By default, the main configuration file is named config, with the exception of Windows, where it is named config.txt. Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword followed by a list of values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For example:
-confdir /etc/privoxy
-Assigns the value /etc/privoxy to the option confdir and thus indicates that the configuration directory is named "/etc/privoxy/".
-All options in the config file except for confdir and logdir are optional. Watch out in the below description for what happens if you leave them unset.
-The main config file controls all aspects of Privoxy's operation that are not location dependent (i.e. they apply universally, no matter where you may be surfing). Like the filter and action files, the config file is a plain text file and can be modified with a text editor like emacs, vim or notepad.exe.
-If you intend to operate Privoxy for more users than just yourself, it might be a good idea to let them know how to reach you, what you block and why you do that, your policies, etc.
-Location of the Privoxy User Manual.
A fully qualified URI
Unset
http://www.privoxy.org/https://www.privoxy.org/version/user-manual/ will be used, where version is the Privoxy version.
The User Manual URI is the single best source of information on Privoxy, and is used for help links from some of the internal CGI pages. The manual itself is normally packaged with the binary distributions, so you probably want to set this to a locally installed copy.
-Examples:
-The best all purpose solution is simply to put the full local PATH to where the User Manual is located:
-
- user-manual /usr/share/doc/privoxy/user-manual -+ ��user-manual��/usr/share/doc/privoxy/user-manual |
The User Manual is then available to anyone with access to Privoxy, by following the built-in URL: http://config.privoxy.org/user-manual/ (or the shortcut: http://p.p/user-manual/).
-If the documentation is not on the local system, it can be accessed from a remote server, as:
-
- user-manual http://example.com/privoxy/user-manual/ -+ ��user-manual��http://example.com/privoxy/user-manual/ |
| Warning | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
If set, this option should be
-
A URL to be displayed in the error page that users will see
if access to an untrusted page is denied. URL Unset No links are displayed on the "untrusted" error page. The value of this option only matters if the experimental
trust mechanism has been activated. (See trustfile below.) If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write
up some on-line documentation about your trust policy and to
specify the URL(s) here. Use multiple times for multiple
URLs. The URL(s) should be added to the trustfile as well, so
users don't end up locked out from the information on why they
were locked out in the first place! An email address to reach the Privoxy administrator. Email address Unset No email address is displayed on error pages and the CGI
user interface. If both admin-address and
proxy-info-url are unset, the whole
@@ -274,106 +216,80 @@
A URL to documentation about the local Privoxy setup, configuration or
policies. URL Unset No link to local documentation is displayed on error pages
and the CGI user interface. If both admin-address and
proxy-info-url are unset, the whole
"Local Privoxy Support" box on all generated pages will not be
shown. This URL shouldn't be blocked ;-) Privoxy can (and normally does) use
a number of other files for additional configuration, help and logging.
This section of the configuration file tells Privoxy where to find those other files. The user running Privoxy, must have
read permission for all configuration files, and write permission to
any files that would be modified, such as log files and actions
files. The directory where the other configuration files are
located. Path name /etc/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows) Mandatory No trailing "/", please. An alternative directory where the templates are loaded
from. Path name unset The templates are assumed to be located in
confdir/template. Privoxy's original
templates are usually overwritten with each update. Use this
@@ -428,47 +333,35 @@
A directory where Privoxy can create temporary files. Path name unset No temporary files are created, external filters don't
work. To execute external
filters, Privoxy has
to create temporary files. This directive specifies the
directory the temporary files should be written to. It should be a directory only Privoxy (and trusted users) can
access. The directory where all logging takes place (i.e. where the
logfile is located). Path name /var/log/privoxy (Unix) or Privoxy installation dir (Windows) Mandatory No trailing "/", please. The actions file(s) to
use Complete file name, relative to confdir
default.action # Main actions file
@@ -570,26 +443,20 @@
No actions are taken at all. More or less neutral
proxying. Multiple actionsfile lines are
permitted, and are in fact recommended! The default values are default.action, which is the "main" actions file maintained by the
developers, and user.action, where
you can make your personal additions. Actions files contain all the per site and per URL
configuration for ad blocking, cookie management, privacy
considerations, etc. The filter file(s) to use File name, relative to confdir default.filter (Unix) or default.filter.txt (Windows) No textual content filtering takes place, i.e. all
+name} actions in the actions
files are turned neutral. Multiple filterfile lines are
permitted. The filter files contain
content modification rules that use regular expressions. These rules
@@ -647,20 +502,17 @@
your favorite JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual
displayed text, or just have some fun playing buzzword bingo
with web pages. The +filter{name} actions rely on the
relevant filter (name) to
be defined in a filter file! A pre-defined filter file called default.filter that contains a number of useful
filters for common problems is included in the distribution.
