cookies} # Kill cookies that come in the HTML or JS content</screen>
3253 <anchor id="filter-refresh-tags">
3254 <screen>+filter{refresh-tags} # Kill automatic refresh tags (for dial-on-demand setups)</screen>
3257 <anchor id="filter-unsolicited-popups">
3258 <screen>+filter{unsolicited-popups} # Disable only unsolicited pop-up windows</screen>
3261 <anchor id="filter-all-popups">
3262 <screen>+filter{all-popups} # Kill all popups in JavaScript and HTML</screen>
3265 <anchor id="filter-img-reorder">
3266 <screen>+filter{img-reorder} # Reorder attributes in <img> tags to make the banners-by-* filters more effective</screen>
3269 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-size">
3270 <screen>+filter{banners-by-size} # Kill banners by size</screen>
3273 <anchor id="filter-banners-by-link">
3274 <screen>+filter{banners-by-link} # Kill banners by their links to known clicktrackers</screen>
3277 <anchor id="filter-webbugs">
3278 <screen>+filter{webbugs} # Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)</screen>
3281 <anchor id="filter-tiny-textforms">
3282 <screen>+filter{tiny-textforms} # Extend those tiny textareas up to 40x80 and kill the hard wrap</screen>
3285 <anchor id="filter-jumping-windows">
3286 <screen>+filter{jumping-windows} # Prevent windows from resizing and moving themselves</screen>
3289 <anchor id="filter-frameset-borders">
3290 <screen>+filter{frameset-borders} # Give frames a border and make them resizable</screen>
3293 <anchor id="filter-demoronizer">
3294 <screen>+filter{demoronizer} # Fix MS's non-standard use of standard charsets</screen>
3297 <anchor id="filter-shockwave-flash">
3298 <screen>+filter{shockwave-flash} # Kill embedded Shockwave Flash objects</screen>
3301 <anchor id="filter-quicktime-kioskmode">
3302 <screen>+filter{quicktime-kioskmode} # Make Quicktime movies saveable</screen>
3305 <anchor id="filter-fun">
3306 <screen>+filter{fun} # Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!</screen>
3309 <anchor id="filter-crude-parental">
3310 <screen>+filter{crude-parental} # Crude parental filtering (demo only)</screen>
3313 <anchor id="filter-ie-exploits">
3314 <screen>+filter{ie-exploits} # Disable some known Internet Explorer bug exploits</screen>
3322 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3323 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter-client-headers">
3324 <title>filter-client-headers</title>
3328 <term>Typical use:</term>
3331 To apply filtering to the client's (browser's) headers
3337 <term>Effect:</term>
3339 <para>Extend filtering capabilities to the client's headers, which
3340 by default applies only to the document itself.
3347 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3349 <para>Boolean.</para>
3354 <term>Parameter:</term>
3366 Regular expressions can be used to filter headers as well. Check your
3367 filters closely before activating this action, as it can easily lead to broken
3371 These filters are applied to each header on its own, not to them
3372 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3373 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is
3377 The filters are used after the other header actions have finished and can
3378 use their output as input.
3382 Whenever possible one should specify <literal>^</literal>,
3383 <literal>$</literal>, the whole header name and the colon, to make sure
3384 the filter doesn't cause havoc to other headers or the
3385 page itself. For example if you want to transform
3386 <application>Galeon</application> User-Agents to
3387 <application>Firefox</application> User-Agents you
3392 s@Galeon/\d\.\d\.\d @@
3398 s@^(User-Agent:.*) Galeon/\d\.\d\.\d (Firefox/\d\.\d\.\d\.\d)$@$1 $2@
3405 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3409 {+filter-client-headers +filter{test_filter}}
3410 problem-host.example.com
3420 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3421 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="filter-server-headers">
3422 <title>filter-server-headers</title>
3426 <term>Typical use:</term>
3429 To apply filtering to the server's headers
3435 <term>Effect:</term>
3437 <para>Extend filtering capabilities to the server's headers, which
3438 by default applies only to the document itself.
3445 <!-- boolean, parameterized, Multi-value -->
3447 <para>Boolean.</para>
3452 <term>Parameter:</term>
3464 Similar to <literal>filter-client-headers</literal>, but works on
3465 the server instead. To filter both server and client, use both.
3468 As with <literal>filter-client-headers</literal>, check your
3469 filters before activating this action, as it can easily lead to broken
3473 These filters are applied to each header on its own, not to them
3474 all at once. This makes it easier to diagnose problems, but on the downside
3475 you can't write filters that only change header x if header y's value is
3479 The filters are used after the other header actions have finished and can
3480 use their output as input.
3483 Remember too, whenever possible one should specify <literal>^</literal>,
3484 <literal>$</literal>, the whole header name and the colon, to make sure
3485 the filter doesn't cause havoc to other headers or the
3486 page itself. See above for example.
3493 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3497 {+filter-server-headers +filter{test_filter}}
3498 problem-host.example.com
3508 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3509 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="force-text-mode">
3510 <title>force-text-mode</title>
3516 <term>Typical use:</term>
3518 <para>Force <application>Privoxy</application> to treat a document as if it was in some kind of <emphasis>text</emphasis> format. </para>
3523 <term>Effect:</term>
3526 Declares a document as text, even if the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> isn't detected as such.
3533 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3535 <para>Boolean.</para>
3540 <term>Parameter:</term>
3552 As explained <literal><link linkend="filter">above</link></literal>,
3553 <application>Privoxy</application> tries to only filter files that are
3554 in some kind of text format. The same restrictions apply to
3555 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite</link></literal>.
3556 <literal>force-text-mode</literal> declares a document as text,
3557 without looking at the <quote>Content-Type:</quote> first.
3561 Think twice before activating this action. Filtering binary data
3562 with regular expressions can cause file damage.
3569 <term>Example usage:</term>
3582 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3583 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-empty-document">
3584 <title>handle-as-empty-document</title>
3590 <term>Typical use:</term>
3592 <para>Mark URLs that should be replaced by empty documents <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis></para>
3597 <term>Effect:</term>
3600 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs.
3601 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
3602 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
3603 page, or an empty document will be sent to the client as a substitute for the blocked content.
3604 The <emphasis>empty</emphasis> document isn't literally empty, but actually contains a single space.
3611 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3613 <para>Boolean.</para>
3618 <term>Parameter:</term>
3630 Some browsers complain about syntax errors if JavaScript documents
3631 are blocked with <application>Privoxy's</application>
3632 default HTML page; this option can be used to silence them.
3635 The content type for the empty document can be specified with
3636 <literal><link linkend="content-type-overwrite">content-type-overwrite{}</link></literal>,
3637 but usually this isn't necessary.
3643 <term>Example usage:</term>
3646 <screen># Block all documents on example.org that end with ".js",
3647 # but send an empty document instead of the usual HTML message.
3648 {+block +handle-as-empty-document}
3658 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3659 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="handle-as-image">
3660 <title>handle-as-image</title>
3664 <term>Typical use:</term>
3666 <para>Mark URLs as belonging to images (so they'll be replaced by imagee <emphasis>if they get blocked</emphasis>)</para>
3671 <term>Effect:</term>
3674 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. It just marks URLs as images.
3675 If the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action <emphasis>also applies</emphasis>,
3676 the presence or absence of this mark decides whether an HTML <quote>blocked</quote>
3677 page, or a replacement image (as determined by the <literal><link
3678 linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal> action) will be sent to the
3679 client as a substitute for the blocked content.
3686 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3688 <para>Boolean.</para>
3693 <term>Parameter:</term>
3705 The below generic example section is actually part of <filename>default.action</filename>.
3706 It marks all URLs with well-known image file name extensions as images and should
3710 Users will probably only want to use the handle-as-image action in conjunction with
3711 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>, to block sources of banners, whose URLs don't
3712 reflect the file type, like in the second example section.
3715 Note that you cannot treat HTML pages as images in most cases. For instance, (in-line) ad
3716 frames require an HTML page to be sent, or they won't display properly.
3717 Forcing <literal>handle-as-image</literal> in this situation will not replace the
3718 ad frame with an image, but lead to error messages.
3724 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
3727 <screen># Generic image extensions:
3730 /.*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|bmp|ico)$
3732 # These don't look like images, but they're banners and should be
3733 # blocked as images:
3735 {+block +handle-as-image}
3736 some.nasty-banner-server.com/junk.cgi?output=trash
3738 # Banner source! Who cares if they also have non-image content?
3748 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3749 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-accept-language">
3750 <title>hide-accept-language</title>
3756 <term>Typical use:</term>
3758 <para>Pretend to use different language settings.</para>
3763 <term>Effect:</term>
3766 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> HTTP header in client requests.
3773 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3775 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3780 <term>Parameter:</term>
3783 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
3792 Faking the browser's language settings can be useful to make a
3793 foreign User-Agent set with
3794 <literal><link linkend="hide-user-agent">hide-user-agent</link></literal>
3798 However some sites with content in different languages check the
3799 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> to decide which one to take by default.
3800 Sometimes it isn't possible to later switch to another language without
3801 changing the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header first.
3804 Therefore it's a good idea to either only change the
3805 <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header to languages you understand,
3806 or to languages that aren't wide spread.
3809 Before setting the <quote>Accept-Language:</quote> header
3810 to a rare language, you should consider that it helps to
3811 make your requests unique and thus easier to trace.
3812 If you don't plan to change this header frequently,
3813 you should stick to a common language.
3819 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3822 <screen># Pretend to use Canadian language settings.
3823 {+hide-accept-language{en-ca} \
3824 +hide-user-agent{Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenBSD i386; en-CA; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060628 Firefox/1.5.0.4} \
3834 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3835 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-content-disposition">
3836 <title>hide-content-disposition</title>
3842 <term>Typical use:</term>
3844 <para>Prevent download menus for content you prefer to view inside the browser.</para>
3849 <term>Effect:</term>
3852 Deletes or replaces the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header set by some servers.
3859 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3861 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3866 <term>Parameter:</term>
3869 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
3878 Some servers set the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> HTTP header for
3879 documents they assume you want to save locally before viewing them.
3880 The <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header contains the file name
3881 the browser is supposed to use by default.
3884 In most browsers that understand this header, it makes it impossible to
3885 <emphasis>just view</emphasis> the document, without downloading it first,
3886 even if it's just a simple text file or an image.
3889 Removing the <quote>Content-Disposition:</quote> header helps
3890 to prevent this annoyance, but some browsers additionally check the
3891 <quote>Content-Type:</quote> header, before they decide if they can
3892 display a document without saving it first. In these cases, you have
3893 to change this header as well, before the browser stops displaying
3897 It is also possible to change the server's file name suggestion
3898 to another one, but in most cases it isn't worth the time to set
3905 <term>Example usage:</term>
3908 <screen># Disarm the download link in Sourceforge's patch tracker
3910 +content-type-overwrite {text/plain}\
3911 +hide-content-disposition {block} }
3912 .sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php</screen>
3920 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3921 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-if-modified-since">
3922 <title>hide-if-modified-since</title>
3928 <term>Typical use:</term>
3930 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
3935 <term>Effect:</term>
3938 Deletes the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> HTTP client header or modifies its value.
3945 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
3947 <para>Parameterized.</para>
3952 <term>Parameter:</term>
3955 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or a user defined value that specifies a range of hours.
3964 Removing this header is useful for filter testing, where you want to force a real
3965 reload instead of getting status code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the
3966 browser to use a cached copy of the page.
3969 Instead of removing the header, <literal>hide-if-modified-since</literal> can
3970 also add or substract a random amount of time to/from the headers value.
3971 You specify a range of hours were the random factor should be chosen from and
3972 <application>Privoxy</application> does the rest. A negative value means
3973 subtracting, a positive value adding.
3976 Randomizing the value of the <quote>If-Modified-Since:</quote> makes
3977 sure it isn't used as a cookie replacement, but you will run into
3978 caching problems if the random range is too high.
3981 It is a good idea to only use a small negative value and let
3982 <literal><link linkend="overwrite-last-modified">overwrite-last-modified</link></literal>
3983 handle the greater changes.
3986 It is also recommended to use this action together with
3987 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
3993 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
3996 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
3997 {+hide-if-modified-since {-1}\
3998 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize}\
3999 +crunch-if-none-match}
4008 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4009 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-forwarded-for-headers">
4010 <title>hide-forwarded-for-headers</title>
4016 <term>Typical use:</term>
4018 <para>Improve privacy by hiding the true source of the request</para>
4023 <term>Effect:</term>
4026 Deletes any existing <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> HTTP header from client requests,
4027 and prevents adding a new one.
4034 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4036 <para>Boolean.</para>
4041 <term>Parameter:</term>
4053 It is fairly safe to leave this on.
4056 This action is scheduled for improvement: It should be able to generate forged
4057 <quote>X-Forwarded-for:</quote> headers using random IP addresses from a specified network,
4058 to make successive requests from the same client look like requests from a pool of different
4059 users sharing the same proxy.
4065 <term>Example usage:</term>
4068 <screen>+hide-forwarded-for-headers</screen>
4076 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4077 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-from-header">
4078 <title>hide-from-header</title>
4082 <term>Typical use:</term>
4084 <para>Keep your (old and ill) browser from telling web servers your email address</para>
4089 <term>Effect:</term>
4092 Deletes any existing <quote>From:</quote> HTTP header, or replaces it with the
4100 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4102 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4107 <term>Parameter:</term>
4110 Keyword: <quote>block</quote>, or any user defined value.
4119 The keyword <quote>block</quote> will completely remove the header
4120 (not to be confused with the <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>
4124 Alternately, you can specify any value you prefer to be sent to the web
4125 server. If you do, it is a matter of fairness not to use any address that
4126 is actually used by a real person.
4129 This action is rarely needed, as modern web browsers don't send
4130 <quote>From:</quote> headers anymore.
4136 <term>Example usage:</term>
4139 <screen>+hide-from-header{block}</screen> or
4140 <screen>+hide-from-header{spam-me-senseless@sittingduck.example.com}</screen>
4148 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4149 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-referrer">
4150 <title>hide-referrer</title>
4151 <anchor id="hide-referer">
4154 <term>Typical use:</term>
4156 <para>Conceal which link you followed to get to a particular site</para>
4161 <term>Effect:</term>
4164 Deletes the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) HTTP header from the client request,
4165 or replaces it with a forged one.
