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53 <h1 class="SECT1"><a name="WHATSNEW" id="WHATSNEW">3. What's New in this
56 <p><span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy 3.0.18</span> is a stable release.
57 The changes since 3.0.17 stable are:</p>
65 <p>Fix a logic bug that could cause Privoxy to reuse a server
66 socket after it got tainted by a server-header-tagger-induced
67 block that was triggered before the whole server response had
68 been read. If keep-alive was enabled and the request following
69 the blocked one was to the same host and using the same
70 forwarding settings, Privoxy would send it on the tainted server
71 socket. While the server would simply treat it as a pipelined
72 request, Privoxy would later on fail to properly parse the
73 server's response as it would try to parse the unread data from
74 the first response as server headers for the second one.
75 Regression introduced in 3.0.17.</p>
79 <p>When implying keep-alive in client_connection(), remember that
80 the client didn't. Fixes a regression introduced in 3.0.13 that
81 would cause Privoxy to wait for additional client requests after
82 receiving a HTTP/1.1 request with "Connection: close" set and
83 connection sharing enabled. With clients which terminates the
84 client connection after detecting that the whole body has been
85 received it doesn't really matter, but with clients that don't
86 the connection would be kept open until it timed out.</p>
90 <p>Fix a subtle race condition between
91 prepare_csp_for_next_request() and sweep() A thread preparing
92 itself for the next client request could briefly appear to be
93 inactive. If all other threads were already using more recent
94 files, the thread could get its files swept away under its feet.
95 So far this has only been reproduced while stress testing in
96 valgrind while touching action files in a loop. It's unlikely to
97 have caused any actual problems in the real world.</p>
101 <p>Disable filters if SDCH compression is used unless filtering
102 is forced. If SDCH was combined with a supported compression
103 algorithm, Privoxy previously could try to decompress it and
104 ditch the Content-Encoding header even though the SDCH
105 compression wasn't dealt with. Reported by zebul666 in
110 <p>Make a copy of the --user value and only mess with that when
111 splitting user and group. On some operating systems modifying the
112 value directly is reflected in the output of ps and friends and
113 can be misleading. Reported by zepard in #3292710.</p>
117 <p>If forwarded-connect-retries is set, only retry if Privoxy is
118 actually forwarding the request. Previously direct connections
119 would be retried as well.</p>
123 <p>Fixed a small memory leak when retrying connections with IPv6
128 <p>Remove an incorrect assertion in
129 compile_dynamic_pcrs_job_list() It could be triggered by a pcrs
130 job with an invalid pcre pattern (for example one that contains a
131 lone quantifier).</p>
135 <p>If the --user argument user[.group] contains a dot, always
136 bail out if no group has been specified. Previously the intended,
137 but undocumented (and apparently untested), behaviour was to try
138 interpreting the whole argument as user name, but the detection
139 was flawed and checked for '0' instead of '\0', thus merely
140 preventing group names beginning with a zero.</p>
144 <p>In html_code_map[], use a numeric character reference instead
145 of ' which wasn't standardized before XHTML 1.0.</p>
149 <p>Fix an invalid free when compiled with
150 FEATURE_GRACEFUL_TERMINATION and shut down through
151 http://config.privoxy.org/die</p>
155 <p>In get_actions(), fix the "temporary" backwards compatibility
156 hack to accept block actions without reason. It also covered
157 other actions that should be rejected as invalid. Reported by
164 <p>General improvements:</p>
168 <p>Privoxy can (re)compress buffered content before delivering it
169 to the client. Disabled by default as most users wouldn't benefit
174 <p>The +fast-redirects{check-decoded-url} action checks URL
175 segments separately. If there are other parameters behind the
176 redirect URL, this makes it unnecessary to cut them off by
177 additionally using a +redirect{} pcrs command. Initial patch
178 submitted by Jamie Zawinski in #3429848.</p>
182 <p>When loading action sections, verify that the referenced
183 filters exist. Currently missing filters only result in an error
184 message, but eventually the severity will be upgraded to