See the section on the filter action for a
list. It is recommended to place any locally adapted filters into
a separate file, such as user.filter. The log file to use File name, relative to logdir Unset (commented
out). When activated: logfile (Unix) or privoxy.log
(Windows). No logfile is written. The logfile is where all logging and error messages are
written. The level of detail and number of messages are set
@@ -712,20 +553,16 @@
Privoxy (e.g., it's not
blocking an ad you think it should block) and it can help you
to monitor what your browser is doing. Depending on the debug options below, the logfile may be a
privacy risk if third parties can get access to it. As most
users will never look at it, Privoxy only logs fatal errors by
default. For most troubleshooting purposes, you will have to change
that, please refer to the debugging section for details. Any log files must be writable by whatever user Privoxy is being run as (on Unix, default
user id is "privoxy"). To prevent the logfile from growing indefinitely, it is
recommended to periodically rotate or shorten it. Many
operating systems support log rotation out of the box, some
@@ -735,59 +572,45 @@
The name of the trust file to use File name, relative to confdir Unset (commented
out). When activated: trust (Unix) or trust.txt
(Windows) The entire trust mechanism is disabled. The trust mechanism is an experimental feature for building
white-lists and should be used with care. It is NOT recommended for
the casual user. If you specify a trust file, Privoxy will only allow access to sites
that are specified in the trustfile. Sites can be listed in one
of two ways: Prepending a ~ character limits
access to this site only (and any sub-paths within this site),
e.g. ~www.example.com allows access to
~www.example.com/features/news.html,
etc. Or, you can designate sites as trusted referrers, by
prepending the name with a +
@@ -799,17 +622,14 @@
become trusted referrers themselves (i.e. they are added with a
~ designation). There is a limit of
512 such entries, after which new entries will not be made. If you use the + operator in the
trust file, it may grow considerably over time. It is recommended that Privoxy be compiled with the --disable-force, --disable-toggle and --disable-editor options, if this feature is to
be used. Possible applications include limiting Internet access for
children. These options are mainly useful when tracing a problem. Note that
you might also want to invoke Privoxy
with the --no-daemon command line option when
debugging. Key values that determine what information gets logged. Integer values 0 (i.e.: only fatal errors (that cause Privoxy to exit) are
logged) Default value is used (see above). The available debug levels are: To select multiple debug levels, you can either add them or
use multiple debug lines. A debug level of 1 is informative because it will show you
each request as it happens. 1, 1024, 4096 and 8192 are recommended so
@@ -899,20 +701,16 @@
probably only of interest if you are hunting down a specific
problem. They can produce a hell of an output (especially
16). If you are used to the more verbose settings, simply enable
the debug lines below again. If you want to use pure CLF (Common Log Format), you should
set "debug 512" ONLY and not enable
anything else. Privoxy has a hard-coded
limit for the length of log messages. If it's reached, messages
are logged truncated and marked with "...
[too long, truncated]". Please don't file any support requests without trying to
reproduce the problem with increased debug level first. Once
you read the log messages, you may even be able to solve the
@@ -921,41 +719,30 @@
Whether to run only one server thread. 1 or
0 0 Multi-threaded (or, where unavailable: forked) operation,
i.e. the ability to serve multiple requests simultaneously. This option is only there for debugging purposes.
It will drastically
@@ -964,50 +751,37 @@
The hostname shown on the CGI pages. Text Unset The hostname provided by the operating system is used. On some misconfigured systems resolving the hostname fails
or takes too much time and slows Privoxy down. Setting a fixed
hostname works around the problem. In other circumstances it might be desirable to show a
hostname other than the one returned by the operating system.