4172 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4174 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4179 <term>Parameter:</term>
4183 <para><quote>conditional-block</quote> to delete the header completely if the host has changed.</para>
4186 <para><quote>block</quote> to delete the header unconditionally.</para>
4189 <para><quote>forge</quote> to pretend to be coming from the homepage of the server we are talking to.</para>
4192 <para>Any other string to set a user defined referrer.</para>
4202 <literal>conditional-block</literal> is the only parameter,
4203 that isn't easily detected in the server's log file. If it blocks the
4204 referrer, the request will look like the visitor used a bookmark or
4205 typed in the address directly.
4208 Leaving the referrer unmodified for requests on the same host
4209 allows the server owner to see the visitor's <quote>click path</quote>,
4210 but in most cases she could also get that information by comparing
4211 other parts of the log file: for example the User-Agent if it isn't
4212 a very common one, or the user's IP address if it doesn't change between
4216 Always blocking the referrer, or using a custom one, can lead to
4217 failures on servers that check the referrer before they answer any
4218 requests, in an attempt to prevent their valuable content from being
4219 embedded or linked to elsewhere.
4222 Both <literal>conditional-block</literal> and <literal>forge</literal>
4223 will work with referrer checks, as long as content and valid referring page
4224 are on the same host. Most of the time that's the case.
4227 <literal>hide-referer</literal> is an alternate spelling of
4228 <literal>hide-referrer</literal> and the two can be can be freely
4229 substituted with each other. (<quote>referrer</quote> is the
4230 correct English spelling, however the HTTP specification has a bug - it
4231 requires it to be spelled as <quote>referer</quote>.)
4237 <term>Example usage:</term>
4240 <screen>+hide-referrer{forge}</screen> or
4241 <screen>+hide-referrer{http://www.yahoo.com/}</screen>
4249 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4250 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="hide-user-agent">
4251 <title>hide-user-agent</title>
4255 <term>Typical use:</term>
4257 <para>Conceal your type of browser and client operating system</para>
4262 <term>Effect:</term>
4265 Replaces the value of the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> HTTP header
4266 in client requests with the specified value.
4273 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4275 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4280 <term>Parameter:</term>
4283 Any user-defined string.
4293 This can lead to problems on web sites that depend on looking at this header in
4294 order to customize their content for different browsers (which, by the
4295 way, is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the right thing to do: good web sites
4296 work browser-independently).
4298 <ulink url="http://www.javascriptkit.com/javaindex.shtml">smart way to do
4304 Using this action in multi-user setups or wherever different types of
4305 browsers will access the same <application>Privoxy</application> is
4306 <emphasis>not recommended</emphasis>. In single-user, single-browser
4307 setups, you might use it to delete your OS version information from
4308 the headers, because it is an invitation to exploit known bugs for your
4309 OS. It is also occasionally useful to forge this in order to access
4310 sites that won't let you in otherwise (though there may be a good
4311 reason in some cases). Example of this: some MSN sites will not
4312 let <application>Mozilla</application> enter, yet forging to a
4313 <application>Netscape 6.1</application> user-agent works just fine.
4314 (Must be just a silly MS goof, I'm sure :-).
4317 This action is scheduled for improvement.
4323 <term>Example usage:</term>
4326 <screen>+hide-user-agent{Netscape 6.1 (X11; I; Linux 2.4.18 i686)}</screen>
4334 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4335 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="inspect-jpegs">
4336 <title>inspect-jpegs</title>
4342 <term>Typical use:</term>
4344 <para>To protect against the MS buffer over-run in JPEG processing</para>
4349 <term>Effect:</term>
4352 To protect against a known exploit
4359 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4361 <para>Boolean.</para>
4366 <term>Parameter:</term>
4378 See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-028. JPEG images are one of the most
4379 common image types found across the Internet. The exploit as described can
4380 allow execution of code on the target system, giving an attacker access
4381 to the system in question by merely planting an altered JPEG image, which
4382 would have no obvious indications of what lurks inside. This action
4383 prevents unwanted intrusion.
4390 <term>Example usage:</term>
4392 <para><screen>+inspect-jpegs</screen></para>
4401 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4402 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="kill-popups">
4403 <title>kill-popups<anchor id="kill-popup"></title>
4407 <term>Typical use:</term>
4409 <para>Eliminate those annoying pop-up windows (deprecated)</para>
4414 <term>Effect:</term>
4417 While loading the document, replace JavaScript code that opens
4418 pop-up windows with (syntactically neutral) dummy code on the fly.
4425 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4427 <para>Boolean.</para>
4432 <term>Parameter:</term>
4444 This action is basically a built-in, hardwired special-purpose filter
4445 action, but there are important differences: For <literal>kill-popups</literal>,
4446 the document need not be buffered, so it can be incrementally rendered while
4447 downloading. But <literal>kill-popups</literal> doesn't catch as many pop-ups as
4449 linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>all-popups</replaceable>}</link></literal>
4450 does and is not as smart as <literal><link
4451 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
4455 Think of it as a fast and efficient replacement for a filter that you
4456 can use if you don't want any filtering at all. Note that it doesn't make
4457 sense to combine it with any <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action,
4458 since as soon as one <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> applies,
4459 the whole document needs to be buffered anyway, which destroys the advantage of
4460 the <literal>kill-popups</literal> action over its filter equivalent.
4463 Killing all pop-ups unconditionally is problematic. Many shops and banks rely on
4464 pop-ups to display forms, shopping carts etc, and the <literal><link
4465 linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{<replaceable>unsolicited-popups</replaceable>}</link>
4466 </literal> does a fairly good job of catching only the unwanted ones.
4469 If the only kind of pop-ups that you want to kill are exit consoles (those
4470 <emphasis>really nasty</emphasis> windows that appear when you close an other
4471 one), you might want to use
4473 linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>js-annoyances</replaceable>}</literal>
4479 An alternate spelling is <literal>+kill-popup</literal>, which is
4487 <term>Example usage:</term>
4489 <para><screen>+kill-popups</screen></para>
4496 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4497 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="limit-connect">
4498 <title>limit-connect</title>
4502 <term>Typical use:</term>
4504 <para>Prevent abuse of <application>Privoxy</application> as a TCP proxy relay or disable SSL for untrusted sites</para>
4509 <term>Effect:</term>
4512 Specifies to which ports HTTP CONNECT requests are allowable.
4519 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4521 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4526 <term>Parameter:</term>
4529 A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum
4530 defaulting to 0 and the maximum to 65K).
4539 By default, i.e. if no <literal>limit-connect</literal> action applies,
4540 <application>Privoxy</application> only allows HTTP CONNECT
4541 requests to port 443 (the standard, secure HTTPS port). Use
4542 <literal>limit-connect</literal> if more fine-grained control is desired
4543 for some or all destinations.
4546 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
4547 (<quote>https://</quote> URLs) through proxies. It works very simply:
4548 the proxy connects to the server on the specified port, and then
4549 short-circuits its connections to the client and to the remote server.
4550 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can be
4551 abused as TCP relays very easily.
4554 <application>Privoxy</application> relays HTTPS traffic without seeing
4555 the decoded content. Websites can leverage this limitation to circumvent Privoxy's
4556 filters. By specifying an invalid port range you can disable HTTPS entirely.
4557 If you plan to disable SSL by default, consider enabling
4558 <literal><link linkend="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks ">treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</link></literal>
4559 as well, to be able to quickly create exceptions.
4565 <term>Example usages:</term>
4567 <!-- I had trouble getting the spacing to look right in my browser -->
4568 <!-- I probably have the wrong font setup, bollocks. -->
4569 <!-- Apparently the emphasis tag uses a proportional font no matter what -->
4571 <screen>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need not be specified.
4572 +limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.
4573 +limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Ports less than 3, 7, 20 to 100 and above 500 are OK.
4574 +limit-connect{-} # All ports are OK
4575 +limit-connect{,} # No HTTPS traffic is allowed</screen>
4582 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4583 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="prevent-compression">
4584 <title>prevent-compression</title>
4588 <term>Typical use:</term>
4591 Ensure that servers send the content uncompressed, so it can be
4592 passed through <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>s.
4598 <term>Effect:</term>
4601 Removes the Accept-Encoding header which can be used to ask for compressed transfer.
4608 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4610 <para>Boolean.</para>
4615 <term>Parameter:</term>
4627 More and more websites send their content compressed by default, which
4628 is generally a good idea and saves bandwidth. But for the <literal><link
4629 linkend="filter">filter</link></literal>, <literal><link linkend="deanimate-gifs">deanimate-gifs</link></literal>
4630 and <literal><link linkend="kill-popups">kill-popups</link></literal> actions to work,
4631 <application>Privoxy</application> needs access to the uncompressed data.
4632 Unfortunately, <application>Privoxy</application> can't yet(!) uncompress, filter, and
4633 re-compress the content on the fly. So if you want to ensure that all websites, including
4634 those that normally compress, can be filtered, you need to use this action.
4637 This will slow down transfers from those websites, though. If you use any of the above-mentioned
4638 actions, you will typically want to use <literal>prevent-compression</literal> in conjunction
4642 Note that some (rare) ill-configured sites don't handle requests for uncompressed
4643 documents correctly (they send an empty document body). If you use <literal>prevent-compression</literal>
4644 per default, you'll have to add exceptions for those sites. See the example for how to do that.
4650 <term>Example usage (sections):</term>
4653 <screen># Set default:
4655 {+prevent-compression}
4658 # Make exceptions for ill sites:
4660 {-prevent-compression}
4662 www.pclinuxonline.com</screen>
4671 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4672 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="overwrite-last-modified">
4673 <title>overwrite-last-modified</title>
4679 <term>Typical use:</term>
4681 <para>Prevent yet another way to track the user's steps between sessions.</para>
4686 <term>Effect:</term>
4689 Deletes the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> HTTP server header or modifies its value.
4696 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4698 <para>Parameterized.</para>
4703 <term>Parameter:</term>
4706 One of the keywords: <quote>block</quote>, <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote>
4707 and <quote>randomize</quote>
4716 Removing the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header is useful for filter
4717 testing, where you want to force a real reload instead of getting status
4718 code <quote>304</quote>, which would cause the browser to reuse the old
4719 version of the page.
4722 The <quote>randomize</quote> option overwrites the value of the
4723 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with a randomly chosen time
4724 between the original value and the current time. In theory the server
4725 could send each document with a different <quote>Last-Modified:</quote>
4726 header to track visits without using cookies. <quote>Randomize</quote>
4727 makes it impossible and the browser can still revalidate cached documents.
4730 <quote>reset-to-request-time</quote> overwrites the value of the
4731 <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header with the current time. You could use
4732 this option together with
4733 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>
4734 to further customize your random range.
4737 The preferred parameter here is <quote>randomize</quote>. It is safe
4738 to use, as long as the time settings are more or less correct.
4739 If the server sets the <quote>Last-Modified:</quote> header to the time
4740 of the request, the random range becomes zero and the value stays the same.
4741 Therefore you should later randomize it a second time with
4742 <literal><link linkend="hide-if-modified-since">hided-if-modified-since</link></literal>,
4746 It is also recommended to use this action together with
4747 <literal><link linkend="crunch-if-none-match">crunch-if-none-match</link></literal>.
4753 <term>Example usage:</term>
4756 <screen># Let the browser revalidate without being tracked across sessions
4757 {+hide-if-modified-since {-1}\
4758 +overwrite-last-modified {randomize}\
4759 +crunch-if-none-match}
4768 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4769 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="redirect">
4770 <title>redirect</title>
4776 <term>Typical use:</term>
4779 Redirect requests to other sites.
4785 <term>Effect:</term>
4788 Convinces the browser that the requested document has been moved
4789 to another location and the browser should get it from there.
4796 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4798 <para>Parameterized</para>
4803 <term>Parameter:</term>
4815 This action is useful to replace whole documents with your own
4816 ones. For that to work, they have to be available on another server.
4819 You can do the same by combining the actions
4820 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
4821 <literal><link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> and
4822 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{URL}</link></literal>.
4823 It doesn't sound right for non-image documents, and that's why this action
4827 This action will be ignored if you use it together with
4828 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal>.
4834 <term>Example usage:</term>
4837 <screen># Replace example.com's style sheet with another one
4838 {+redirect{http://localhost/css-replacements/example.com.css}}
4839 example.com/stylesheet.css</screen>
4848 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4849 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-vanilla-wafer">
4850 <title>send-vanilla-wafer</title>
4854 <term>Typical use:</term>
4857 Feed log analysis scripts with useless data.
4863 <term>Effect:</term>
4866 Sends a cookie with each request stating that you do not accept any copyright
4867 on cookies sent to you, and asking the site operator not to track you.
4874 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4876 <para>Boolean.</para>
4881 <term>Parameter:</term>
4893 The vanilla wafer is a (relatively) unique header and could conceivably be used to track you.
4896 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
4902 <term>Example usage:</term>
4905 <screen>+send-vanilla-wafer</screen>
4914 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4915 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="send-wafer">
4916 <title>send-wafer</title>
4920 <term>Typical use:</term>
4923 Send custom cookies or feed log analysis scripts with even more useless data.
4929 <term>Effect:</term>
4932 Sends a custom, user-defined cookie with each request.
4939 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
4941 <para>Multi-value.</para>
4946 <term>Parameter:</term>
4949 A string of the form <quote><replaceable class="option">name</replaceable>=<replaceable
4950 class="parameter">value</replaceable></quote>.
4959 Being multi-valued, multiple instances of this action can apply to the same request,
4960 resulting in multiple cookies being sent.
4963 This action is rarely used and not enabled in the default configuration.
4968 <term>Example usage (section):</term>
4971 <screen>{+send-wafer{UsingPrivoxy=true}}
4972 my-internal-testing-server.void</screen>
4980 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
4981 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="session-cookies-only">
4982 <title>session-cookies-only</title>
4986 <term>Typical use:</term>
4989 Allow only temporary <quote>session</quote> cookies (for the current
4990 browser session <emphasis>only</emphasis>).
4996 <term>Effect:</term>
4999 Deletes the <quote>expires</quote> field from <quote>Set-Cookie:</quote>
5000 server headers. Most browsers will not store such cookies permanently and
5001 forget them in between sessions.