189 <p>Allow to bind to multiple separate addresses. Patch set
190 submitted by Petr Pisar in #3354485.</p>
194 <p>Set socket_error to errno if connecting fails in
195 rfc2553_connect_to() Previously rejected direct connections could
196 be incorrectly reported as DNS issues if Privoxy was compiled
197 with IPv6 support.</p>
201 <p>Adjust url_code_map[] so spaces are replaced with %20 instead
202 of '+' While '+' can be used by client's submitting form data,
203 this is not actually what Privoxy is using the lookups for. This
204 is more of a cosmetic issue and doesn't fix any known
209 <p>When compiled without FEATURE_FAST_REDIRECTS, do not silently
210 ignore +fast-redirect{} directives</p>
214 <p>Added a workaround for GNU libc's strptime() reporting
215 negative year values when the parsed year is only specified with
216 two digits. On affected systems cookies with such a date would
217 not be turned into session cookies by the +session-cookies-only
218 action. Reported by Vaeinoe in #3403560</p>
222 <p>Fixed bind failures with certain GNU libc versions if no
223 non-loopback IP address has been configured on the system. This
224 is mainly an issue if the system is using DHCP and Privoxy is
225 started before the network is completely configured. Reported by
226 Raphael Marichez in #3349356. Additional insight from Petr
231 <p>Privoxy log messages now use the ISO 8601 date format
232 %Y-%m-%d. It's only slightly longer than the old format, but
233 contains the full date including the year and allows sorting by
234 date (when grepping in multiple log files) without hassle.</p>
238 <p>In get_last_url(), do not bother trying to decode URLs that do
239 not contain at least one '%' sign. It reduces the log noise and a
240 number of unnecessary memory allocations.</p>
244 <p>In case of SOCKS5 failures, dump the socks response in the log
249 <p>Simplify the signal setup in main()</p>
253 <p>Streamline socks5_connect() slightly</p>
257 <p>In socks5_connect(), require a complete socks response from
258 the server Previously Privoxy didn't care how much data the
259 server response contained as long as the first two bytes
260 contained the expected values. While at it, shrink the buffer
261 size so Privoxy can't read more than a whole socks response.</p>
265 <p>In chat(), do not bother to generate a client request in case
266 of direct CONNECT requests. It will not be used anyway.</p>
270 <p>Reduce server_last_modified()'s stack size.</p>
274 <p>Shorten get_http_time() by using strftime().</p>
278 <p>Constify the known_http_methods pointers in
279 unknown_method().</p>
283 <p>Constify the time_formats pointers in parse_header_time().</p>
287 <p>Constify the formerly_valid_actions pointers in
288 action_used_to_be_valid().</p>
292 <p>Introduce a GNUMakefile MAN_PAGE variable that defaults to
293 privoxy.1. The Debian package uses section 8 for the man page and
294 this should simplify the patch.</p>
298 <p>Deduplicate the INADDR_NONE definition for Solaris by moving
299 it to jbsockets.h</p>
303 <p>In block_url(), ditch the obsolete workaround for ancient
304 Netscape versions that supposedly couldn't properly deal with
309 <p>Remove a useless NULL pointer check in load_trustfile().</p>
313 <p>Remove two useless NULL pointer checks in
314 load_one_re_filterfile().</p>
318 <p>Change url_code_map[] from an array of pointers to an array of
319 arrays It removes an unnecessary layer of indirection and on
320 64bit system reduces the size of the binary a bit.</p>
324 <p>Fix various typos. Fixes taken from Debian's 29_typos.dpatch
325 by Roland Rosenfeld.</p>
329 <p>Add a dok-tidy GNUMakefile target to clean up the messy HTML
330 generated by the other dok targets.</p>
334 <p>GNUisms in the GNUMakefile have been removed.</p>
338 <p>Change the HTTP version in static responses to 1.1</p>
342 <p>Synced config.sub and config.guess with upstream
343 2011-11-11/386c7218162c145f5f9e1ff7f558a3fbb66c37c5.</p>
347 <p>Add a dedicated function to parse the values of toggles.
348 Reduces duplicated code in load_config() and provides better
349 error handling. Invalid or missing toggle values are now a fatal
350 error instead of being silently ignored.</p>
354 <p>Terminate HTML lines in static error messages with \n instead
359 <p>Simplify cgi_error_unknown() a bit.</p>
363 <p>In LogPutString(), don't bother looking at pszText when not
364 actually logging anything.</p>
368 <p>Change ssplit()'s fourth parameter from int to size_t. Fixes a
373 <p>Add a warning that the statistics currently can't be trusted.