For example if the system has several different hostnames and
you don't want to use the first one. Note that Privoxy does not validate the specified hostname
value. This section of the config file controls the security-relevant
aspects of Privoxy's
configuration. The address and TCP port on which Privoxy will listen for client
requests. [IP-Address]:Port [Hostname]:Port 127.0.0.1:8118 Bind to 127.0.0.1 (IPv4 localhost), port 8118. This is
suitable and recommended for home users who run Privoxy on the same machine as their
browser. You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy
address and port. If you already have another service running on port 8118, or
if you want to serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your
local network) as well, you will need to override the
default. You can use this statement multiple times to make
Privoxy listen on more ports
or more IP addresses. Suitable if
your operating system does not support sharing IPv6 and IPv4
protocols on the same socket. If a hostname is used instead of an IP address, Privoxy will try to resolve it to an IP
address and if there are multiple, use the first one
returned. If the address for the hostname isn't already known on the
system (for example because it's in /etc/hostname), this may
result in DNS traffic. If the specified address isn't available on the system, or
if the hostname can't be resolved, Privoxy will fail to start. IPv6 addresses containing colons have to be quoted by
brackets. They can only be used if Privoxy has been compiled with IPv6
support. If you aren't sure if your version supports it, have a
look at http://config.privoxy.org/show-status. Some operating systems will prefer IPv6 to IPv4 addresses
even if the system has no IPv6 connectivity which is usually
not expected by the user. Some even rely on DNS to resolve
localhost which mean the "localhost" address used may not
actually be local. It is therefore recommended to explicitly configure the
intended IP address instead of relying on the operating system,
unless there's a strong reason not to. If you leave out the address, Privoxy will bind to all IPv4 interfaces
(addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the
@@ -1119,12 +870,10 @@
documentation. Check for non-standard patches if your
Privoxy version behaves
differently. If you configure Privoxy to
be reachable from the network, consider using access control lists (ACL's, see below),
and/or a firewall. If you open Privoxy to
untrusted users, you will also want to make sure that the
following actions are disabled: enable-remote-toggle Suppose you are running Privoxy on a machine which has the address
192.168.0.1 on your local private network (192.168.0.0) and has
another outside connection with a different address. You want
it to serve requests from inside only: Suppose you are running Privoxy on an IPv6-capable machine and you
want it to listen on the IPv6 address of the loopback
device: Initial state of "toggle" status 1 or 0 1 Act as if toggled on If set to 0, Privoxy will
start in "toggled off" mode, i.e.
@@ -1212,46 +943,34 @@
Whether or not the web-based
toggle feature may be used 0 or 1 0 The web-based toggle feature is disabled. When toggled off, Privoxy
mostly acts like a normal, content-neutral proxy, i.e. doesn't
block ads or filter content. Access to the toggle feature can not be controlled
separately by "ACLs" or HTTP
@@ -1262,14 +981,11 @@
users. So this option is not recommended for multi-user
environments with untrusted users. Note that malicious client side code (e.g Java) is also
capable of using this option. As a lot of Privoxy users
don't read documentation, this feature is disabled by
default. Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
otherwise this option has no effect. Whether or not Privoxy recognizes special HTTP headers to
change its behaviour. 0 or 1 0 Privoxy ignores special HTTP headers. When toggled on, the client can change Privoxy's behaviour by setting special
@@ -1318,54 +1023,41 @@
"X-Filter: No", to disable filtering
for the ongoing request, even if it is enabled in one of the
action files. This feature is disabled by default. If you are using
Privoxy in a environment with
trusted clients, you may enable this feature at your
discretion. Note that malicious client side code (e.g Java) is
also capable of using this feature. This option will be removed in future releases as it has
been obsoleted by the more general header taggers. Whether or not the web-based
actions file editor may be used 0 or 1 0 The web-based actions file editor is disabled. Access to the editor can not be controlled separately by
@@ -1375,18 +1067,15 @@
"QUOTE">"ACLs" and listen-address above) can modify its
configuration for all users. This option is not recommended for environments with
untrusted users and as a lot of Privoxy users don't read documentation,
this feature is disabled by default. Note that malicious client side code (e.g Java) is also
capable of using the actions editor and you shouldn't enable
this options unless you understand the consequences and are
sure your browser is configured correctly. Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with support for this feature,
otherwise this option has no effect. Whether the user is allowed to ignore blocks and can
"go there anyway". 0 or 1 0 Blocks are not enforced. Privoxy is mainly used to
block and filter requests as a service to the user, for example
@@ -1436,7 +1114,6 @@
sometimes innocent pages are blocked. In this situation it