5008 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5010 <para>Boolean.</para>
5015 <term>Parameter:</term>
5027 This is less strict than <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> /
5028 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal> and allows you to browse
5029 websites that insist or rely on setting cookies, without compromising your privacy too badly.
5032 Most browsers will not permanently store cookies that have been processed by
5033 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal> and will forget about them between sessions.
5034 This makes profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
5035 that you can log in for transactions. This is generally turned on for all
5036 sites, and is the recommended setting.
5039 It makes <emphasis>no sense at all</emphasis> to use <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>
5040 together with <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal> or
5041 <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>. If you do, cookies
5042 will be plainly killed.
5045 Note that it is up to the browser how it handles such cookies without an <quote>expires</quote>
5046 field. If you use an exotic browser, you might want to try it out to be sure.
5049 This setting also has no effect on cookies that may have been stored
5050 previously by the browser before starting <application>Privoxy</application>.
5051 These would have to be removed manually.
5054 <application>Privoxy</application> also uses
5055 the <link linkend="filter-content-cookies">content-cookies filter</link>
5056 to block some types of cookies. Content cookies are not effected by
5057 <literal>session-cookies-only</literal>.
5063 <term>Example usage:</term>
5066 <screen>+session-cookies-only</screen>
5074 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5075 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="set-image-blocker">
5076 <title>set-image-blocker</title>
5080 <term>Typical use:</term>
5082 <para>Choose the replacement for blocked images</para>
5087 <term>Effect:</term>
5090 This action alone doesn't do anything noticeable. If <emphasis>both</emphasis>
5091 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> <emphasis>and</emphasis> <literal><link
5092 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> <emphasis>also</emphasis>
5093 apply, i.e. if the request is to be blocked as an image,
5094 <emphasis>then</emphasis> the parameter of this action decides what will be
5095 sent as a replacement.
5102 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5104 <para>Parameterized.</para>
5109 <term>Parameter:</term>
5114 <quote>pattern</quote> to send a built-in checkerboard pattern image. The image is visually
5115 decent, scales very well, and makes it obvious where banners were busted.
5120 <quote>blank</quote> to send a built-in transparent image. This makes banners disappear
5121 completely, but makes it hard to detect where <application>Privoxy</application> has blocked
5122 images on a given page and complicates troubleshooting if <application>Privoxy</application>
5123 has blocked innocent images, like navigation icons.
5128 <quote><replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable></quote> to
5129 send a redirect to <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>. You can redirect
5130 to any image anywhere, even in your local filesystem via <quote>file:///</quote> URL.
5131 (But note that not all browsers support redirecting to a local file system).
5134 A good application of redirects is to use special <application>Privoxy</application>-built-in
5135 URLs, which send the built-in images, as <replaceable class="parameter">target-url</replaceable>.
5136 This has the same visual effect as specifying <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote> in
5137 the first place, but enables your browser to cache the replacement image, instead of requesting
5138 it over and over again.
5149 The URLs for the built-in images are <quote>http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=<replaceable
5150 class="parameter">type</replaceable></quote>, where <replaceable class="parameter">type</replaceable> is
5151 either <quote>blank</quote> or <quote>pattern</quote>.
5154 There is a third (advanced) type, called <quote>auto</quote>. It is <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> to be
5155 used in <literal>set-image-blocker</literal>, but meant for use from <link linkend="filter-file">filters</link>.
5156 Auto will select the type of image that would have applied to the referring page, had it been an image.
5162 <term>Example usage:</term>
5168 <screen>+set-image-blocker{pattern}</screen>
5171 Redirect to the BSD devil:
5174 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://www.freebsd.org/gifs/dae_up3.gif}</screen>
5177 Redirect to the built-in pattern for better caching:
5180 <screen>+set-image-blocker{http://config.privoxy.org/send-banner?type=pattern}</screen>
5188 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5189 <sect3 renderas="sect4" id="treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks">
5190 <title>treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</title>
5196 <term>Typical use:</term>
5198 <para>Block forbidden connects with an easy to find error message.</para>
5203 <term>Effect:</term>
5206 If this action is enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> no longer
5207 makes a difference between forbidden connects and ordinary blocks.
5214 <!-- Boolean, Parameterized, Multi-value -->
5216 <para>Boolean</para>
5221 <term>Parameter:</term>
5231 By default <application>Privoxy</application> answers
5232 <link linkend="limit-connect">forbidden <quote>Connect</quote> requests</link>
5233 with a short error message inside the headers. If the browser doesn't display
5234 headers (most don't), you just see an empty page.
5237 With this action enabled, <application>Privoxy</application> displays
5238 the message that is used for ordinary blocks instead. If you decide
5239 to make an exception for the page in question, you can do so by
5240 following the <quote>See why</quote> link.
5243 For <quote>Connect</quote> requests the clients tell
5244 <application>Privoxy</application> which host they are interested
5245 in, but not which document they plan to get later. As a result, the
5246 <quote>Go there anyway</quote> link becomes rather useless:
5247 it lets the client request the home page of the forbidden host
5248 through unencrypted HTTP, still using the port of the last request.
5251 If you previously configured <application>Privoxy</application> to do the
5252 request through a SSL tunnel, everything will work. Most likely you haven't
5253 and the server will responds with an error message because it is expecting
5260 <term>Example usage:</term>
5263 <screen>+treat-forbidden-connects-like-blocks</screen>
5271 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5273 <title>Summary</title>
5275 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
5276 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
5277 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
5278 content, and other criteria, he may depend on. There is no way to have hard
5279 and fast rules for all sites. See the <link
5280 linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link> for a brief example on troubleshooting
5286 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5287 <sect2 id="aliases">
5288 <title>Aliases</title>
5290 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
5291 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other actions.
5292 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in actions.
5293 Currently, an alias name can contain any character except space, tab,
5295 <quote>{</quote> and <quote>}</quote>, but we <emphasis>strongly
5296 recommend</emphasis> that you only use <quote>a</quote> to <quote>z</quote>,
5297 <quote>0</quote> to <quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and <quote>-</quote>.
5298 Alias names are not case sensitive, and are not required to start with a
5299 <quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> sign, since they are merely textually
5303 Aliases can be used throughout the actions file, but they <emphasis>must be
5304 defined in a special section at the top of the file!</emphasis>
5305 And there can only be one such section per actions file. Each actions file may
5306 have its own alias section, and the aliases defined in it are only visible
5310 There are two main reasons to use aliases: One is to save typing for frequently
5311 used combinations of actions, the other one is a gain in flexibility: If you
5312 decide once how you want to handle shops by defining an alias called
5313 <quote>shop</quote>, you can later change your policy on shops in
5314 <emphasis>one</emphasis> place, and your changes will take effect everywhere
5315 in the actions file where the <quote>shop</quote> alias is used. Calling aliases
5316 by their purpose also makes your actions files more readable.
5319 Currently, there is one big drawback to using aliases, though:
5320 <application>Privoxy</application>'s built-in web-based action file
5321 editor honors aliases when reading the actions files, but it expands
5322 them before writing. So the effects of your aliases are of course preserved,
5323 but the aliases themselves are lost when you edit sections that use aliases
5325 This is likely to change in future versions of <application>Privoxy</application>.
5329 Now let's define some aliases...
5334 # Useful custom aliases we can use later.
5336 # Note the (required!) section header line and that this section
5337 # must be at the top of the actions file!
5341 # These aliases just save typing later:
5342 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5344 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5345 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5346 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5347 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5349 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5350 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5352 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>
5353 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link>
5355 # Short names for other aliases, for really lazy people ;-)
5357 c0 = +crunch-all-cookies
5358 c1 = -crunch-all-cookies</screen>
5362 ...and put them to use. These sections would appear in the lower part of an
5363 actions file and define exceptions to the default actions (as specified further
5364 up for the <quote>/</quote> pattern):
5369 # These sites are either very complex or very keen on
5370 # user data and require minimal interference to work:
5373 .office.microsoft.com
5374 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
5378 # Allow cookies (for setting and retrieving your customer data)
5382 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5385 # These shops require pop-ups:
5387 {shop -kill-popups -filter{all-popups}}
5389 .overclockers.co.uk</screen>
5393 Aliases like <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote> are often used for
5394 <quote>problem</quote> sites that require some actions to be disabled
5395 in order to function properly.
5401 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
5402 <sect2 id="act-examples">
5403 <title>Actions Files Tutorial</title>
5405 The above chapters have shown <link linkend="actions-file">which actions files
5406 there are and how they are organized</link>, how actions are <link
5407 linkend="actions">specified</link> and <link linkend="actions-apply">applied
5408 to URLs</link>, how <link linkend="af-patterns">patterns</link> work, and how to
5409 define and use <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link>. Now, let's look at an
5410 example <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>user.action</filename>
5411 file and see how all these pieces come together:
5414 <sect3><title>default.action</title>
5417 Every config file should start with a short comment stating its purpose:
5421 <screen># Sample default.action file <ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net></screen>
5425 Then, since this is the <filename>default.action</filename> file, the
5426 first section is a special section for internal use that you needn't
5427 change or worry about:
5432 ##########################################################################
5433 # Settings -- Don't change! For internal Privoxy use ONLY.
5434 ##########################################################################
5437 for-privoxy-version=3.0</screen>
5441 After that comes the (optional) alias section. We'll use the example
5442 section from the above <link linkend="aliases">chapter on aliases</link>,
5443 that also explains why and how aliases are used:
5448 ##########################################################################
5450 ##########################################################################
5453 # These aliases just save typing later:
5454 # (Note that some already use other aliases!)
5456 +crunch-all-cookies = +<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> +<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5457 -crunch-all-cookies = -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link>
5458 block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5459 mercy-for-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link>
5461 # These aliases define combinations of actions
5462 # that are useful for certain types of sites:
5464 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>
5465 shop = -crunch-all-cookies -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></screen>
5469 Now come the regular sections, i.e. sets of actions, accompanied
5470 by URL patterns to which they apply. Remember <emphasis>all actions
5471 are disabled when matching starts</emphasis>, so we have to explicitly
5472 enable the ones we want.
5476 The first regular section is probably the most important. It has only
5477 one pattern, <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, but this pattern
5478 <link linkend="af-patterns">matches all URLs</link>. Therefore, the
5479 set of actions used in this <quote>default</quote> section <emphasis>will
5480 be applied to all requests as a start</emphasis>. It can be partly or
5481 wholly overridden by later matches further down this file, or in user.action,
5482 but it will still be largely responsible for your overall browsing
5487 Again, at the start of matching, all actions are disabled, so there is
5488 no real need to disable any actions here, but we will do that nonetheless,
5489 to have a complete listing for your reference. (Remember: a <quote>+</quote>
5490 preceding the action name enables the action, a <quote>-</quote> disables!).
5491 Also note how this long line has been made more readable by splitting it into
5492 multiple lines with line continuation.
5497 ##########################################################################
5498 # "Defaults" section:
5499 ##########################################################################
5501 -<link linkend="ADD-HEADER">add-header</link> \
5502 -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> \
5503 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES">crunch-incoming-cookies</link> \
5504 -<link linkend="CRUNCH-OUTGOING-COOKIES">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link> \
5505 +<link linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS">deanimate-gifs</link> \
5506 -<link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION">downgrade-http-version</link> \
5507 +<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> \
5508 +<link linkend="FILTER-JS-ANNOYANCES">filter{js-annoyances}</link> \
5509 -<link linkend="FILTER-JS-EVENTS">filter{js-events}</link> \
5510 +<link linkend="FILTER-HTML-ANNOYANCES">filter{html-annoyances}</link> \
5511 -<link linkend="FILTER-CONTENT-COOKIES">filter{content-cookies}</link> \
5512 +<link linkend="FILTER-REFRESH-TAGS">filter{refresh-tags}</link> \
5513 +<link linkend="FILTER-UNSOLICITED-POPUPS">filter{unsolicited-popups}</link> \
5514 -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{all-popups}</link> \
5515 +<link linkend="FILTER-IMG-REORDER">filter{img-reorder}</link> \
5516 +<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-SIZE">filter{banners-by-size}</link> \
5517 -<link linkend="FILTER-BANNERS-BY-LINK">filter{banners-by-link}</link> \
5518 +<link linkend="FILTER-WEBBUGS">filter{webbugs}</link> \
5519 -<link linkend="FILTER-TINY-TEXTFORMS">filter{tiny-textforms}</link> \
5520 +<link linkend="FILTER-JUMPING-WINDOWS">filter{jumping-windows}</link> \
5521 -<link linkend="FILTER-FRAMESET-BORDERS">filter{frameset-borders}</link> \
5522 -<link linkend="FILTER-DEMORONIZER">filter{demoronizer}</link> \
5523 -<link linkend="FILTER-SHOCKWAVE-FLASH">filter{shockwave-flash}</link> \
5524 -<link linkend="FILTER-QUICKTIME-KIOSKMODE">filter{quicktime-kioskmode}</link> \
5525 -<link linkend="FILTER-FUN">filter{fun}</link> \
5526 -<link linkend="FILTER-CRUDE-PARENTAL">filter{crude-parental}</link> \
5527 +<link linkend="FILTER-IE-EXPLOITS">filter{ie-exploits}</link> \
5528 -<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> \
5529 +<link linkend="HIDE-FORWARDED-FOR-HEADERS">hide-forwarded-for-headers</link> \
5530 +<link linkend="HIDE-FROM-HEADER">hide-from-header{block}</link> \
5531 +<link linkend="HIDE-REFERER">hide-referrer{forge}</link> \
5532 -<link linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT">hide-user-agent</link> \
5533 -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> \
5534 -<link linkend="LIMIT-CONNECT">limit-connect</link> \
5535 +<link linkend="PREVENT-COMPRESSION">prevent-compression</link> \
5536 -<link linkend="SEND-VANILLA-WAFER">send-vanilla-wafer</link> \
5537 -<link linkend="SEND-WAFER">send-wafer</link> \
5538 +<link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY">session-cookies-only</link> \
5539 +<link linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER">set-image-blocker{pattern}</link> \
5541 / # forward slash will match *all* potential URL patterns.</screen>
5545 The default behavior is now set. Note that some actions, like not hiding
5546 the user agent, are part of a <quote>general policy</quote> that applies
5547 universally and won't get any exceptions defined later. Other choices,
5548 like not blocking (which is <emphasis>understandably</emphasis> the
5549 default!) need exceptions, i.e. we need to specify explicitly what we
5550 want to block in later sections.
