1 Announcing Privoxy 3.0.28 stable
2 --------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Privoxy 3.0.27 stable scales better in multi-user environments
5 and brings a couple of tuning directives.
7 Privoxy 3.0.28 stable fixes two regressions introduced in 3.0.27.
9 --------------------------------------------------------------------
10 ChangeLog for Privoxy 3.0.28
11 --------------------------------------------------------------------
12 - Bug fixes for regressions in 3.0.27:
13 - Fixed misplaced parentheses.
14 Reported by David Binderman.
15 - Changed two regression tests to depend on config directive
16 enable-remote-toggle instead of FEATURE_TOGGLE.
18 --------------------------------------------------------------------
19 ChangeLog for Privoxy 3.0.27
20 --------------------------------------------------------------------
21 - General improvements:
22 - Add a receive-buffer-size directive which can be used to
23 set the size of the previously statically allocated buffer
24 in handle_established_connection().
25 Increasing the buffer size increases Privoxy's memory usage but
26 can lower the number of context switches and thereby reduce the
27 CPU usage and potentially increase the throughput.
28 This is mostly relevant for fast network connections and
29 large downloads that don't require filtering.
30 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
31 - Add a listen-backlog directive which specifies the backlog
32 value passed to listen().
33 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
34 - Add an enable-accept-filter directive which allows to
35 toggle accept filter support at run time when compiled
36 with FEATURE_ACCEPT_FILTER support.
37 It makes testing more convenient and now that it's
38 optional we can emit an error message if enabling
39 the accept filter fails.
40 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
41 - Add a delay-response{} action.
42 This is useful to tar pit JavaScript requests that
43 are endlessly retried in case of blocks. It can also
44 be used to simulate a slow Internet connection.
45 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
46 - Add a 'trusted-cgi-referrer' directive.
47 It allows to configure another page or site that can be used
48 to reach sensitive CGI resources.
49 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
50 - Add a --fuzz mode which exposes Privoxy internals to input
52 Mainly tested with American Fuzzy Lop. For details see:
53 https://www.fabiankeil.de/talks/fuzzing-on-freebsd/
54 This work was partially funded with donations and done
55 as part of the Privoxy month in 2015.
56 - Consistently use the U(ngreedy) flag in the 'img-reorder' filter.
57 - listen_loop(): Reuse a single thread attribute object
58 The object doesn't change and creating a new one for
59 every thread is a waste of (CPU) time.
60 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
61 - Free csp resources in the thread that belongs to the csp instead
62 of the main thread which has enough on its plate already.
63 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
64 - Improve 'socket timeout reached' message.
65 Log the timeout that was triggered and downgrade the
66 log level to LOG_LEVEL_CONNECT to reduce the log noise
67 with common debug settings.
68 The timeout isn't necessary the result of an error and
69 usually merely indicates that Privoxy's socket timeout
70 is lower than the relevant timeouts used by client and
72 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
73 - Explicitly taint the server socket in case of CONNECT requests.
74 This doesn't fix any known problems, but makes
75 some log messages less confusing.
76 - Let write_pid_file() terminate if the pid file can't be opened.
77 Logging the issue at info level is unlikely to help.
78 - log_error(): Reduce the mutex-protected area by not using a
79 heap-allocated buffer that is shared between all threads.
80 This increases performance and reduces the latency with
81 verbose debug settings and multiple concurrent connections.
82 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
83 - Let zalloc() use calloc() if it's available.
84 In some situations using calloc() can be faster than
85 malloc() + memset() and it should never be slower.
86 In the real world the impact of this change is not
87 expected to be noticeable.
88 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
89 - Never use select() when poll() is available.
90 On most platforms select() is limited by FD_SETSIZE while
91 poll() is not. This was a scaling issue for multi-user setups.
92 Using poll() has no downside other than the usual risk
93 that code modifications may introduce new bugs that have
94 yet to be found and fixed.
95 At least in theory this commit could also reduce the latency
96 when there are lots of connections and select() would use
97 "bit fields in arrays of integers" to store file descriptors.
98 Another side effect is that Privoxy no longer has to stop
99 monitoring the client sockets when pipelined requests are
100 waiting but can't be read yet.
101 This code keeps the select()-based code behind ifdefs for
102 now but hopefully it can be removed soonish to make the
104 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
105 - Add a 'reproducible-tarball-dist' target.
106 It's currently separate from the "tarball-dist" target
107 because it requires a tar implementation with mtree spec
109 It's far from being perfect and does not enforce a
110 reproducible mode, but it's better than nothing.
111 - Use arc4random() if it's available.
112 While Privoxy doesn't need high quality pseudo-random numbers
113 there's no reason not to use them when we can and this silences
114 a warning emitted by code checkers that can't tell whether or not
116 - Show the FEATURE_EXTERNAL_FILTERS status on the status page.
117 Better late than never. Previously a couple of tests weren't
118 executed as Privoxy-Regression-Test couldn't detect that the
119 FEATURE_EXTERNAL_FILTERS dependency was satisfied.
120 - Ditch FEATURE_IMAGE_DETECT_MSIE.