makes sense to allow the user to enforce the request and have
Privoxy ignore the block. In the default configuration Privoxy's "Blocked" page contains a Privoxy will detect the force
prefix, remove it again and let the request pass. Of course Privoxy can also
be used to enforce a network policy. In that case the user
obviously should not be able to bypass any blocks, and that's
@@ -1454,31 +1130,24 @@
the user adds the force prefix by hand, it will not be accepted
and the circumvention attempt is logged. enforce-blocks 1 Who can access what. src_addr[:port][/dst_addr[:port][/dst_masklen]] Where src_addr and
dst_addr are IPv4 addresses
in dotted decimal notation or valid DNS names,
-
If your system implements RFC
3493, then src_addr and
@@ -1507,13 +1174,10 @@
dst_masklen can be a number
from 0 to 128. Unset If no port is specified,
any port will match. If no src_masklen or
Don't restrict access further than implied by listen-address Access controls are included at the request of ISPs and
systems administrators, and listen-address option. Please see the warnings in the FAQ that Privoxy is not intended to be a substitute
for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic
security weaknesses. Multiple ACL lines are OK. If any ACLs are specified,
Privoxy only talks to IP
addresses that match at least one deny-access line. In other
words, the last match wins, with the default being deny-access. If Privoxy is using a
forwarder (see forward below) for a
particular destination URL, the Privoxy to determine the IP
address of the ultimate target (that's often what gateways are
used for). You should prefer using IP addresses over DNS names, because
the address lookups take time. All DNS names must resolve! You
can not
use domain patterns like "*.org" or
partial domain names. If a DNS name resolves to multiple IP
addresses, only the first one is used. Some systems allow IPv4 clients to connect to IPv6 server
sockets. Then the client's IPv4 address will be translated by
the system into IPv6 address space with special prefix
::ffff:0:0/96 (so called IPv4 mapped IPv6 address).
Privoxy can handle it and maps
such ACL addresses automatically. Denying access to particular sites by ACL may have undesired
side effects if the site in question is hosted on a machine
which also hosts other sites (most sites are). Explicitly define the default behavior if no ACL and
listen-address are set: dst_addr implies that all destination
addresses are OK: Allow any host on the same class C subnet as www.privoxy.org
access to nothing but www.example.com (or other domains hosted
on the same system): Allow access from any host on the 26-bit subnet
192.168.45.64 to anywhere, with the exception that
192.168.45.73 may not access the IP address behind
www.dirty-stuff.example.com: Allow access from the IPv4 network 192.0.2.0/24 even if
listening on an IPv6 wild card address (not supported on all
platforms): This is equivalent to the following line even if listening
on an IPv4 address (not supported on all platforms): Maximum size of the buffer for content filtering. Size in Kbytes 4096 Use a 4MB (4096 KB) limit. For content filtering, i.e. the +filter and
-
When a document buffer size reaches the buffer-limit, it is flushed to the client
unfiltered and no further attempt to filter the rest of the
@@ -1720,54 +1344,40 @@
Whether or not proxy authentication through Privoxy should work. 0 or 1 0 Proxy authentication headers are removed. Privoxy itself does not support proxy authentication, but
can allow clients to authenticate against Privoxy's parent
proxy. By default Privoxy (3.0.21 and later) don't do that and
remove Proxy-Authorization headers in requests and
Proxy-Authenticate headers in responses to make it harder for
malicious sites to trick inexperienced users into providing
login information. If this option is enabled the headers are forwarded. Enabling this option is not recommended if there is no parent
proxy that requires authentication or if the local network
@@ -1780,20 +1390,80 @@
A trusted website or webpage whose links can be followed to
+ reach sensitive CGI pages URL or URL prefix Unset No external pages are considered trusted referers. Before Privoxy accepts
+ configuration changes through CGI pages like client-tags or the
+ remote toggle,
+ it checks the Referer header to see if the request comes from a
+ trusted source. By default only the webinterface domains config.privoxy.org and p.p are considered trustworthy. Requests originating
+ from other domains are rejected to prevent third-parties from
+ modifiying Privoxy's state by e.g. embedding images that result
+ in CGI requests. In some environments it may be desirable to embed links to
+ CGI pages on external pages, for example on an Intranet
+ homepage the Privoxy admin controls. The "trusted-cgi-referer" option
+ can be used to add that page, or the whole domain, as trusted
+ source so the resulting requests aren't rejected. Requests are
+ accepted if the specified trusted-cgi-refer is the prefix of
+ the Referer. Declaring pages the admin doesn't control
+ trustworthy may allow malicious third parties to modify
+ Privoxy's internal state against the user's wishes and
+ without the user's knowledge. This feature allows routing of HTTP requests through a chain of
multiple proxies. Forwarding can be used to chain Privoxy with a caching proxy to
speed up browsing. Using a parent proxy may also be necessary if the
machine that Privoxy runs on has no
direct Internet access. Note that parent proxies can severely decrease your privacy level.