5554 The first of our specialized sections is concerned with <quote>fragile</quote>
5555 sites, i.e. sites that require minimum interference, because they are either
5556 very complex or very keen on tracking you (and have mechanisms in place that
5557 make them unusable for people who avoid being tracked). We will simply use
5558 our pre-defined <literal>fragile</literal> alias instead of stating the list
5559 of actions explicitly:
5564 ##########################################################################
5565 # Exceptions for sites that'll break under the default action set:
5566 ##########################################################################
5568 # "Fragile" Use a minimum set of actions for these sites (see alias above):
5571 .office.microsoft.com # surprise, surprise!
5572 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com</screen>
5576 Shopping sites are not as fragile, but they typically
5577 require cookies to log in, and pop-up windows for shopping
5578 carts or item details. Again, we'll use a pre-defined alias:
5587 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
5589 .scan.co.uk</screen>
5592 <!-- No longer needed BEGIN OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK
5595 Then, there are sites which rely on pop-up windows (yuck!) to work.
5596 Since we made pop-up-killing our default above, we need to make exceptions
5597 now. <ulink url="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</ulink> users, who
5598 can turn on smart handling of unwanted pop-ups in their browsers, can
5600 -<literal><link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link></literal> (and
5601 -<literal><link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link></literal>) above
5602 and hence don't need this section. Anyway, disabling an already disabled
5603 action doesn't hurt, so we'll define our exceptions regardless of what was
5604 chosen in the defaults section:
5609 # These sites require pop-ups too :(
5611 { -<link linkend="KILL-POPUPS">kill-popups</link> -<link linkend="FILTER-ALL-POPUPS">filter{popups}</link> }
5614 .deutsche-bank-24.de</screen>
5617 END OF COMMENTED OUT BLOCK -->
5620 The <literal><link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link></literal>
5621 action, which we enabled per default above, breaks some sites. So disable
5622 it for popular sites where we know it misbehaves:
5627 { -<link linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS">fast-redirects</link> }
5631 .altavista.com/.*(like|url|link):http
5632 .altavista.com/trans.*urltext=http
5633 .nytimes.com</screen>
5637 It is important that <application>Privoxy</application> knows which
5638 URLs belong to images, so that <emphasis>if</emphasis> they are to
5639 be blocked, a substitute image can be sent, rather than an HTML page.
5640 Contacting the remote site to find out is not an option, since it
5641 would destroy the loading time advantage of banner blocking, and it
5642 would feed the advertisers (in terms of money <emphasis>and</emphasis>
5643 information). We can mark any URL as an image with the <literal><link
5644 linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> action,
5645 and marking all URLs that end in a known image file extension is a
5651 ##########################################################################
5653 ##########################################################################
5655 # Define which file types will be treated as images, in case they get
5656 # blocked further down this file:
5658 { +<link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE">handle-as-image</link> }
5659 /.*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp|ico)$</screen>
5663 And then there are known banner sources. They often use scripts to
5664 generate the banners, so it won't be visible from the URL that the
5665 request is for an image. Hence we block them <emphasis>and</emphasis>
5666 mark them as images in one go, with the help of our
5667 <literal>block-as-image</literal> alias defined above. (We could of
5668 course just as well use <literal>+<link linkend="block">block</link>
5669 +<link linkend="handle-as-image">handle-as-image</link></literal> here.)
5670 Remember that the type of the replacement image is chosen by the
5671 <literal><link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link></literal>
5672 action. Since all URLs have matched the default section with its
5673 <literal>+<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker</link>{pattern}</literal>
5674 action before, it still applies and needn't be repeated:
5679 # Known ad generators:
5684 .ad.*.doubleclick.net
5685 .a.yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
5686 .a[0-9].yimg.com/(?:(?!/i/).)*$
5693 One of the most important jobs of <application>Privoxy</application>
5694 is to block banners. A huge bunch of them are already <quote>blocked</quote>
5695 by the <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{banners-by-size}</literal>
5696 action, which we enabled above, and which deletes the references to banner
5697 images from the pages while they are loaded, so the browser doesn't request
5698 them anymore, and hence they don't need to be blocked here. But this naturally
5699 doesn't catch all banners, and some people choose not to use filters, so we
5700 need a comprehensive list of patterns for banner URLs here, and apply the
5701 <literal><link linkend="block">block</link></literal> action to them.
5704 First comes a bunch of generic patterns, which do most of the work, by
5705 matching typical domain and path name components of banners. Then comes
5706 a list of individual patterns for specific sites, which is omitted here
5707 to keep the example short:
5712 ##########################################################################
5713 # Block these fine banners:
5714 ##########################################################################
5715 { <link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link> }
5723 /.*count(er)?\.(pl|cgi|exe|dll|asp|php[34]?)
5724 /(?:.*/)?(publicite|werbung|rekla(ma|me|am)|annonse|maino(kset|nta|s)?)/
5726 # Site-specific patterns (abbreviated):
5728 .hitbox.com</screen>
5732 You wouldn't believe how many advertisers actually call their banner
5733 servers ads.<replaceable>company</replaceable>.com, or call the directory
5734 in which the banners are stored simply <quote>banners</quote>. So the above
5735 generic patterns are surprisingly effective.
5738 But being very generic, they necessarily also catch URLs that we don't want
5739 to block. The pattern <literal>.*ads.</literal> e.g. catches
5740 <quote>nasty-<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.nasty-corp.com</quote> as intended,
5741 but also <quote>downlo<emphasis>ads</emphasis>.sourcefroge.net</quote> or
5742 <quote><emphasis>ads</emphasis>l.some-provider.net.</quote> So here come some
5743 well-known exceptions to the <literal>+<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
5747 Note that these are exceptions to exceptions from the default! Consider the URL
5748 <quote>downloads.sourcefroge.net</quote>: Initially, all actions are deactivated,
5749 so it wouldn't get blocked. Then comes the defaults section, which matches the
5750 URL, but just deactivates the <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal>
5751 action once again. Then it matches <literal>.*ads.</literal>, an exception to the
5752 general non-blocking policy, and suddenly
5753 <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">+block</link></literal> applies. And now, it'll match
5754 <literal>.*loads.</literal>, where <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">-block</link></literal>
5755 applies, so (unless it matches <emphasis>again</emphasis> further down) it ends up
5756 with no <literal><link linkend="BLOCK">block</link></literal> action applying.
5761 ##########################################################################
5762 # Save some innocent victims of the above generic block patterns:
5763 ##########################################################################
5767 { -<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
5768 adv[io]*. # (for advogato.org and advice.*)
5769 adsl. # (has nothing to do with ads)
5770 ad[ud]*. # (adult.* and add.*)
5771 .edu # (universities don't host banners (yet!))
5772 .*loads. # (downloads, uploads etc)
5780 www.globalintersec.com/adv # (adv = advanced)
5781 www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/adv</screen>
5785 Filtering source code can have nasty side effects,
5786 so make an exception for our friends at sourceforge.net,
5787 and all paths with <quote>cvs</quote> in them. Note that
5788 <literal>-<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link></literal>
5789 disables <emphasis>all</emphasis> filters in one fell swoop!
5794 # Don't filter code!
5796 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
5798 .sourceforge.net</screen>
5802 The actual <filename>default.action</filename> is of course more
5803 comprehensive, but we hope this example made clear how it works.
5808 <sect3><title>user.action</title>
5811 So far we are painting with a broad brush by setting general policies,
5812 which would be a reasonable starting point for many people. Now,
5813 you might want to be more specific and have customized rules that
5814 are more suitable to your personal habits and preferences. These would
5815 be for narrowly defined situations like your ISP or your bank, and should
5816 be placed in <filename>user.action</filename>, which is parsed after all other
5817 actions files and hence has the last word, over-riding any previously
5818 defined actions. <filename>user.action</filename> is also a
5819 <emphasis>safe</emphasis> place for your personal settings, since
5820 <filename>default.action</filename> is actively maintained by the
5821 <application>Privoxy</application> developers and you'll probably want
5822 to install updated versions from time to time.
5826 So let's look at a few examples of things that one might typically do in
5827 <filename>user.action</filename>:
5831 <!-- brief sample user.action here -->
5835 # My user.action file. <fred@foobar.com></screen>
5839 As <link linkend="aliases">aliases</link> are local to the actions
5840 file that they are defined in, you can't use the ones from
5841 <filename>default.action</filename>, unless you repeat them here:
5846 # Aliases are local to the file they are defined in.
5847 # (Re-)define aliases for this file:
5851 # These aliases just save typing later, and the alias names should
5852 # be self explanatory.
5854 +crunch-all-cookies = +crunch-incoming-cookies +crunch-outgoing-cookies
5855 -crunch-all-cookies = -crunch-incoming-cookies -crunch-outgoing-cookies
5856 allow-all-cookies = -crunch-all-cookies -session-cookies-only
5857 allow-popups = -filter{all-popups} -kill-popups
5858 +block-as-image = +block +handle-as-image
5859 -block-as-image = -block
5861 # These aliases define combinations of actions that are useful for
5862 # certain types of sites:
5864 fragile = -block -crunch-all-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referrer -kill-popups
5865 shop = -crunch-all-cookies allow-popups
5867 # Allow ads for selected useful free sites:
5869 allow-ads = -block -filter{banners-by-size} -filter{banners-by-link}</screen>
5875 Say you have accounts on some sites that you visit regularly, and
5876 you don't want to have to log in manually each time. So you'd like
5877 to allow persistent cookies for these sites. The
5878 <literal>allow-all-cookies</literal> alias defined above does exactly
5879 that, i.e. it disables crunching of cookies in any direction, and the
5880 processing of cookies to make them only temporary.
5885 { allow-all-cookies }
5891 .redhat.com</screen>
5895 Your bank is allergic to some filter, but you don't know which, so you disable them all:
5900 { -<link linkend="FILTER">filter</link> }
5901 .your-home-banking-site.com</screen>
5905 Some file types you may not want to filter for various reasons:
5910 # Technical documentation is likely to contain strings that might
5911 # erroneously get altered by the JavaScript-oriented filters:
5916 # And this stupid host sends streaming video with a wrong MIME type,
5917 # so that Privoxy thinks it is getting HTML and starts filtering:
5919 stupid-server.example.com/</screen>
5923 Example of a simple <link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> action. Say you've
5924 seen an ad on your favourite page on example.com that you want to get rid of.
5925 You have right-clicked the image, selected <quote>copy image location</quote>
5926 and pasted the URL below while removing the leading http://, into a
5927 <literal>{ +block }</literal> section. Note that <literal>{ +handle-as-image
5928 }</literal> need not be specified, since all URLs ending in
5929 <literal>.gif</literal> will be tagged as images by the general rules as set
5930 in default.action anyway:
5935 { +<link linkend="BLOCK">block</link> }
5936 www.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.gif
5937 another.popular.site.net/more/junk/here/</screen>
5941 The URLs of dynamically generated banners, especially from large banner
5942 farms, often don't use the well-known image file name extensions, which
5943 makes it impossible for <application>Privoxy</application> to guess
5944 the file type just by looking at the URL.
5945 You can use the <literal>+block-as-image</literal> alias defined above for
5947 Note that objects which match this rule but then turn out NOT to be an
5948 image are typically rendered as a <quote>broken image</quote> icon by the
5949 browser. Use cautiously.
5957 ar.atwola.com/</screen>
5961 Now you noticed that the default configuration breaks Forbes Magazine,
5962 but you were too lazy to find out which action is the culprit, and you
5963 were again too lazy to give <link linkend="contact">feedback</link>, so
5964 you just used the <literal>fragile</literal> alias on the site, and
5965 -- <emphasis>whoa!</emphasis> -- it worked. The <literal>fragile</literal>
5966 aliases disables those actions that are most likely to break a site. Also,
5967 good for testing purposes to see if it is <application>Privoxy</application>
5968 that is causing the problem or not.
5974 .forbes.com</screen>
5978 You like the <quote>fun</quote> text replacements in <filename>default.filter</filename>,
5979 but it is disabled in the distributed actions file. (My colleagues on the team just
5980 don't have a sense of humour, that's why! ;-). So you'd like to turn it on in your private,
5981 update-safe config, once and for all:
5986 { +<link linkend="filter-fun">filter{fun}</link> }
5987 / # For ALL sites!</screen>
5991 Note that the above is not really a good idea: There are exceptions
5992 to the filters in <filename>default.action</filename> for things that
5993 really shouldn't be filtered, like code on CVS->Web interfaces. Since
5994 <filename>user.action</filename> has the last word, these exceptions
5995 won't be valid for the <quote>fun</quote> filtering specified here.
5999 You might also worry about how your favourite free websites are
6000 funded, and find that they rely on displaying banner advertisements
6001 to survive. So you might want to specifically allow banners for those
6002 sites that you feel provide value to you:
6014 Note that <literal>allow-ads</literal> has been aliased to
6015 <literal>-<link linkend="block">block</link></literal>,
6016 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-size">filter{banners-by-size}</link></literal>, and
6017 <literal>-<link linkend="filter-banners-by-link">filter{banners-by-link}</link></literal> above.
6021 <filename>user.action</filename> is generally the best place to define
6022 exceptions and additions to the default policies of
6023 <filename>default.action</filename>. Some actions are safe to have their
6024 default policies set here though. So let's set a default policy to have a
6025 <quote>blank</quote> image as opposed to the checkerboard pattern for
6026 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> sites. <quote>/</quote> of course matches all URL
6032 { +<link linkend="set-image-blocker">set-image-blocker{blank}</link> }
6033 / # ALL sites</screen>
6039 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6043 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6045 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6047 <sect1 id="filter-file">
6048 <title>Filter Files</title>
6051 On-the-fly text substitutions that can be invoked through the
6052 <literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link></literal> action need
6053 to be defined in a <quote>filter file</quote>. Once defined, they
6054 can then be invoked as an <quote>action</quote>. Mulitple filter files can be
6055 defined through the <literal> <link
6056 linkend="filterfile">filterfile</link></literal> config directive. The filters
6057 as supplied by the developers will be found in
6058 <filename>default.filter</filename>. It is recommended that any locally
6059 defined or modified filters go in a separately defined file such as
6060 <filename>user.filter</filename>.