374 Mention Privoxy-Log-Parser's --statistics option as an
375 alternative for the time being.</p>
379 <p>In rfc2553_connect_to(), start setting cgi->error_message
384 <p>Change the expected status code returned for http://p.p/die
385 depending on whether or not FEATURE_GRACEFUL_TERMINATION is
390 <p>In cgi_die(), mark the client connection for closing. If the
391 client will fetch the style sheet through another connection it
392 gets the main thread out of the accept() state and should thus
393 trigger the actual shutdown.</p>
397 <p>Add a proper CGI message for cgi_die().</p>
401 <p>Don't enforce a logical line length limit in
402 read_config_line()</p>
406 <p>Slightly refactor server_last_modified() to remove useless
411 <p>In get_content_type(), also recognize '.jpeg' as JPEG
416 <p>Add '.png' to the list of recognized file extenstions in
417 get_content_type()</p>
421 <p>In block_url(), consistently use the block reason "Request
422 blocked by Privoxy" In two places the reason was "Request for
423 blocked URL" which hides the fact that the request got blocked by
424 Privoxy and isn't necessarily correct as the block may be due to
429 <p>In listen_loop(), reload the configuration files after
430 accepting a new connection instead of before. Previously the
431 first connection that arrived after a configuration change would
432 still be handled with the old configuration.</p>
436 <p>In chat()'s receive-data loop, skip a client socket check if
437 the socket will be written to right away anyway. This can
438 increase the transfer speed for unfiltered content on fast
439 network connections.</p>
443 <p>The socket timeout is used for SOCKS negotiations as well
444 which previously couldn't timeout.</p>
448 <p>Don't keep the client connection alive if any configuration
449 file changed since the time the connection came in. This is
450 closer to Privoxy's behaviour before keep-alive support for
451 client connection has been added and also less confusing in
456 <p>Treat all Content-Type header values containing the pattern
457 'script' as a sign of text. Reported by pribog in #3134970.</p>
463 <p>Action file improvements:</p>
467 <p>Moved the site-specific block pattern section below the one
468 for the generic patterns so for requests that are matched in
469 both, the block reason for the domain is shown which is usually
470 more useful than showing the one for the generic pattern.</p>
474 <p>Remove -prevent-compression from the fragile alias It's no
475 longer used anywhere by default and isn't known to break stuff
480 <p>Add a (disabled) section to block various Facebook tracking
481 URLs Reported by Dan Stahlke in #3421764.</p>
485 <p>Add a (disabled) section to rewrite and redirect
486 click-tracking URLs used on news.google.com Reported by Dan
487 Stahlke in #3421755.</p>
491 <p>Unblock linuxcounter.net/ Reported by Dan Stahlke in
496 <p>Block 'www91.intel.com/' which is used by Omniture. Reported
497 by Adam Piggott in #3167370.</p>
501 <p>Disable the handle-as-empty-doc-returns-ok option and mark it
502 as deprecated. Reminded by tceverling in #2790091.</p>
506 <p>Add ".ivwbox.de/" to the "Cross-site user tracking" section.
507 Reported by Nettozahler in #3172525.</p>
511 <p>Unblock and fast-redirect ".awin1.com/.*=http://" Reported by
512 Adam Piggott in #3170921.</p>
516 <p>Block "b.collective-media.net/".</p>
520 <p>Widen the Debian popcon exception to "qa.debian.org/popcon".