For example a parent proxy could add your IP address to the request
headers and if it's a caching proxy it may add the
-
Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. Privoxy supports the SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 4A
protocols. To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be
routed. target_pattern
http_parent[:port] where target_pattern is
a URL pattern that
specifies to which requests (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall
@@ -1839,28 +1502,21 @@
8000). Use a single dot (.) to denote
"no forwarding". Unset Don't use parent HTTP proxies. If http_parent is
".", then requests are not forwarded
to another HTTP proxy but are made directly to the web
servers. http_parent can be a
numerical IPv6 address (if RFC 3493
@@ -1870,64 +1526,50 @@
containing an IPv6 address has to be put into angle brackets
(normal brackets are reserved for regular expressions
already). Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the
last match wins. Everything goes to an example parent proxy, except SSL on
port 443 (which it doesn't handle): Everything goes to our example ISP's caching proxy, except
for requests to that ISP's sites: Parent proxy specified by an IPv6 address: Suppose your parent proxy doesn't support IPv6: Through which SOCKS proxy (and optionally to which parent
HTTP proxy) specific requests should be routed. target_pattern
socks_proxy[:port] http_parent[:port] where target_pattern is
a URL pattern that
specifies to which requests (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall
@@ -1974,42 +1610,32 @@
"REPLACEABLE">port parameters are TCP ports, i.e.
integer values from 1 to 65535 Unset Don't use SOCKS proxies. Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the
last match wins. The difference between forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a is that in the SOCKS 4A
protocol, the DNS resolution of the target hostname happens on
the SOCKS server, while in SOCKS 4 it happens locally. With forward-socks5 the DNS
resolution will happen on the remote server as well. forward-socks5t works like vanilla
forward-socks5 but lets Privoxy additionally use Tor-specific
SOCKS extensions. Currently the only supported SOCKS extension
is optimistic data which can reduce the latency for the first
request made on a newly created connection. socks_proxy and
http_parent can be a
numerical IPv6 address (if
-
If http_parent is
".", then requests are not forwarded
to another HTTP proxy but are made (HTTP-wise) directly to the
web servers, albeit through a SOCKS proxy. From the company example.com, direct connections are made to
all "internal" domains, but
everything outbound goes through their ISP's proxy by way of
example.com's corporate SOCKS 4A gateway to the Internet. A rule that uses a SOCKS 4 gateway for all destinations but
no HTTP parent looks like this: To chain Privoxy and Tor, both running on the same system,
you would use something like: Note that if you got Tor through one of the bundles, you may
have to change the port from 9050 to 9150 (or even another
one). For details, please check the documentation on the
Tor
website. The public Tor network
can't be used to reach your local network, if you need to
access local servers you therefore might want to make some
exceptions: Unencrypted connections to systems in these address ranges
will be as (un)secure as the local network is, but the
alternative is that you can't reach the local network through
Privoxy at all. Of course this
may actually be desired and there is no reason to make these
exceptions if you aren't sure you need them. If you also want to be able to reach servers in your local
network by using their names, you will need additional
exceptions that look like this: If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special
content only to their subscribers, you can configure multiple
Privoxies which have connections to
the respective ISPs to act as forwarders to each other, so that
your users can
see the internal content of all ISPs. Assume that host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.example.net. And
host-b has a PPP connection to isp-b.example.org. Both run
Privoxy. Their forwarding
configuration can look like this: host-a: host-b: Now, your users can set their browser's proxy to use either host-a
or host-b and be able to browse the internal content of both isp-a
and isp-b. If you intend to chain Privoxy
and squid locally, then chaining as
browser -> squid -> privoxy is the
recommended way. Assuming that Privoxy and
squid run on the same box, your