6065 Typical reasons for doing these kinds of substitutions are to eliminate
6066 common annoyances in HTML and JavaScript, such as pop-up windows,
6067 exit consoles, crippled windows without navigation tools, the
6068 infamous <BLINK> tag etc, to suppress images with certain
6069 width and height attributes (standard banner sizes or web-bugs),
6070 or just to have fun. The possibilities are endless.
6074 Filtering works on any text-based document type, including
6075 HTML, JavaScript, CSS etc. (all <literal>text/*</literal>
6076 MIME types, <emphasis>except</emphasis> <literal>text/plain</literal>).
6077 Substitutions are made at the source level, so if you want to <quote>roll
6078 your own</quote> filters, you should first be familiar with HTML syntax,
6079 and, of course, regular expressions. By default, filters are only applied
6080 to the document content, but can be extended to the headers with
6081 the supplemental actions:
6082 <link linkend="filter-client-headers">filter-client-headers</link> and
6083 <link linkend="filter-server-headers">filter-server-headers</link>.
6087 Just like the <link linkend="actions-file">actions files</link>, the
6088 filter file is organized in sections, which are called <emphasis>filters</emphasis>
6089 here. Each filter consists of a heading line, that starts with the
6090 <emphasis>keyword</emphasis> <literal>FILTER:</literal>, followed by
6091 the filter's <emphasis>name</emphasis>, and a short (one line)
6092 <emphasis>description</emphasis> of what it does. Below that line
6093 come the <emphasis>jobs</emphasis>, i.e. lines that define the actual
6094 text substitutions. By convention, the name of a filter
6095 should describe what the filter <emphasis>eliminates</emphasis>. The
6096 comment is used in the <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6097 user interface</ulink>.
6101 Once a filter called <replaceable>name</replaceable> has been defined
6102 in the filter file, it can be invoked by using an action of the form
6103 +<literal><link linkend="filter">filter</link>{<replaceable>name</replaceable>}</literal>
6104 in any <link linkend="actions-file">actions file</link>.
6108 A filter header line for a filter called <quote>foo</quote> could look
6113 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"</screen>
6117 Below that line, and up to the next header line, come the jobs that
6118 define what text replacements the filter executes. They are specified
6119 in a syntax that imitates <ulink url="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</ulink>'s
6120 <literal>s///</literal> operator. If you are familiar with Perl, you
6121 will find this to be quite intuitive, and may want to look at the
6122 PCRS documentation for the subtle differences to Perl behaviour. Most
6123 notably, the non-standard option letter <literal>U</literal> is supported,
6124 which turns the default to ungreedy matching.
6128 If you are new to regular expressions, you might want to take a look at
6129 the <link linkend="regex">Appendix on regular expressions</link>, and
6130 see the <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perl.html">Perl
6132 <ulink url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlop.html#s-PATTERN-REPLACEMENT-egimosx">the
6133 <literal>s///</literal> operator's syntax</ulink> and <ulink
6134 url="http://perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/perlre.html">Perl-style regular
6135 expressions</ulink> in general.
6136 The below examples might also help to get you started.
6140 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6142 <sect2><title>Filter File Tutorial</title>
6144 Now, let's complete our <quote>foo</quote> filter. We have already defined
6145 the heading, but the jobs are still missing. Since all it does is to replace
6146 <quote>foo</quote> with <quote>bar</quote>, there is only one (trivial) job
6151 <screen>s/foo/bar/</screen>
6155 But wait! Didn't the comment say that <emphasis>all</emphasis> occurrences
6156 of <quote>foo</quote> should be replaced? Our current job will only take
6157 care of the first <quote>foo</quote> on each page. For global substitution,
6158 we'll need to add the <literal>g</literal> option:
6162 <screen>s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6166 Our complete filter now looks like this:
6169 <screen>FILTER: foo Replace all "foo" with "bar"
6170 s/foo/bar/g</screen>
6174 Let's look at some real filters for more interesting examples. Here you see
6175 a filter that protects against some common annoyances that arise from JavaScript
6176 abuse. Let's look at its jobs one after the other:
6182 FILTER: js-annoyances Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
6184 # Get rid of JavaScript referrer tracking. Test page: http://www.randomoddness.com/untitled.htm
6186 s|(<script.*)document\.referrer(.*</script>)|$1"Not Your Business!"$2|Usg</screen>
6190 Following the header line and a comment, you see the job. Note that it uses
6191 <literal>|</literal> as the delimiter instead of <literal>/</literal>, because
6192 the pattern contains a forward slash, which would otherwise have to be escaped
6193 by a backslash (<literal>\</literal>).
6197 Now, let's examine the pattern: it starts with the text <literal><script.*</literal>
6198 enclosed in parentheses. Since the dot matches any character, and <literal>*</literal>
6199 means: <quote>Match an arbitrary number of the element left of myself</quote>, this
6200 matches <quote><script</quote>, followed by <emphasis>any</emphasis> text, i.e.
6201 it matches the whole page, from the start of the first <script> tag.
6205 That's more than we want, but the pattern continues: <literal>document\.referrer</literal>
6206 matches only the exact string <quote>document.referrer</quote>. The dot needed to
6207 be <emphasis>escaped</emphasis>, i.e. preceded by a backslash, to take away its
6208 special meaning as a joker, and make it just a regular dot. So far, the meaning is:
6209 Match from the start of the first <script> tag in a the page, up to, and including,
6210 the text <quote>document.referrer</quote>, if <emphasis>both</emphasis> are present
6211 in the page (and appear in that order).
6215 But there's still more pattern to go. The next element, again enclosed in parentheses,
6216 is <literal>.*</script></literal>. You already know what <literal>.*</literal>
6217 means, so the whole pattern translates to: Match from the start of the first <script>
6218 tag in a page to the end of the last <script> tag, provided that the text
6219 <quote>document.referrer</quote> appears somewhere in between.
6223 This is still not the whole story, since we have ignored the options and the parentheses:
6224 The portions of the page matched by sub-patterns that are enclosed in parentheses, will be
6225 remembered and be available through the variables <literal>$1, $2, ...</literal> in
6226 the substitute. The <literal>U</literal> option switches to ungreedy matching, which means
6227 that the first <literal>.*</literal> in the pattern will only <quote>eat up</quote> all
6228 text in between <quote><script</quote> and the <emphasis>first</emphasis> occurrence
6229 of <quote>document.referrer</quote>, and that the second <literal>.*</literal> will
6230 only span the text up to the <emphasis>first</emphasis> <quote></script></quote>
6231 tag. Furthermore, the <literal>s</literal> option says that the match may span
6232 multiple lines in the page, and the <literal>g</literal> option again means that the
6233 substitution is global.
6237 So, to summarize, the pattern means: Match all scripts that contain the text
6238 <quote>document.referrer</quote>. Remember the parts of the script from
6239 (and including) the start tag up to (and excluding) the string
6240 <quote>document.referrer</quote> as <literal>$1</literal>, and the part following
6241 that string, up to and including the closing tag, as <literal>$2</literal>.
6245 Now the pattern is deciphered, but wasn't this about substituting things? So
6246 lets look at the substitute: <literal>$1"Not Your Business!"$2</literal> is
6247 easy to read: The text remembered as <literal>$1</literal>, followed by
6248 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> (<emphasis>including</emphasis>
6249 the quotation marks!), followed by the text remembered as <literal>$2</literal>.
6250 This produces an exact copy of the original string, with the middle part
6251 (the <quote>document.referrer</quote>) replaced by <literal>"Not Your
6252 Business!"</literal>.
6256 The whole job now reads: Replace <quote>document.referrer</quote> by
6257 <literal>"Not Your Business!"</literal> wherever it appears inside a
6258 <script> tag. Note that this job won't break JavaScript syntax,
6259 since both the original and the replacement are syntactically valid
6260 string objects. The script just won't have access to the referrer
6261 information anymore.
6265 We'll show you two other jobs from the JavaScript taming department, but
6266 this time only point out the constructs of special interest:
6271 # The status bar is for displaying link targets, not pointless blahblah
6273 s/window\.status\s*=\s*(['"]).*?\1/dUmMy=1/ig</screen>
6277 <literal>\s</literal> stands for whitespace characters (space, tab, newline,
6278 carriage return, form feed), so that <literal>\s*</literal> means: <quote>zero
6279 or more whitespace</quote>. The <literal>?</literal> in <literal>.*?</literal>
6280 makes this matching of arbitrary text ungreedy. (Note that the <literal>U</literal>
6281 option is not set). The <literal>['"]</literal> construct means: <quote>a single
6282 <emphasis>or</emphasis> a double quote</quote>. Finally, <literal>\1</literal> is
6283 a backreference to the first parenthesis just like <literal>$1</literal> above,
6284 with the difference that in the <emphasis>pattern</emphasis>, a backslash indicates
6285 a backreference, whereas in the <emphasis>substitute</emphasis>, it's the dollar.
6289 So what does this job do? It replaces assignments of single- or double-quoted
6290 strings to the <quote>window.status</quote> object with a dummy assignment
6291 (using a variable name that is hopefully odd enough not to conflict with
6292 real variables in scripts). Thus, it catches many cases where e.g. pointless
6293 descriptions are displayed in the status bar instead of the link target when
6294 you move your mouse over links.
6299 # Kill OnUnload popups. Yummy. Test: http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/tree/yfs.html
6301 s/(<body [^>]*)onunload(.*>)/$1never$2/iU</screen>
6306 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">OnUnload
6307 event binding</ulink> in the HTML DOM was a <emphasis>CRIME</emphasis>.
6308 When I close a browser window, I want it to close and die. Basta.
6309 This job replaces the <quote>onunload</quote> attribute in
6310 <quote><body></quote> tags with the dummy word <literal>never</literal>.
6311 Note that the <literal>i</literal> option makes the pattern matching
6312 case-insensitive. Also note that ungreedy matching alone doesn't always guarantee
6313 a minimal match: In the first parenthesis, we had to use <literal>[^>]*</literal>
6314 instead of <literal>.*</literal> to prevent the match from exceeding the
6315 <body> tag if it doesn't contain <quote>OnUnload</quote>, but the page's
6320 The last example is from the fun department:
6325 FILTER: fun Fun text replacements
6327 # Spice the daily news:
6329 s/microsoft(?!\.com)/MicroSuck/ig</screen>
6333 Note the <literal>(?!\.com)</literal> part (a so-called negative lookahead)
6334 in the job's pattern, which means: Don't match, if the string
6335 <quote>.com</quote> appears directly following <quote>microsoft</quote>
6336 in the page. This prevents links to microsoft.com from being trashed, while
6337 still replacing the word everywhere else.
6342 # Buzzword Bingo (example for extended regex syntax)
6344 s* industry[ -]leading \
6346 | customer[ -]focused \
6347 | market[ -]driven \
6348 | award[ -]winning # Comments are OK, too! \
6349 | high[ -]performance \
6350 | solutions[ -]based \
6354 *<font color="red"><b>BINGO!</b></font> \
6359 The <literal>x</literal> option in this job turns on extended syntax, and allows for
6360 e.g. the liberal use of (non-interpreted!) whitespace for nicer formatting.
6368 <!-- ~~~~~~~~ New section Header ~~~~~~~~~ -->
6370 <sect2 id="predefined-filters"><title>The Pre-defined Filters</title>
6374 Note each filter is also listed in the +filter action section above. Please
6375 keep these listings in sync.
6380 The distribution <filename>default.filter</filename> file contains a selection of
6381 pre-defined filters for your convenience:
6386 <term><emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6389 The purpose of this filter is to get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse.
6394 replaces JavaScript references to the browser's referrer information
6395 with the string "Not Your Business!". This compliments the <literal><link
6396 linkend="hide-referrer">hide-referrer</link></literal> action on the content level.
6401 removes the bindings to the DOM's
6402 <ulink url="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113/events.html#Events-eventgroupings-htmlevents">unload
6403 event</ulink> which we feel has no right to exist and is responsible for most <quote>exit consoles</quote>, i.e.
6404 nasty windows that pop up when you close another one.
6409 removes code that causes new windows to be opened with undesired properties, such as being
6410 full-screen, non-resizable, without location, status or menu bar etc.
6419 <term><emphasis>js-events</emphasis></term>
6422 This is a very radical measure. It removes virtually all JavaScript event bindings, which
6423 means that scripts can not react to user actions such as mouse movements or clicks, window
6424 resizing etc, anymore.
6427 We <emphasis>strongly discourage</emphasis> using this filter as a default since it breaks
6428 many legitimate scripts. It is meant for use only on extra-nasty sites (should you really
6435 <term><emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis></term>
6438 This filter will undo many common instances of HTML based abuse.
6441 The <literal>BLINK</literal> and <literal>MARQUEE</literal> tags
6442 are neutralized (yeah baby!), and browser windows will be created as
6443 resizable (as of course they should be!), and will have location,
6444 scroll and menu bars -- even if specified otherwise.
6450 <term><emphasis>content-cookies</emphasis></term>
6453 Most cookies are set in the HTTP dialogue, where they can be intercepted
6455 <literal><link linkend="crunch-incoming-cookies">crunch-incoming-cookies</link></literal>
6456 and <literal><link linkend="crunch-outgoing-cookies">crunch-outgoing-cookies</link></literal>
6457 actions. But web sites increasingly make use of HTML meta tags and JavaScript
6458 to sneak cookies to the browser on the content level.
6461 This filter disables HTML and JavaScript code that reads or sets cookies. Use
6462 it wherever you would also use the cookie crunch actions.
6468 <term><emphasis>refresh tags</emphasis></term>
6471 Disable any refresh tags if the interval is greater than nine seconds (so
6472 that redirections done via refresh tags are not destroyed). This is useful
6473 for dial-on-demand setups, or for those who find this HTML feature
6480 <term><emphasis>unsolicited-popups</emphasis></term>
6483 This filter attempts to prevent only <quote>unsolicited</quote> pop-up
6484 windows from opening, yet still allow pop-up windows that the user
6485 has explicitly chosen to open. It was added in version 3.0.1,
6486 as an improvement over earlier such filters.