521 Seen in Debian's 05_default_action.dpatch by Roland
526 <p>Block ".gemius.pl/" which only seems to be used for user
527 tracking. Reported by johnd16 in #3002731. Additional input from
532 <p>Disable banners-by-size filters for '.thinkgeek.com/' The
533 filter only seems to catch pictures of the inventory.</p>
537 <p>Block requests for 'go.idmnet.bbelements.com/please/showit/'
538 Reported by kacperdominik in #3372959.</p>
542 <p>Unblock adainitiative.org/</p>
546 <p>Add a fast-redirects exception for
547 '.googleusercontent.com/.*=cache'</p>
551 <p>Add a fast-redirects exception for
552 webcache.googleusercontent.com/</p>
556 <p>Unblock http://adassier.wordpress.com/ and
557 http://adassier.files.wordpress.com/</p>
563 <p>Filter file improvements:</p>
567 <p>Let the yahoo filter hide '.ads'</p>
571 <p>Let the msn filter hide overlay ads for Facebook 'likes' in
572 search results and elements with the id 's_notf_div'. They only
573 seem to be used to advertise site 'enhancements'.</p>
577 <p>Let the js-events filter additionally disarm setInterval()
578 Suggested by dg1727 in #3423775.</p>
584 <p>Documentation improvements:</p>
588 <p>Clarify the effect of compiling Privoxy with zlib support
589 Suggested by dg1727 in #3423782.</p>
593 <p>Point out that the SourceForge messaging system works like a
594 black hole and should thus not be used to contact individual
599 <p>Mention some of the problems one can experience when not
600 explicitly configuring an IP addresses as listen address.</p>
604 <p>Explicitly mention that hostnames can be used instead of IP
605 addresses for the listen-address, that only the first address
606 returned will be used and what happens if the address is invalid.
607 Requested by Calestyo in #3302213.</p>
613 <p>Log message improvements:</p>
617 <p>If only the server connection is kept alive, do not pretent to
618 wait for a new client request.</p>
622 <p>Remove a superfluos log message in forget_connection()</p>
626 <p>In chat(), properly report missing server responses as such
627 instead of calling them empty</p>
631 <p>In forwarded_connect(), fix a log message nobody should ever
636 <p>Fix a log message in socks5_connect(), a failed write
637 operation was logged as failed read operation</p>
641 <p>Let load_one_actions_file() properly complain about a missing
642 '{' at the beginning of the file Simply stating that a line is
643 invalid isn't particularly helpful.</p>
647 <p>Do not claim to listen on a socket until Privoxy actually
648 does. Patch submitted by Petr Pisar #3354485</p>
652 <p>Prevent a duplicated LOG_LEVEL_CLF message when sending out
653 the "no-server-data" response</p>
657 <p>Also log the client socket when dropping a connection.</p>
661 <p>Include the destination host in the 'Request ... marked for
662 blocking. limit-connect{...} doesn't allow CONNECT ...' message
663 Patch submitted by Saperski in #3296250.</p>
667 <p>Prevent a duplicated log message if none of the resolved IP
668 addresses were reachable</p>
672 <p>In connect_to(), do not pretend to retry if
673 forwarded-connect-retries is zero or unset.</p>
677 <p>When a specified user or group can't be found, put the name in
678 single-quotes when logging it.</p>
682 <p>In rfc2553_connect_to(), explain getnameinfo() errors
687 <p>Remove a useless log message in chat()</p>
691 <p>When retrying to connect, also log the maximum number of
692 connection attempts</p>
696 <p>Rephrase a log message in compile_dynamic_pcrs_job_list().
697 Divide the error code and its meaning with a colon. Call the pcrs
698 job dynamic and not the filter. Filters may contain dynamic and
699 non-dynamic pcrs jobs at the same time. Only mention the name of
700 the filter or tagger, but don't claim it's a filter when it could
705 <p>In a fatal error message in load_one_actions_file(), cover
706 both URL and TAG patterns.</p>
710 <p>In pcrs_strerror(), properly report unknown positive error
711 code values as such. Previously they were handled like 0 (no
716 <p>In compile_dynamic_pcrs_job_list(), also log the actual error
717 code as pcrs_strerror() doesn't handle all errors reported by
722 <p>Don't bother trying to continue chatting if the client didn't
723 ask for it. Reduces log noise a bit.</p>
727 <p>Make two fatal error message in load_one_actions_file() more
732 <p>In cgi_send_user_manual(), log when rejecting a file name due
737 <p>In load_file(), log a message if opening a file failed The CGI
738 error message alone isn't too helpful.</p>
742 <p>In connection_destination_matches(), improve two log messages
743 to help understand why the destinations don't match.</p>
747 <p>Rephrase a log message in serve(). Client request arrival
748 should be differentiated from closed client connections now.</p>
752 <p>In serve(), log if a client connection isn't reused due to a
753 configuration file change.</p>
757 <p>Let mark_server_socket_tainted() always mark the server socket