121 It's an obsolete workaround we inherited from Junkbuster
122 and was already disabled by default.
123 Users that feel the urge to work around issues with
124 image requests coming from an Internet Explorer version
125 from more than 15 years ago can still do this using tags.
126 - Consistently use strdup_or_die() instead of strdup() in
127 cases where allocation failures aren't expected.
128 Using strdup_or_die() allows to remove a couple of explicit
129 error checks which slightly reduces the size of the binary.
130 - Insert a refresh tag into the /client-tags CGI page when
131 serving it while a client-specific tag is temporarily enabled.
132 This makes it less likely that the user ends up
133 looking at tag state that is out of date.
134 - Use absolute URLs in the client-tag forms.
135 It's more consistent with the rest of the CGI page
136 URLs and makes it more convenient to copy the forms
138 - cgi_error_disabled(): Use status code 403 and an appropriate response line
139 - Use a dedicated CGI handler to deal with tag-toggle requests
140 As a result the /client-tags page is now safe to reach without
141 trusted Referer header which makes bookmarking or linking to
143 Finally, refreshing the /client-tags page to show the
144 current state can no longer unintentionally repeat the
145 previous toggle request.
146 - Don't add a "Connection" header for CONNECT requests.
147 Explicitly sending "Connection: close" is not necessary and
148 apparently it causes problems with some forwarding proxies
149 that will close the connection prematurely.
150 Reported by Marc Thomas.
151 - Fix compiler warnings.
154 - rfc2553_connect_to(): Properly detect and log when poll()
155 reached the time out. Previously this was logged as:
156 Could not connect to [...]: No error: 0.
157 which isn't very helpful.
158 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
159 - add_tag_for_client(): Set time_to_live properly.
160 Previously the time_to_live was always set for the first tag.
161 Attempts to temporarily enable a tag would result in enabling
162 it permanently unless no tag was enabled already.
163 - Revert r1.165 which didn't perform as advertised.
164 While the idea was to use "https:// when creating links
165 for the user manual on the website", the actual effect
166 was to use "https://" when Privoxy was supposed to serve
167 the user manual itself.
168 Reported by Yossi Zahn on Privoxy-devel@.
169 - socks5_connect(): Fail in case of unsupported address types.
170 Previously they would not be detected right away and
171 Privoxy would fail later on with an error message that
172 didn't make it obvious that the problem was socks-related.
173 So far, no such problems have actually been reported.
174 - socks5_connect(): Properly deal with socks replies that
175 contain IPv6 addresses.
176 Previously parts of the reply were left unread and
177 later on treated as invalid HTTP response data.
178 Fixes #904 reported by Danny Goossen who also provided
179 the initial version of this patch.
181 - Action file improvements:
182 - Unblock 'msdn.microsoft.com/'.
183 It (presumably) isn't used to serve the kind of ads Privoxy should
184 block by default but happens to serve lots of pages with URLs that
185 are likely to result in false positives.
186 Reported by bugreporter1694 in AF#939.
187 - Disable gif deanimation for requests tagged with CSS-REQUEST.
188 The action will ignore content that isn't considered text
189 anyway and explicitly disabling it makes this more obvious
190 if "action" debugging (debug 65536) is enabled while
191 "gif deanimation" debugging (debug 256) isn't.
192 - Explicitly disable HTML filters for requests with CSS-REQUEST tag.
193 The filters are unlikely to break CSS files but executing
194 them without (intentionally) getting any hits is a waste of
195 cpu time and makes the log more noisy when running with
197 - Unblock 'adventofcode.com/'.
198 Reported by Clint Adams in Debian bug #848211.
199 Fixes Roland's AF#937.
200 - Unblock 'adlibris.com'.
201 Reported by Wyrex in #935
202 - Unblock .golang.org/
203 - Add fast-redirects exception for '.youtube.com/.*origin=http'
205 - Privoxy-Log-Parser:
206 - Don't gather host and resource statistics if they aren't requested.
207 While the performance impact seems negligible this significantly
208 reduces the memory usage if there are lots of requests.
209 - Bump version as the behaviour (slightly) changed.
210 - Count connection failures as well in statistics mode.
211 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
212 - Count connection timeouts as well in statistics mode.
213 Sponsored by: Robert Klemme
214 - Fix an 'uninitialized value' warning when generating
215 statistics for a log file without response headers.
216 While privoxy-log-parser was supposed to detect this already,
217 the check was flawed and the message the user didn't see was
218 somewhat confusing anyway.
219 Now the message is less confusing, more helpful and actually printed.
220 Reported by: Robert Klemme
222 - Documentation improvements:
223 - Refer to the git sources instead of CVS.
224 - Use GNU/Linux when referring to the OS instead of the kernel.
225 - Add FAQ entry for what to do if editing the config file is access denied.
226 - Add brief HTTP/2 FAQ.
227 - Add a small fuzzing section to the developer documentation.