6489 Technical note: The filter works by redefining the window.open JavaScript
6490 function to a dummy function during the loading and rendering phase of each
6491 HTML page access, and restoring the function afterwards.
6497 <term><emphasis>all-popups</emphasis></term>
6500 Attempt to prevent <emphasis>all</emphasis> pop-up windows from opening.
6501 Note this should be used with more discretion than the above, since it is
6502 more likely to break some sites that require pop-ups for normal usage. Use
6509 <term><emphasis>img-reorder</emphasis></term>
6512 This is a helper filter that has no value if used alone. It makes the
6513 <literal>banners-by-size</literal> and <literal>banners-by-link</literal>
6514 (see below) filters more effective and should be enabled together with them.
6520 <term><emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis></term>
6523 This filter removes image tags purely based on what size they are. Fortunately
6524 for us, many ads and banner images tend to conform to certain standardized
6525 sizes, which makes this filter quite effective for ad stripping purposes.
6528 Occasionally this filter will cause false positives on images that are not ads,
6529 but just happen to be of one of the standard banner sizes.
6535 <term><emphasis>banners-by-link</emphasis></term>
6538 This is an experimental filter that attempts to kill any banners if
6539 their URLs seem to point to known or suspected click trackers. It is currently
6540 not of much value and is not recommended for use by default.
6546 <term><emphasis>webbugs</emphasis></term>
6549 Webbugs are small, invisible images (technically 1X1 GIF images), that
6550 are used to track users across websites, and collect information on them.
6551 As an HTML page is loaded by the browser, an embedded image tag causes the
6552 browser to contact a third-party site, disclosing the tracking information
6553 through the requested URL and/or cookies for that third-party domain, without
6554 the use ever becoming aware of the interaction with the third-party site.
6555 HTML-ized spam also uses a similar technique to verify email addresses.
6558 This filter removes the HTML code that loads such <quote>webbugs</quote>.
6564 <term><emphasis>tiny-textforms</emphasis></term>
6567 A rather special-purpose filter that can be used to enlarge textareas (those
6568 multi-line text boxes in web forms) and turn off hard word wrap in them.
6569 It was written for the sourceforge.net tracker system where such boxes are
6570 a nuisance, but it can be handy on other sites, too.
6573 It is not recommended to use this filter as a default.
6579 <term><emphasis>jumping-windows</emphasis></term>
6582 Many consider windows that move, or resize themselves to be abusive. This filter
6583 neutralizes the related JavaScript code. Note that some sites might not display
6584 or behave as intended when using this filter.
6590 <term><emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis></term>
6593 Some web designers seem to assume that everyone in the world will view their
6594 web sites using the same browser brand and version, screen resolution etc,
6595 because only that assumption could explain why they'd use static frame sizes,
6596 yet prevent their frames from being resized by the user, should they be too
6597 small to show their whole content.
6600 This filter removes the related HTML code. It should only be applied to sites
6607 <term><emphasis>demoronizer</emphasis></term>
6610 Many Microsoft products that generate HTML use non-standard extensions (read:
6611 violations) of the ISO 8859-1 aka Latin-1 character set. This can cause those
6612 HTML documents to display with errors on standard-compliant platforms.
6615 This filter translates the MS-only characters into Latin-1 equivalents.
6616 It is not necessary when using MS products, and will cause corruption of
6617 all documents that use 8-bit character sets other than Latin-1. It's mostly
6618 worthwhile for Europeans on non-MS platforms, if wierd garbage characters
6619 sometimes appear on some pages, or user agents that don't correct for this on
6622 My version of Mozilla (ancient) shows litte square boxes for quote
6623 characters, and apostrophes on moronized pages. So many pages have this, I
6624 can read them fine now. HB 08/27/06
6631 <term><emphasis>shockwave-flash</emphasis></term>
6634 A filter for shockwave haters. As the name suggests, this filter strips code
6635 out of web pages that is used to embed shockwave flash objects.
6643 <term><emphasis>quicktime-kioskmode</emphasis></term>
6646 Change HTML code that embeds Quicktime objects so that kioskmode, which
6647 prevents saving, is disabled.
6653 <term><emphasis>fun</emphasis></term>
6656 Text replacements for subversive browsing fun. Make fun of your favorite
6657 Monopolist or play buzzword bingo.
6663 <term><emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis></term>
6666 A demonstration-only filter that shows how <application>Privoxy</application>
6667 can be used to delete web content on a keyword basis.
6673 <term><emphasis>ie-exploits</emphasis></term>
6676 A collection of text replacements to disable malicious HTML and JavaScript
6677 code that exploits known security holes in Internet Explorer.
6680 Presently, it only protects against Nimda and a cross-site scripting bug, and
6681 would need active maintenance to provide more substantial protection.
6687 <term><emphasis>site-specifics</emphasis></term>
6690 Some web sites have very specific problems, the cure for which doesn't apply
6691 anywhere else, or could even cause damage on other sites.
6694 This is a collection of such site-specific cures which should only be applied
6695 to the sites they were intended for, which is what the supplied
6696 <filename>default.action</filename> file does. Users shouldn't need to change
6697 anything regarding this filter.
6704 <term><emphasis> </emphasis></term>
6718 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6722 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6724 <sect1 id="templates">
6725 <title>Templates</title>
6727 All <application>Privoxy</application> built-in pages, i.e. error pages such as the
6728 <ulink url="http://show-the-404-error.page"><quote>404 - No Such Domain</quote>
6729 error page</ulink>, the <ulink
6730 url="http://ads.bannerserver.example.com/nasty-ads/sponsor.html"><quote>BLOCKED</quote>
6732 and all pages of its <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">web-based
6733 user interface</ulink>, are generated from <emphasis>templates</emphasis>.
6734 (<application>Privoxy</application> must be running for the above links to work as
6739 These templates are stored in a subdirectory of the <link linkend="confdir">configuration
6740 directory</link> called <filename>templates</filename>. On Unixish platforms,
6742 <ulink url="file:///etc/privoxy/templates/"><filename>/etc/privoxy/templates/</filename></ulink>.
6746 The templates are basically normal HTML files, but with place-holders (called symbols
6747 or exports), which <application>Privoxy</application> fills at run time. You can
6748 edit the templates with a normal text editor, should you want to customize them.
6749 (<emphasis>Not recommended for the casual user</emphasis>). Note that
6750 just like in configuration files, lines starting with <literal>#</literal> are
6751 ignored when the templates are filled in.
6755 The place-holders are of the form <literal>@name@</literal>, and you will
6756 find a list of available symbols, which vary from template to template,
6757 in the comments at the start of each file. Note that these comments are not
6758 always accurate, and that it's probably best to look at the existing HTML
6759 code to find out which symbols are supported and what they are filled in with.
6763 A special application of this substitution mechanism is to make whole
6764 blocks of HTML code disappear when a specific symbol is set. We use this
6765 for many purposes, one of them being to include the beta warning in all
6766 our user interface (CGI) pages when <application>Privoxy</application>
6767 is in an alpha or beta development stage:
6772 <!-- @if-unstable-start -->
6774 ... beta warning HTML code goes here ...
6776 <!-- if-unstable-end@ --></screen>
6780 If the "unstable" symbol is set, everything in between and including
6781 <literal>@if-unstable-start</literal> and <literal>if-unstable-end@</literal>
6782 will disappear, leaving nothing but an empty comment:
6786 <screen><!-- --></screen>
6790 There's also an if-then-else construct and an <literal>#include</literal>
6791 mechanism, but you'll sure find out if you are inclined to edit the
6796 All templates refer to a style located at
6797 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet"><literal>http://config.privoxy.org/send-stylesheet</literal></ulink>.
6798 This is, of course, locally served by <application>Privoxy</application>
6799 and the source for it can be found and edited in the
6800 <filename>cgi-style.css</filename> template.
6805 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6809 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6811 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
6814 <!-- Include contacting.sgml boilerplate: -->
6816 <!-- end boilerplate -->
6820 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6823 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6824 <sect1 id="copyright"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Copyright, License and History</title>
6826 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
6828 <!-- end copyright -->
6830 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6831 <sect2><title>License</title>
6832 <!-- Include copyright.sgml: -->
6834 <!-- end copyright -->
6836 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6839 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6841 <sect2 id="history"><title>History</title>
6842 <!-- Include history.sgml: -->
6844 <!-- end history -->
6847 <sect2 id="authors"><title>Authors</title>
6848 <!-- Include p-authors.sgml: -->
6850 <!-- end authors -->
6855 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
6858 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6859 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See Also</title>
6860 <!-- Include seealso.sgml: -->
6862 <!-- end seealso -->
6867 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6868 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
6871 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
6873 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
6875 <application>Privoxy</application> uses Perl-style <quote>regular
6876 expressions</quote> in its <link linkend="actions-file">actions
6877 files</link> and <link linkend="filter-file">filter file</link>,
6878 through the <ulink url="http://www.pcre.org/">PCRE</ulink> and
6881 <ulink url="http://www.oesterhelt.org/pcrs/">PCRS</ulink> libraries.
6883 <application>PCRS</application> libraries.
6887 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
6888 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
6889 introduction only. A full explanation would require a <ulink
6890 url="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/">book</ulink> ;-)
6894 Regular expressions provide a language to describe patterns that can be
6895 run against strings of characters (letter, numbers, etc), to see if they
6896 match the string or not. The patterns are themselves (sometimes complex)
6897 strings of literal characters, combined with wild-cards, and other special
6898 characters, called meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have
6899 special meanings and are used to build complex patterns to be matched against.
6900 Perl Compatible Regular Expressions are an especially convenient
6901 <quote>dialect</quote> of the regular expression language.
6905 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
6906 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
6907 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
6908 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
6909 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
6910 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
6911 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
6912 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
6916 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
6917 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
6918 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
6919 and then some examples:
6924 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
6925 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
6927 </simplelist></para>
6931 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
6934 </simplelist></para>
6938 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
6941 </simplelist></para>
6945 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
6948 </simplelist></para>
6952 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
6953 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
6954 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
6955 not as a special meta-character. Example: <quote>example\.com</quote>, makes
6956 sure the period is recognized only as a period (and not expanded to its
6957 meta-character meaning of any single character).
6959 </simplelist></para>
6963 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
6964 any of the enclosed characters are encountered. For instance, <quote>[0-9]</quote>
6965 matches any numeric digit (zero through nine). As an example, we can combine
6966 this with <quote>+</quote> to match any digit one of more times: <quote>[0-9]+</quote>.
6968 </simplelist></para>
6972 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
6973 or multiple sub-expressions.
6975 </simplelist></para>
6979 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
6980 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
6981 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches. As an example:
6982 <quote>/(this|that) example/</quote> uses grouping and the bar character
6983 and would match either <quote>this example</quote> or <quote>that
6984 example</quote>, and nothing else.
6986 </simplelist></para>
6989 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
6990 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
6991 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
6992 be more illuminating:
6996 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
6997 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
6998 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
6999 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
7000 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
7001 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
7002 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
7003 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
7004 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
7005 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
7006 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
7007 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
7008 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
7009 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
7014 A now something a little more complex:
7018 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
7019 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
7020 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
7021 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
7022 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
7023 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
7024 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
7029 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
7030 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
7031 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
7032 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
7033 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
7034 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
7035 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
7036 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
7037 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
7038 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
7039 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
7040 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
7041 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
7042 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
7043 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
7044 changing our regular expression to:
7045 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
7050 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
7051 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
7052 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
7053 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
7054 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
7055 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
7056 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
7057 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
7058 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
7059 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
7060 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
7061 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
7062 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
7063 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
7064 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
7065 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
7066 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
7067 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
7068 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
7069 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
7070 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
7071 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
7072 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
7073 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
7074 in the expression anywhere).
7078 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
7079 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
7080 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
7081 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
7082 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
7087 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
7088 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
7092 For information on regular expression based substitutions and their applications
7093 in filters, please see the <link linkend="filter-file">filter file tutorial</link>
7098 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
7101 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7103 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
7106 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
7107 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
7108 trap certain special URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
7109 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
7110 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
7111 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
7112 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
7118 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
7119 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
7120 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
7121 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
7134 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/">http://config.privoxy.org/</ulink>
7138 There is a shortcut: <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (But it
7139 doesn't provide a fall-back to a real page, in case the request is not
7140 sent through <application>Privoxy</application>)
7146 Show information about the current configuration, including viewing and
7147 editing of actions files:
7151 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</ulink>
7158 Show the source code version numbers:
7162 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-version">http://config.privoxy.org/show-version</ulink>
7169 Show the browser's request headers:
7173 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-request">http://config.privoxy.org/show-request</ulink>
7180 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
7184 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7191 Toggle Privoxy on or off. In this case, <quote>Privoxy</quote> continues
7192 to run, but only as a pass-through proxy, with no actions taking place:
7196 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</ulink>
7200 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
7204 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
7209 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable">http://config.privoxy.org/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
7218 These may be bookmarked for quick reference. See next.
7222 <sect3 id="bookmarklets">
7223 <title>Bookmarklets</title>
7225 Below are some <quote>bookmarklets</quote> to allow you to easily access a
7226 <quote>mini</quote> version of some of <application>Privoxy's</application>
7227 special pages. They are designed for MS Internet Explorer, but should work
7228 equally well in Netscape, Mozilla, and other browsers which support
7229 JavaScript. They are designed to run directly from your bookmarks - not by
7230 clicking the links below (although that should work for testing).
7233 To save them, right-click the link and choose <quote>Add to Favorites</quote>
7234 (IE) or <quote>Add Bookmark</quote> (Netscape). You will get a warning that
7235 the bookmark <quote>may not be safe</quote> - just click OK. Then you can run the
7236 Bookmarklet directly from your favorites/bookmarks. For even faster access,
7237 you can put them on the <quote>Links</quote> bar (IE) or the <quote>Personal
7238 Toolbar</quote> (Netscape), and run them with a single click.
7247 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>
7254 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>
7261 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)
7268 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>
7274 <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>
7280 <ulink url="javascript:void(window.open('http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info?url='+escape(location.href),'Why').focus());">Privoxy - Why?</ulink>
7287 Credit: The site which gave us the general idea for these bookmarklets is
7288 <ulink url="http://www.bookmarklets.com/">www.bookmarklets.com</ulink>. They
7289 have more information about bookmarklets.
7298 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7300 <title>Chain of Events</title>
7302 Let's take a quick look at the basic sequence of events when a web page is
7303 requested by your browser and <application>Privoxy</application> is on duty:
7310 First, your web browser requests a web page. The browser knows to send
7311 the request to <application>Privoxy</application>, which will in turn,
7312 relay the request to the remote web server after passing the following
7318 <application>Privoxy</application> traps any request for its own internal CGI
7319 pages (e.g http://p.p/) and sends the CGI page back to the browser.