758 tainted, just don't talk about it in cases where it has no
759 effect. It doesn't change Privoxy's behaviour, but makes
760 understanding the log file easier.</p>
770 <p>Added a --disable-ipv6-support switch for platforms where
771 support is detected but doesn't actually work.</p>
775 <p>Do not check for the existence of strerror() and memmove()
780 <p>Remove a useless test for setpgrp(2). Privoxy doesn't need it
781 and it can cause problems when cross-compiling.</p>
785 <p>Rename the --disable-acl-files switch to
786 --disable-acl-support. Since about 2001, ACL directives are
787 specified in the standard config file.</p>
791 <p>Update the URL of the 'Removing outdated PCRE version after
792 the next stable release' posting. The old URL stopped working
793 after one of SF's recent site "optimizations". Reported by Han
800 <p>Privoxy-Regression-Test:</p>
804 <p>Added --shuffle-tests option to increase the chances of
805 detection race conditions.</p>
809 <p>Added a --local-test-file option that allows to use
810 Privoxy-Regression-Test without Privoxy</p>
814 <p>Added tests for missing socks4 and socks4a forwarders</p>
818 <p>The --privoxy-address option now works with IPv6 addresses
819 containing brackets, too</p>
823 <p>Perform limited sanity checks for parameters that are supposed
824 to have numerical values.</p>
828 <p>Added a --sleep-time option to specify a number of seconds to
829 sleep between tests, defaults to 0.</p>
833 <p>Disable the range-requests tagger for tests that break if it's
838 <p>Log messages use the ISO 8601 date format %Y-%m-%d.</p>
842 <p>Fix spelling in two error messages.</p>
846 <p>In the --help output, include a list of supported tests and
847 their default levels.</p>
851 <p>Adjust the tests to properly deal with FEATURE_TOGGLE being
858 <p>Privoxy-Log-Parser:</p>
862 <p>Perform limited sanity checks for command line parameters that
863 are supposed to have numerical values.</p>
867 <p>Implement a --unbreak-lines-only option to try to revert MUA
872 <p>Accept and highlight: Added header: Content-Encoding:
877 <p>Accept and highlight: Compressed content from 29258 to 8630
882 <p>Accept and highlight: Client request arrived in time on socket
887 <p>Highlight: Didn't receive data in time: a.fsdn.com:443</p>
891 <p>Accept log messages with ISO 8601 time stamps, too</p>
901 <p>Bump generated Firefox version to 8.0</p>
905 <p>Only randomize the release date if the new
906 --randomize-release-date option is enabled. Firefox versions
907 after 4 use a fixed date string without meaning.</p>
914 <h2 class="SECT2"><a name="UPGRADERSNOTE" id="UPGRADERSNOTE">3.1. Note
915 to Upgraders</a></h2>
917 <p>A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier
918 versions of <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span>:</p>
922 <p>The recommended way to upgrade <span class=
923 "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> is to backup your old configuration
924 files, install the new ones, verify that <span class=
925 "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> is working correctly and finally merge
926 back your changes using <span class="APPLICATION">diff</span> and
927 maybe <span class="APPLICATION">patch</span>.</p>
929 <p>There are a number of new features in each <span class=
930 "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> release and most of them have to be
931 explicitly enabled in the configuration files. Old configuration
932 files obviously don't do that and due to syntax changes using old
933 configuration files with a new <span class=
934 "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> isn't always possible anyway.</p>
938 <p>Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely,
939 including configuration files, therefore you should really save any
940 important configuration files!</p>
944 <p>On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing
945 configuration files, thinking you will want to do that
950 <p><tt class="FILENAME">standard.action</tt> has been merged into
951 the <tt class="FILENAME">default.action</tt> file.</p>
955 <p>In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now.
956 You can change that in the <a href="config.html#DEBUG">debug
957 section</a> of the configuration file. You may also want to enable
958 more verbose logging until you verified that the new <span class=
959 "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> version is working as expected.</p>
963 <p>Three other config file settings are now off by default:
964 <a href="config.html#ENABLE-REMOTE-TOGGLE">enable-remote-toggle</a>,
966 "config.html#ENABLE-REMOTE-HTTP-TOGGLE">enable-remote-http-toggle</a>,
968 "config.html#ENABLE-EDIT-ACTIONS">enable-edit-actions</a>. If you
969 use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and be
970 aware of the security issues involved.</p>
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