squid configuration could then look
like this: You would then need to change your browser's proxy settings to
squid's address and port. Squid
normally uses port 3128. If unsure consult http_port in squid.conf. You could just as well decide to only forward requests you suspect
of leading to Windows executables through a virus-scanning parent
proxy, say, on antivir.example.com, port
8010: How often Privoxy retries if a forwarded connection request
fails. Number of retries. 0 Connections forwarded through other proxies are treated like
direct connections and no retry attempts are made. forwarded-connect-retries is mainly
@@ -2263,21 +1837,17 @@
have failed because the server doesn't exist or isn't
reachable. In this case the retry will just delay the
appearance of Privoxy's error message. Note that in the context of this option, "forwarded connections" includes all connections
that Privoxy forwards through other proxies. This option is not
limited to the HTTP CONNECT method. Only use this option, if you are getting lots of
forwarding-related error messages that go away when you try
again manually. Start with a small value and check Privoxy's
logfile from time to time, to see how many retries are usually
needed. forwarded-connect-retries 1 Whether intercepted requests should be treated as valid. 0 or 1 0 Only proxy requests are accepted, intercepted requests are
treated as invalid. If you don't trust your clients and want to force them to
use Privoxy, enable this
option and configure your packet filter to redirect outgoing
HTTP connections into Privoxy. Note that intercepting encrypted connections (HTTPS) isn't
supported. Make sure that Privoxy's
own requests aren't redirected as well. Additionally take care
that Privoxy can't
@@ -2340,58 +1896,44 @@
redirection loops if Privoxy's
listening port is reachable by the outside or an attacker has
access to the pages you visit. If you are running Privoxy as intercepting proxy without
being able to intercept all client requests you may want to
adjust the CGI templates to make sure they don't reference
content from config.privoxy.org. accept-intercepted-requests 1 Whether requests to Privoxy's CGI pages can be blocked or
redirected. 0 or 1 0 Privoxy ignores block and
redirect actions for its CGI pages. By default Privoxy ignores
block or redirect actions for its CGI pages. Intercepting these
@@ -2399,130 +1941,98 @@
fine-grained access control, but it can also render the
complete web interface useless and make debugging problems
painful if done without care. Don't enable this option unless you're sure that you really
need it. allow-cgi-request-crunching 1 Whether the CGI interface should stay compatible with broken
HTTP clients. 0 or 1 0 The CGI form generate long GET URLs. Privoxy's CGI forms can
lead to rather long URLs. This isn't a problem as far as the
HTTP standard is concerned, but it can confuse clients with
arbitrary URL length limitations. Enabling split-large-forms causes Privoxy to divide big forms into smaller
ones to keep the URL length down. It makes editing a lot less
convenient and you can no longer submit all changes at once,
but at least it works around this browser bug. If you don't notice any editing problems, there is no reason
to enable this option, but if one of the submit buttons appears
to be broken, you should give it a try. split-large-forms 1 Number of seconds after which an open connection will no
longer be reused. Time in seconds. None Connections are not kept alive. This option allows clients to keep the connection to
Privoxy alive. If the server
supports it, Privoxy will keep
the connection to the server alive as well. Under certain
circumstances this may result in speed-ups. By default, Privoxy will
close the connection to the server if the client connection
gets closed, or if the specified timeout has been reached
without a new request coming in. This behaviour can be changed
with the connection-sharing option. This option has no effect if Privoxy has been compiled without
keep-alive support. Note that a timeout of five seconds as used in the default
configuration file significantly decreases the number of
connections that will be reused. The value is used because some
@@ -2532,124 +2042,93 @@
connections the browser allows, which means connections to
other websites can't be opened until the connections currently
in use time out. Several users have reported this as a Privoxy bug, so the
default value has been reduced. Consider increasing it to 300
seconds or even more if you think your browser can handle it.