7324 Next, <application>Privoxy</application> checks to see if the URL
7326 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link> patterns. If
7327 so, the URL is then blocked, and the remote web server will not be contacted.
7328 <link linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>
7329 is then checked and if it does not match, an
7330 HTML <quote>BLOCKED</quote> page is sent back. Otherwise, if it does match,
7331 an image is returned. The type of image depends on the setting of <link
7332 linkend="SET-IMAGE-BLOCKER"><quote>+set-image-blocker</quote></link>
7333 (blank, checkerboard pattern, or an HTTP redirect to an image elsewhere).
7338 Untrusted URLs are blocked. If URLs are being added to the
7339 <filename>trust</filename> file, then that is done.
7344 If the URL pattern matches the <link
7345 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link> action,
7346 it is then processed. Unwanted parts of the requested URL are stripped.
7351 Now the rest of the client browser's request headers are processed. If any
7352 of these match any of the relevant actions (e.g. <link
7353 linkend="HIDE-USER-AGENT"><quote>+hide-user-agent</quote></link>,
7354 etc.), headers are suppressed or forged as determined by these actions and
7360 Now the web server starts sending its response back (i.e. typically a web page and related
7366 First, the server headers are read and processed to determine, among other
7367 things, the MIME type (document type) and encoding. The headers are then
7368 filtered as determined by the
7369 <link linkend="CRUNCH-INCOMING-COOKIES"><quote>+crunch-incoming-cookies</quote></link>,
7370 <link linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>,
7371 and <link linkend="DOWNGRADE-HTTP-VERSION"><quote>+downgrade-http-version</quote></link>
7377 If the <link linkend="KILL-POPUPS"><quote>+kill-popups</quote></link>
7378 action applies, and it is an HTML or JavaScript document, the popup-code in the
7379 response is filtered on-the-fly as it is received.
7384 If a <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
7386 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7387 action applies (and the document type fits the action), the rest of the page is
7388 read into memory (up to a configurable limit). Then the filter rules (from
7389 <filename>default.filter</filename>) are processed against the buffered
7390 content. Filters are applied in the order they are specified in one of the
7391 filter files. Animated GIFs, if present, are
7392 reduced to either the first or last frame, depending on the action
7393 setting.The entire page, which is now filtered, is then sent by
7394 <application>Privoxy</application> back to your browser.
7397 If neither <link linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link>
7399 linkend="DEANIMATE-GIFS"><quote>+deanimate-gifs</quote></link>
7400 matches, then <application>Privoxy</application> passes the raw data through
7401 to the client browser as it becomes available.
7406 As the browser receives the now (probably filtered) page content, it
7407 reads and then requests any URLs that may be embedded within the page
7408 source, e.g. ad images, stylesheets, JavaScript, other HTML documents (e.g.
7409 frames), sounds, etc. For each of these objects, the browser issues a new
7410 request. And each such request is in turn processed as above. Note that a
7411 complex web page may have many such embedded URLs.
7421 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
7422 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
7423 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
7426 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies
7427 <link linkend="ACTIONS">actions</link> and <link linkend="FILTER">filters</link>
7428 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so
7429 easy to understand what is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to
7430 <emphasis>see</emphasis> just what <application>Privoxy</application> is
7431 doing. Especially, if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing
7432 is causing us a problem inadvertently. It can be a little daunting to look at
7433 the actions and filters files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
7434 <link linkend="regex">regular expressions</link> whose consequences are not
7439 One quick test to see if <application>Privoxy</application> is causing a problem
7440 or not, is to disable it temporarily. This should be the first troubleshooting
7441 step. See <link linkend="bookmarklets">the Bookmarklets</link> section on a quick
7442 and easy way to do this (be sure to flush caches afterward!). Looking at the
7443 logs is a good idea too.
7447 <application>Privoxy</application> also provides the
7448 <ulink url="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info">http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</ulink>
7449 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
7450 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
7454 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
7455 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
7456 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
7457 help with filtering effects (i.e. the <link
7458 linkend="FILTER"><quote>+filter</quote></link> action) from
7459 one of the filter files since this is handled very
7460 differently and not so easy to trap! It also will not tell you about any other
7461 URLs that may be embedded within the URL you are testing. For instance, images
7462 such as ads are expressed as URLs within the raw page source of HTML pages. So
7463 you will only get info for the actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area
7464 -- not any sub-URLs. If you want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you
7465 will have to dig those out of the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View
7466 Page Source</quote> option for this. Or right click on the ad, and grab the
7471 Let's try an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
7472 and look at it one section at a time:
7477 Matches for http://google.com:
7479 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
7483 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
7484 -crunch-incoming-cookies
7485 +deanimate-gifs{last}
7486 -downgrade-http-version
7490 -filter{shockwave-flash}
7491 -filter{crude-parental}
7492 +filter{html-annoyances}
7493 +filter{js-annoyances}
7494 +filter{content-cookies}
7496 +filter{refresh-tags}
7498 +filter{banners-by-size}
7499 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
7500 +hide-from-header{block}
7501 +hide-referer{forge}
7506 +prevent-compression
7509 +session-cookies-only
7510 +set-image-blocker{pattern} }
7513 { -session-cookies-only }
7519 In file: user.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
7520 (no matches in this file)
7525 This tells us how we have defined our
7526 <link linkend="ACTIONS"><quote>actions</quote></link>, and
7527 which ones match for our example, <quote>google.com</quote>. The first listing
7528 is any matches for the <filename>standard.action</filename> file. No hits at
7529 all here on <quote>standard</quote>. Then next is <quote>default</quote>, or
7530 our <filename>default.action</filename> file. The large, multi-line listing,
7531 is how the actions are set to match for all URLs, i.e. our default settings.
7532 If you look at your <quote>actions</quote> file, this would be the section
7533 just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section near the top. This will apply to
7534 all URLs as signified by the single forward slash at the end of the listing
7535 -- <quote>/</quote>.
7539 But we can define additional actions that would be exceptions to these general
7540 rules, and then list specific URLs (or patterns) that these exceptions would
7541 apply to. Last match wins. Just below this then are two explicit matches for
7542 <quote>.google.com</quote>. The first is negating our previous cookie setting,
7544 linkend="SESSION-COOKIES-ONLY"><quote>+session-cookies-only</quote></link>
7545 (i.e. not persistent). So we will allow persistent cookies for google. The
7546 second turns <emphasis>off</emphasis> any
7548 linkend="FAST-REDIRECTS"><quote>+fast-redirects</quote></link>
7549 action, allowing this to take place unmolested. Note that there is a leading
7550 dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will match any hosts and
7551 sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
7552 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these two actions
7553 defined somewhere in the lower part of our <filename>default.action</filename>
7554 file, and <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced somewhere in these latter
7559 Then, for our <filename>user.action</filename> file, we again have no hits.
7563 And finally we pull it all together in the bottom section and summarize how
7564 <application>Privoxy</application> is applying all its <quote>actions</quote>
7565 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
7576 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
7577 -crunch-incoming-cookies
7578 +deanimate-gifs{last}
7579 -downgrade-http-version
7583 -filter{shockwave-flash}
7584 -filter{crude-parental}
7585 +filter{html-annoyances}
7586 +filter{js-annoyances}
7587 +filter{content-cookies}
7589 +filter{refresh-tags}
7591 +filter{banners-by-size}
7592 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
7593 +hide-from-header{block}
7594 +hide-referer{forge}
7599 +prevent-compression
7602 -session-cookies-only
7603 +set-image-blocker{pattern}
7608 Notice the only difference here to the previous listing, is to
7609 <quote>fast-redirects</quote> and <quote>session-cookies-only</quote>,
7610 which are actived specifically for this site in our configuration.
7614 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
7620 { +block +handle-as-image }
7623 { +block +handle-as-image }
7626 { +block +handle-as-image }
7632 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
7633 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +handle-as-image</quote>,
7634 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
7635 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<link
7636 linkend="ALIASES"><quote>Aliases</quote></link> are defined in
7637 the first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
7642 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
7643 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
7644 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
7645 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
7646 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
7647 is done here -- as both a <link
7648 linkend="BLOCK"><quote>+block</quote></link>
7649 <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
7651 linkend="HANDLE-AS-IMAGE"><quote>+handle-as-image</quote></link>.
7652 The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> just simplifies the process and make
7657 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
7658 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm ...
7664 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
7666 In file: default.action <guibutton>[ View ]</guibutton> <guibutton>[ Edit ]</guibutton>
7670 -crunch-incoming-cookies
7671 -crunch-outgoing-cookies
7673 -downgrade-http-version
7675 +filter{html-annoyances}
7676 +filter{js-annoyances}
7677 +filter{kill-popups}
7680 +filter{banners-by-size}
7683 +hide-forwarded-for-headers
7684 +hide-from-header{block}
7685 +hide-referer{forge}
7689 +prevent-compression
7692 +session-cookies-only
7693 +set-image-blocker{blank} }
7696 { +block +handle-as-image }
7702 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
7703 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
7704 now add a new action below this that explicitly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
7705 block (<quote>{-block}</quote>) paths with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are
7706 various ways to handle such exceptions. Example:
7718 Now the page displays ;-) Be sure to flush your browser's caches when
7719 making such changes. Or, try using <literal>Shift+Reload</literal>.
7723 But now what about a situation where we get no explicit matches like
7730 { +block +handle-as-image }
7736 That actually was very telling and pointed us quickly to where the problem
7737 was. If you don't get this kind of match, then it means one of the default
7738 rules in the first section is causing the problem. This would require some
7739 guesswork, and maybe a little trial and error to isolate the offending rule.
7740 One likely cause would be one of the <quote>{+filter}</quote> actions. These
7741 tend to be harder to troubleshoot. Try adding the URL for the site to one of
7742 aliases that turn off <quote>+filter</quote>:
7750 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
7758 <quote>{shop}</quote> is an <quote>alias</quote> that expands to
7759 <quote>{ -filter -session-cookies-only }</quote>.
7760 Or you could do your own exception to negate filtering:
7773 This would turn off all filtering for that site. This would probably be most
7774 appropriately put in <filename>user.action</filename>, for local site
7779 Images that are inexplicably being blocked, may well be hitting the
7780 <quote>+filter{banners-by-size}</quote> rule, which assumes
7781 that images of certain sizes are ad banners (works well most of the time
7782 since these tend to be standardized).
7786 <quote>{fragile}</quote> is an alias that disables most actions. This can be
7787 used as a last resort for problem sites. Remember to flush caches! If this
7788 still does not work, you will have to go through the remaining actions one by
7789 one to find which one(s) is causing the problem.
7798 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
7799 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
7800 Public License as published by the Free Software
7801 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
7802 your option) any later version.
7804 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
7805 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
7806 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
7807 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
7808 License for more details.
7810 The GNU General Public License should be included with
7811 this file. If not, you can view it at
7812 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
7813 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
7814 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
7816 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
7817 Revision 2.14 2006/08/29 10:59:36 hal9
7818 Add a "Whats New in this release" Section. Further work on multiple filter
7819 files, and assorted other minor changes.
7821 Revision 2.13 2006/08/22 11:04:59 hal9
7822 Silence warnings and errors. This should build now. New filters were only
7823 stubbed in. More to be done.
7825 Revision 2.12 2006/08/14 08:40:39 fabiankeil
7826 Documented new actions that were part of
7827 the "minor Privoxy improvements".
7829 Revision 2.11 2006/07/18 14:48:51 david__schmidt
7830 Reorganizing the repository: swapping out what was HEAD (the old 3.1 branch)
7831 with what was really the latest development (the v_3_0_branch branch)
7833 Revision 1.123.2.43 2005/05/23 09:59:10 hal9
7836 Revision 1.123.2.42 2004/12/04 14:39:57 hal9
7837 Fix two minor typos per bug SF report.
7839 Revision 1.123.2.41 2004/03/23 12:58:42 oes
7842 Revision 1.123.2.40 2004/02/27 12:48:49 hal9
7843 Add comment re: redirecting to local file system for set-image-blocker may
7844 is dependent on browser.
7846 Revision 1.123.2.39 2004/01/30 22:31:40 oes
7847 Added a hint re bookmarklets to Quickstart section
7849 Revision 1.123.2.38 2004/01/30 16:47:51 oes
7850 Some minor clarifications
7852 Revision 1.123.2.37 2004/01/29 22:36:11 hal9
7853 Updates for no longer filtering text/plain, and demoronizer default settings,
7854 and copyright notice dates.
7856 Revision 1.123.2.36 2003/12/10 02:26:26 hal9
7857 Changed the demoronizer filter description.
7859 Revision 1.123.2.35 2003/11/06 13:36:37 oes
7860 Updated link to nightly CVS tarball
7862 Revision 1.123.2.34 2003/06/26 23:50:16 hal9
7863 Add a small bit on filtering and problems re: source code being corrupted.
7865 Revision 1.123.2.33 2003/05/08 18:17:33 roro
7866 Use apt-get instead of dpkg to install Debian package, which is more
7867 solid, uses the correct and most recent Debian version automatically.
7869 Revision 1.123.2.32 2003/04/11 03:13:57 hal9
7870 Add small note about only one filterfile (as opposed to multiple actions
7873 Revision 1.123.2.31 2003/03/26 02:03:43 oes
7874 Updated hard-coded copyright dates
7876 Revision 1.123.2.30 2003/03/24 12:58:56 hal9
7877 Add new section on Predefined Filters.
7879 Revision 1.123.2.29 2003/03/20 02:45:29 hal9
7880 More problems with \-\-chroot causing markup problems :(
7882 Revision 1.123.2.28 2003/03/19 00:35:24 hal9
7883 Manual edit of revision log because 'chroot' (even inside a comment) was
7884 causing Docbook to hang here (due to double hyphen and the processor thinking
7887 Revision 1.123.2.27 2003/03/18 19:37:14 oes
7888 s/Advanced|Radical/Adventuresome/g to avoid complaints re fun filter
7890 Revision 1.123.2.26 2003/03/17 16:50:53 oes
7891 Added documentation for new chroot option
7893 Revision 1.123.2.25 2003/03/15 18:36:55 oes
7894 Adapted to the new filters
7896 Revision 1.123.2.24 2002/11/17 06:41:06 hal9
7897 Move default profiles table from FAQ to U-M, and other minor related changes.
7900 Revision 1.123.2.23 2002/10/21 02:32:01 hal9
7901 Updates to the user.action examples section. A few new ones.
7903 Revision 1.123.2.22 2002/10/12 00:51:53 hal9
7904 Add demoronizer to filter section.
7906 Revision 1.123.2.21 2002/10/10 04:09:35 hal9
7907 s/Advanced/Radical/ and added very brief note.