228 - Add a client-header-tagger{client-ip-address} example.
229 - Stop suggesting that Privoxy is an anonymizing proxy.
230 The term could lead to Privoxy users overestimating
231 what it can do on its own (without Tor).
232 - Make it more obvious that SPI accepts Paypal, too.
233 Currently most donations are made through the Paypal account
234 managed by Zwiebelfreunde e.V. and a more even distribution
236 - Suggest to log applying actions as well when reproducing problems.
237 - Explicitly mention that Privoxy binaries are built by individuals
238 on their own systems. Buyer beware!
239 - Mention the release feed on the homepage.
240 - Remove a mysterious comment with a GNU FDL link as it isn't
241 useful and could confuse license scanners.
242 In May 2002 it was briefly claimed that "this document" was covered
243 by the GNU FDL. The commit message (r1.5) doesn't explain the motivation
244 or whether all copyright holders were actually asked and agreed to the
245 declared license change.
246 It's thus hard to tell whether or not the license change was legit,
247 but luckily two days later the "doc license" was "put" "back to GPL"
249 At the same time the offending comment with a link to the FDL
250 (not the GPL) was added for no obvious reason.
254 - Bump for-privoxy-version to 3.0.27 as we now rely on untrusted
255 CGI request being rejected with status code 403 (instead of 200).
256 - Update test for /send-stylesheet and add another one
259 - Consistently use https:// when linking to the Privoxy website.
260 - Remove SourceForge references in Copyright header.
261 - Remove a couple of SourceForge references in a comment.
262 While at it, fix the grammar.
263 - Move the site-specific documentation block before the generic one.
264 While most Privoxy installations don't have a site-specific
265 documentation block, in cases were it exists it's likely to
266 be more relevant than the generic one.
267 Showing it first makes it less likely that users stop reading
268 before they reach it, especially on pages that don't fit on
271 - Build system improvements:
272 - Prefer openjade to jade. On some systems Jade produces
273 HTML with unescaped ampersands in URLs.
274 - Prefer OpenSP to SP to be consistent.
275 - Have Docbook generated HTML files be straight ASCII.
276 Dealing with a mixture of ISO-8859 and UTF-8 files is problematic.
277 - Echo the filename to stderr for 'make dok-tidy'.
278 Make it a bit easier to find errors in docbook generated HTML.
279 - Warn when still using select().
280 - Warn when compiling without calloc().
281 - Make it more obvious that the --with-fdsetsize configure switch
282 is pointless if poll() is available.
283 - Remove support for AmigaOS.
284 - Update windows build system to use supported software.
285 The cygwin gcc -mno-cygwin option is no longer supported, so
286 convert the windows build system to use the cygwin cross-compiler
287 to build "native" code.
288 - Add --enable-static-linking option for configure
289 does the same thing as LDFLAGS=-static; ./configure
290 but nicer than mixing evars and configure options.
292 -----------------------------------------------------------------
294 -----------------------------------------------------------------
296 Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for
297 enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling
298 access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a
299 flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and
300 tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user
303 Privoxy is Free Software and licensed under the GNU GPLv2.
305 Our TODO list is rather long. Helping hands and donations are welcome:
307 * https://www.privoxy.org/faq/general.html#PARTICIPATE
309 * https://www.privoxy.org/faq/general.html#DONATE
311 At present, Privoxy is known to run on Windows 95 and later versions
312 (98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7 etc.), GNU/Linux (RedHat, SuSE,
313 Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware and others), Mac OS X (10.4 and
314 upwards on PPC and Intel processors), OS/2, Haiku, DragonFly, ElectroBSD,
315 FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and various other flavors of Unix.
317 In addition to the core features of ad blocking and cookie management,
318 Privoxy provides many supplemental features, that give the end-user
319 more control, more privacy and more freedom:
321 * Supports "Connection: keep-alive". Outgoing connections can be kept
322 alive independently from the client. Currently not available on all
325 * Supports IPv6, provided the operating system does so too,
326 and the configure script detects it.
328 * Supports tagging which allows to change the behaviour based on client
331 * Can be run as an "intercepting" proxy, which obviates the need to
332 configure browsers individually.
334 * Sophisticated actions and filters for manipulating both server and
337 * Can be chained with other proxies.
339 * Integrated browser based configuration and control utility at
340 http://config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/). Browser-based
341 tracing of rule and filter effects. Remote toggling.
343 * Web page filtering (text replacements, removes banners based on size,
344 invisible "web-bugs" and HTML annoyances, etc.)
346 * Modularized configuration that allows for standard settings and user
347 settings to reside in separate files, so that installing updated actions
348 files won't overwrite individual user settings.
350 * Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration
351 files, and a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax.
355 * Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
357 * User-customizable HTML templates for most proxy-generated pages (e.g.
360 * Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
362 * Most features are controllable on a per-site or per-location basis.
366 https://www.privoxy.org/
368 - Privoxy Developers <privoxy-devel@lists.privoxy.org>