If your browser appears to be hanging, it probably can't. keep-alive-timeout 300 Whether or not pipelined requests should be served. 0 or 1. None If Privoxy receives more than one request at once, it
terminates the client connection after serving the first
one. Privoxy currently doesn't
pipeline outgoing requests, thus allowing pipelining on the
client connection is not guaranteed to improve the
performance. By default Privoxy tries to
discourage clients from pipelining by discarding aggressively
pipelined requests, which forces the client to resend them
through a new connection. This option lets Privoxy
tolerate pipelining. Whether or not that improves performance
mainly depends on the client configuration. If you are seeing problems with pages not properly loading,
disabling this option could work around the problem. tolerate-pipelining 1 Assumed server-side keep-alive timeout if not specified by
the server. Time in seconds. None Connections for which the server didn't specify the
keep-alive timeout are not reused. Enabling this option significantly increases the number of
connections that are reused, provided the keep-alive-timeout
option is also enabled. While it also increases the number of connections problems
when Privoxy tries to reuse a
connection that already has been closed on the server side, or
@@ -2660,96 +2139,74 @@
"APPLICATION">Privoxy will simply close the connection
and the client is supposed to retry the request without
bothering the user. Enabling this option is therefore only recommended if the
connection-sharing option is disabled. It is an error to specify a value larger than the keep-alive-timeout
value. This option has no effect if Privoxy has been compiled without
keep-alive support. default-server-timeout 60 Whether or not outgoing connections that have been kept
alive should be shared between different incoming
connections. 0 or 1 None Connections are not shared. This option has no effect if Privoxy has been compiled without
keep-alive support, or if it's disabled. Note that reusing connections doesn't necessary cause
speedups. There are also a few privacy implications you should
be aware of. If this option is effective, outgoing connections are shared
between clients (if there are more than one) and closing the
browser that initiated the outgoing connection does no longer
affect the connection between Privoxy and the server unless the client's
request hasn't been completed yet. If the outgoing connection is idle, it will not be closed
until either Privoxy's or the
server's timeout is reached. While it's open, the server knows
that the system running Privoxy is still there. If there are more than one client (maybe even belonging to
multiple users), they will be able to reuse each others
connections. This is potentially dangerous in case of
authentication schemes like NTLM where only the connection is
authenticated, instead of requiring authentication for each
request. If there is only a single client, and if said client can
keep connections alive on its own, enabling this option has
next to no effect. If the client doesn't support connection
@@ -2757,113 +2214,84 @@
Privoxy to keep outgoing
connections alive even if the client itself doesn't support
it. You should also be aware that enabling this option increases
the likelihood of getting the "No server or forwarder data"
error message, especially if you are using a slow connection to
the Internet. This option should only be used by experienced users who
understand the risks and can weight them against the
benefits. connection-sharing 1 Number of seconds after which a socket times out if no data
is received. Time in seconds. None A default value of 300 seconds is used. The default is quite high and you probably want to reduce
it. If you aren't using an occasionally slow proxy like Tor,
reducing it to a few seconds should be fine. socket-timeout 300 Maximum number of client connections that will be
served. Positive number. 128 Connections are served until a resource limit is
reached. Privoxy creates one thread
(or process) for every incoming client connection that isn't
rejected based on the access control settings. If the system is powerful enough, Privoxy can theoretically deal with
several hundred (or thousand) connections at the same time, but
@@ -2871,7 +2299,6 @@
offending processes and their default limits may be below the
ones Privoxy would require
under heavy load. Configuring Privoxy to
enforce a connection limit below the thread or process limit
used by the operating system makes sure this doesn't happen.
@@ -2880,7 +2307,6 @@
application running on the system, you may actually want to
limit the resources used by Privoxy. If Privoxy is only used by
a single trusted user, limiting the number of client
connections is probably unnecessary. If there are multiple
@@ -2890,10 +2316,8 @@
could intentionally create a high number of connections to
prevent other users from using Privoxy. Obviously using this option only makes sense if you choose a
limit below the one enforced by the operating system. One most POSIX-compliant systems Privoxy can't properly deal with more than
FD_SETSIZE file descriptors at the same time and has to reject
@@ -2902,61 +2326,46 @@
without recompiling Privoxy
with a different FD_SETSIZE limit. max-client-connections 256 The status code Privoxy returns for pages blocked with
+handle-as-empty-document. 0 or 1 0 Privoxy returns a status 403(forbidden) for all blocked
pages. Privoxy returns a status 200(OK) for pages blocked with
+handle-as-empty-document and a status 403(Forbidden) for all
other blocked pages. This directive was added as a work-around for Firefox bug
492459: "Websites are no longer rendered if
@@ -2971,93 +2380,69 @@
Whether or not buffered content is compressed before
delivery. 0 or 1 0 Privoxy does not compress buffered content. Privoxy compresses buffered content before delivering it to
the client, provided the client supports it. This directive is only supported if Privoxy has been
compiled with FEATURE_COMPRESSION, which should not to be
confused with FEATURE_ZLIB. Compressing buffered content is mainly useful if Privoxy and
the client are running on different systems. If they are
running on the same system, enabling compression is likely to
slow things down. If you didn't measure otherwise, you should
assume that it does and keep this option disabled. Privoxy will not compress buffered content below a certain
length. The compression level that is passed to the zlib library
when compressing buffered content. Positive number ranging from 0 to
9. 1 Compressing the data more takes usually longer than
compressing it less or not compressing it at all. Which level
@@ -3065,19 +2450,16 @@
client. If you can't be bothered to benchmark it for yourself,
you should stick with the default and keep compression
disabled. If compression is disabled, the compression level is
irrelevant. The order in which client headers are sorted before
forwarding them. Client header names delimited by
spaces or tabs None By default Privoxy leaves
the client headers in the order they were sent by the client.