7909 Revision 1.123.2.20 2002/10/10 03:49:21 hal9
7910 Add notes to session-cookies-only and Quickstart about pre-existing
7911 cookies. Also, note content-cookies work differently.
7913 Revision 1.123.2.19 2002/09/26 01:25:36 hal9
7914 More explanation on Privoxy patterns, more on content-cookies and SSL.
7916 Revision 1.123.2.18 2002/08/22 23:47:58 hal9
7917 Add 'Documentation' to Privoxy Menu shot in Configuration section to match
7920 Revision 1.123.2.17 2002/08/18 01:13:05 hal9
7921 Spell checked (only one typo this time!).
7923 Revision 1.123.2.16 2002/08/09 19:20:54 david__schmidt
7924 Update to Mac OSX startup script name
7926 Revision 1.123.2.15 2002/08/07 17:32:11 oes
7927 Converted some internal links from ulink to link for PDF creation; no content changed
7929 Revision 1.123.2.14 2002/08/06 09:16:13 oes
7930 Nits re: actions file download
7932 Revision 1.123.2.13 2002/08/02 18:23:19 g_sauthoff
7933 Just 2 small corrections to the Gentoo sections
7935 Revision 1.123.2.12 2002/08/02 18:17:21 g_sauthoff
7936 Added 2 Gentoo sections
7938 Revision 1.123.2.11 2002/07/26 15:20:31 oes
7939 - Added version info to title
7940 - Added info on new filters
7941 - Revised parts of the filter file tutorial
7942 - Added info on where to get updated actions files
7944 Revision 1.123.2.10 2002/07/25 21:42:29 hal9
7945 Add brief notes on not proxying non-HTTP protocols.
7947 Revision 1.123.2.9 2002/07/11 03:40:28 david__schmidt
7949 Updated Mac OSX sections due to installation location change
7951 Revision 1.123.2.8 2002/06/09 16:36:32 hal9
7952 Clarifications on filtering and MIME. Hardcode 'latest release' in index.html.
7954 Revision 1.123.2.7 2002/06/09 00:29:34 hal9
7955 Touch ups on filtering, in actions section and Anatomy.
7957 Revision 1.123.2.6 2002/06/06 23:11:03 hal9
7958 Fix broken link. Linkchecked all docs.
7960 Revision 1.123.2.5 2002/05/29 02:01:02 hal9
7961 This is break out of the entire config section from u-m, so it can
7962 eventually be used to generate the comments, etc in the main config file
7963 so that these are in sync with each other.
7965 Revision 1.123.2.4 2002/05/27 03:28:45 hal9
7966 Ooops missed something from David.
7968 Revision 1.123.2.3 2002/05/27 03:23:17 hal9
7969 Fix FIXMEs for OS2 and OSX startup. Fix Redhat typos (should be Red Hat).
7970 That's a wrap, I think.
7972 Revision 1.123.2.2 2002/05/26 19:02:09 hal9
7973 Move Amiga stuff around to take of FIXME in start up section.
7975 Revision 1.123.2.1 2002/05/26 17:04:25 hal9
7976 -Spellcheck, very minor edits, and sync across branches
7978 Revision 1.123 2002/05/24 23:19:23 hal9
7979 Include new image (Proxy setup). More fun with guibutton.
7980 Minor corrections/clarifications here and there.
7982 Revision 1.122 2002/05/24 13:24:08 oes
7983 Added Bookmarklet for one-click pre-filled access to show-url-info
7985 Revision 1.121 2002/05/23 23:20:17 oes
7986 - Changed more (all?) references to actions to the
7987 <literal><link> style.
7988 - Small fixes in the actions chapter
7989 - Small clarifications in the quickstart to ad blocking
7990 - Removed <emphasis> from <title>s since the new doc CSS
7991 renders them red (bad in TOC).
7993 Revision 1.120 2002/05/23 19:16:43 roro
7994 Correct Debian specials (installation and startup).
7996 Revision 1.119 2002/05/22 17:17:05 oes
7999 Revision 1.118 2002/05/21 04:54:55 hal9
8000 -New Section: Quickstart to Ad Blocking
8001 -Reformat Actions Anatomy to match new CGI layout
8003 Revision 1.117 2002/05/17 13:56:16 oes
8004 - Reworked & extended Templates chapter
8005 - Small changes to Regex appendix
8006 - #included authors.sgml into (C) and hist chapter
8008 Revision 1.116 2002/05/17 03:23:46 hal9
8009 Fixing merge conflict in Quickstart section.
8011 Revision 1.115 2002/05/16 16:25:00 oes
8012 Extended the Filter File chapter & minor fixes
8014 Revision 1.114 2002/05/16 09:42:50 oes
8015 More ulink->link, added some hints to Quickstart section
8017 Revision 1.113 2002/05/15 21:07:25 oes
8018 Extended and further commented the example actions files
8020 Revision 1.112 2002/05/15 03:57:14 hal9
8021 Spell check. A few minor edits here and there for better syntax and
8024 Revision 1.111 2002/05/14 23:01:36 oes
8027 Revision 1.110 2002/05/14 19:10:45 oes
8028 Restored alphabetical order of actions
8030 Revision 1.109 2002/05/14 17:23:11 oes
8031 Renamed the prevent-*-cookies actions, extended aliases section and moved it before the example AFs
8033 Revision 1.108 2002/05/14 15:29:12 oes
8034 Completed proofreading the actions chapter
8036 Revision 1.107 2002/05/12 03:20:41 hal9
8037 Small clarifications for 127.0.0.1 vs localhost for listen-address since this
8038 apparently an important distinction for some OS's.
8040 Revision 1.106 2002/05/10 01:48:20 hal9
8041 This is mostly proposed copyright/licensing additions and changes. Docs
8042 are still GPL, but licensing and copyright are more visible. Also, copyright
8043 changed in doc header comments (eliminate references to JB except FAQ).
8045 Revision 1.105 2002/05/05 20:26:02 hal9
8046 Sorting out license vs copyright in these docs.
8048 Revision 1.104 2002/05/04 08:44:45 swa
8051 Revision 1.103 2002/05/04 00:40:53 hal9
8052 -Remove the TOC first page kludge. It's fixed proper now in ldp.dsl.in.
8053 -Some minor additions to Quickstart.
8055 Revision 1.102 2002/05/03 17:46:00 oes
8056 Further proofread & reactivated short build instructions
8058 Revision 1.101 2002/05/03 03:58:30 hal9
8059 Move the user-manual config directive to top of section. Add note about
8060 Privoxy needing read permissions for configs, and write for logs.
8062 Revision 1.100 2002/04/29 03:05:55 hal9
8063 Add clarification on differences of new actions files.
8065 Revision 1.99 2002/04/28 16:59:05 swa
8066 more structure in starting section
8068 Revision 1.98 2002/04/28 05:43:59 hal9
8069 This is the break up of configuration.html into multiple files. This
8070 will probably break links elsewhere :(
8072 Revision 1.97 2002/04/27 21:04:42 hal9
8073 -Rewrite of Actions File example.
8074 -Add section for user-manual directive in config.
8076 Revision 1.96 2002/04/27 05:32:00 hal9
8077 -Add short section to Filter Files to tie in with +filter action.
8078 -Start rewrite of examples in Actions Examples (not finished).
8080 Revision 1.95 2002/04/26 17:23:29 swa
8081 bookmarks cleaned, changed structure of user manual, screen and programlisting cleanups, and numerous other changes that I forgot
8083 Revision 1.94 2002/04/26 05:24:36 hal9
8084 -Add most of Andreas suggestions to Chain of Events section.
8085 -A few other minor corrections and touch up.
8087 Revision 1.92 2002/04/25 18:55:13 hal9
8088 More catchups on new actions files, and new actions names.
8089 Other assorted cleanups, and minor modifications.
8091 Revision 1.91 2002/04/24 02:39:31 hal9
8092 Add 'Chain of Events' section.
8094 Revision 1.90 2002/04/23 21:41:25 hal9
8095 Linuxconf is deprecated on RH, substitute chkconfig.
8097 Revision 1.89 2002/04/23 21:05:28 oes
8098 Added hint for startup on Red Hat
8100 Revision 1.88 2002/04/23 05:37:54 hal9
8101 Add AmigaOS install stuff.
8103 Revision 1.87 2002/04/23 02:53:15 david__schmidt
8104 Updated OSX installation section
8105 Added a few English tweaks here an there
8107 Revision 1.86 2002/04/21 01:46:32 hal9
8108 Re-write actions section.
8110 Revision 1.85 2002/04/18 21:23:23 hal9
8111 Fix ugly typo (mine).
8113 Revision 1.84 2002/04/18 21:17:13 hal9
8114 Spell Redhat correctly (ie Red Hat). A few minor grammar corrections.
8116 Revision 1.83 2002/04/18 18:21:12 oes
8117 Added RPM install detail
8119 Revision 1.82 2002/04/18 12:04:50 oes
8122 Revision 1.81 2002/04/18 11:50:24 oes
8123 Extended Install section - needs fixing by packagers
8125 Revision 1.80 2002/04/18 10:45:19 oes
8126 Moved text to buildsource.sgml, renamed some filters, details
8128 Revision 1.79 2002/04/18 03:18:06 hal9
8129 Spellcheck, and minor touchups.
8131 Revision 1.78 2002/04/17 18:04:16 oes
8134 Revision 1.77 2002/04/17 13:51:23 oes
8135 Proofreading, part one
8137 Revision 1.76 2002/04/16 04:25:51 hal9
8138 -Added 'Note to Upgraders' and re-ordered the 'Quickstart' section.
8139 -Note about proxy may need requests to re-read config files.
8141 Revision 1.75 2002/04/12 02:08:48 david__schmidt
8142 Remove OS/2 building info... it is already in the developer-manual
8144 Revision 1.74 2002/04/11 00:54:38 hal9
8145 Add small section on submitting actions.
8147 Revision 1.73 2002/04/10 18:45:15 swa
8150 Revision 1.72 2002/04/10 04:06:19 hal9
8151 Added actions feedback to Bookmarklets section
8153 Revision 1.71 2002/04/08 22:59:26 hal9
8154 Version update. Spell chkconfig correctly :)
8156 Revision 1.70 2002/04/08 20:53:56 swa
8159 Revision 1.69 2002/04/06 05:07:29 hal9
8160 -Add privoxy-man-page.sgml, for man page.
8161 -Add authors.sgml for AUTHORS (and p-authors.sgml)
8162 -Reworked various aspects of various docs.
8163 -Added additional comments to sub-docs.
8165 Revision 1.68 2002/04/04 18:46:47 swa
8166 consistent look. reuse of copyright, history et. al.
8168 Revision 1.67 2002/04/04 17:27:57 swa
8169 more single file to be included at multiple points. make maintaining easier
8171 Revision 1.66 2002/04/04 06:48:37 hal9
8172 Structural changes to allow for conditional inclusion/exclusion of content
8173 based on entity toggles, e.g. 'entity % p-not-stable "INCLUDE"'. And
8174 definition of internal entities, e.g. 'entity p-version "2.9.13"' that will
8175 eventually be set by Makefile.
8176 More boilerplate text for use across multiple docs.
8178 Revision 1.65 2002/04/03 19:52:07 swa
8179 enhance squid section due to user suggestion
8181 Revision 1.64 2002/04/03 03:53:43 hal9
8182 A few minor bug fixes, and touch ups. Ready for review.
8184 Revision 1.63 2002/04/01 16:24:49 hal9
8185 Define entities to include boilerplate text. See doc/source/*.
8187 Revision 1.62 2002/03/30 04:15:53 hal9
8188 - Fix privoxy.org/config links.
8189 - Paste in Bookmarklets from Toggle page.
8190 - Move Quickstart nearer top, and minor rework.
8192 Revision 1.61 2002/03/29 01:31:08 hal9
8195 Revision 1.60 2002/03/27 01:57:34 hal9
8196 Added more to Anatomy section.
8198 Revision 1.59 2002/03/27 00:54:33 hal9
8199 Touch up intro for new name.
8201 Revision 1.58 2002/03/26 22:29:55 swa
8202 we have a new homepage!
8204 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
8205 A few minor catch ups with name change.
8207 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
8208 configure needs to be generated.
8210 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
8211 we are too lazy to make a block-built
8212 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
8214 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
8215 name change related issue.
8217 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
8218 name change. changed filenames.
8220 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
8223 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
8224 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
8225 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
8226 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
8227 comments and remarks to history untouched.
8229 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
8232 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
8233 New section in Appendix.
8235 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
8236 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
8238 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
8239 correct feedback channels
8241 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
8242 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
8244 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
8247 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
8248 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
8250 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
8251 Added imageblock{pattern}.
8253 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
8256 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
8257 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
8259 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
8260 provide correct feedback channels
8262 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
8263 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
8265 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
8266 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
8268 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
8269 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
8271 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
8272 Add new - - user option.
8274 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
8275 Added section on command line options.
8277 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
8278 Changed default port to 8118
8280 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
8281 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
8283 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
8284 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
8285 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
8288 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
8291 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
8292 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
8294 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
8295 Update OS/2 build section
8297 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
8298 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
8299 will work - no other changes are needed.
8301 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
8302 Added a very short section on Templates
8304 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
8305 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
8307 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
8308 Touch ups for *.action files.
8310 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
8313 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
8314 Updates for recent changes.
8316 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
8317 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
8319 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
8320 Correct 2 minor errors
8322 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
8323 *** empty log message ***
8325 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
8326 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
8328 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
8329 wrong url in documentation
8331 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
8332 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
8334 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
8337 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
8340 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
8343 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
8344 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
8346 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
8347 Some additions, and re-arranging.
8349 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
8352 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
8353 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
8355 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
8358 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
8359 source files for junkbuster documentation
8361 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
8362 first proposal of a structure.
8364 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
8365 docs should have an author.
8367 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
8368 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.