Headers are modified in-place, new headers are added at the end
of the already existing headers. The header order can be used to fingerprint client requests
independently of other headers like the User-Agent. This directive allows to sort the headers differently to
better mimic a different User-Agent. Client headers will be
emitted in the order given, headers whose name isn't explicitly
specified are added at the end. Note that sorting headers in an uncommon way will make
fingerprinting actually easier. Encrypted headers are not
affected by this directive. The name of a tag that will always be set for clients that
requested it through the webinterface. Tag name followed by a
description that will be shown in the webinterface None This is an experimental feature. The syntax is
@@ -3190,11 +2549,9 @@
Client-specific tags allow Privoxy admins to create
different profiles and let the users chose which one they want
without impacting other users. One use case is allowing users to circumvent certain blocks
without having to allow them to circumvent all blocks. This is
not possible with the
-
After a client-specific tag has been defined with the
client-specific-tag directive, action sections can be activated
based on the tag by using a
-
The tag is set for all requests that come from clients that
requested it to be set. Note that "clients" are differentiated
by IP address, if the IP address changes the tag has to be
requested again. Clients can request tags to be set by using the CGI
interface http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags. The
@@ -3226,20 +2580,17 @@
should be phrased in away that the user understand the effect
of the tag. How long a temporarily enabled tag remains enabled. Time in seconds. 60 This is an experimental feature. The syntax is
@@ -3289,30 +2630,94 @@
In case of some tags users may not want to enable them
permanently, but only for a short amount of time, for example
to circumvent a block that is the result of an overly-broad URL
pattern. The CGI interface http://config.privoxy.org/client-tags therefore
provides a "enable this tag temporarily" option. If it is used,
the tag will be set until the client-tag-lifetime is over. Whether or not Privoxy should use IP addresses specified
+ with the X-Forwarded-For header 0 or one 0 This is an experimental feature. The syntax is
+ likely to change in future versions. If clients reach Privoxy through another proxy, for example
+ a load balancer, Privoxy can't tell the client's IP address
+ from the connection. If multiple clients use the same proxy,
+ they will share the same client tag settings which is usually
+ not desired. This option lets Privoxy use the X-Forwarded-For header
+ value as client IP address. If the proxy sets the header,
+ multiple clients using the same proxy do not share the same
+ client tag settings. This option should only be enabled if Privoxy can only be
+ reached through a proxy and if the proxy can be trusted to set
+ the header correctly. It is recommended that ACL are used to
+ make sure only trusted systems can reach Privoxy. If access to Privoxy isn't limited to trusted systems, this
+ option would allow malicious clients to change the client tags
+ for other clients or increase Privoxy's memory requirements by
+ registering lots of client tag settings for clients that don't
+ exist. Privoxy has a number of options
specific to the Windows GUI interface: If "activity-animation" is set to 1, the
Privoxy icon will animate when
"Privoxy" is active. To turn off, set to
0. activity-animation 1 If "log-messages" is set to 1,
Privoxy copies log messages to the
console window. The log detail depends on the debug directive. log-messages 1 If "log-buffer-size" is set to 1, the
size of the log buffer, i.e. the amount of memory used for the log
messages displayed in the console window, will be limited to
"log-max-lines" (see below). Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow
infinitely and eat up all your memory! log-buffer-size 1 log-max-lines is the maximum number
of lines held in the log buffer. See above. log-max-lines 200 If "log-highlight-messages" is set to 1,
Privoxy will highlight portions of the
log messages with a bold-faced font: log-highlight-messages 1 The font used in the console window: log-font-name Comic Sans
MS Font size used in the console window: log-font-size 8 "show-on-task-bar" controls whether or
not Privoxy will appear as a button on
the Task bar when minimized: show-on-task-bar 0 If "close-button-minimizes" is set to 1,
the Windows close button will minimize Privoxy instead of closing the program (close with
the exit option on the File menu). close-button-minimizes 1 The "hide-console" option is specific to
the MS-Win console version of Privoxy.
If this option is used, Privoxy will
disconnect from and hide the command console. #hide-console |