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3 File : $Source: /cvsroot/ijbswa/current/doc/source/user-manual.sgml,v $
7 ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/i/ij/ijbswa/htdocs/
9 $Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9 Exp $
11 Written by and Copyright (C) 2001 the SourceForge
12 Privoxy team. http://www.privoxy.org/
14 Based on the Internet Junkbuster originally written
15 by and Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and
16 Junkbusters Corporation. http://www.junkbusters.com
20 Sat 03/02/02 04:53:47 PM
22 This should be ready for BETA release.
24 Hal Burgiss <hal@foobox.net>
29 <title>Privoxy User Manual</title>
31 <pubdate>$Id: user-manual.sgml,v 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9 Exp $</pubdate>
36 <orgname>By: Privoxy Developers</orgname>
43 The user manual gives users information on how to install, configure and use
44 <application>Privoxy</application>. <application>Privoxy</application> is a
45 web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy,
46 filtering web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and
47 removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet
48 Junk. <application>Privoxy</application> has a very flexible configuration
49 and can be customized to suit individual needs and
50 tastes. <application>Privoxy</application> has application for both
51 stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.
54 You can find the latest version of the user manual at <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/">http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/</ulink>.
58 <!-- Feel free to send a note to the developers at <email>ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net</email>. -->
65 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
67 <sect1 id="introduction"><title>Introduction</title>
69 <application>Privoxy</application> is a web proxy with advanced
70 filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, filtering and modifying web
71 page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads,
72 banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet Junk.
73 <application>Privoxy</application> has a very flexible configuration and
74 can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. <application>Privoxy</application> has application for both stand-alone systems and
79 <application>Privoxy</application> is derived from
80 <application>Internet Junkbuster</application> by Junkbusters Corporation,
81 which is no longer under development. Many enhancements and
82 new features have been added.
87 This documentation is included with the current BETA version of
88 <application>Privoxy</application> and is mostly complete at this
89 point. The most up to date reference for the time being is still the comments
90 in the source files and in the individual configuration files. Development
91 of version 3.0 is currently nearing completion, and includes many significant
92 changes and enhancements over earlier versions. The target release date for
93 stable v3.0 is <quote>soon</quote> ;-)
97 Since this is a BETA version, not all new features are well tested. This
98 documentation may be slightly out of sync as a result (especially with
99 CVS sources). And there <emphasis>may be</emphasis> bugs, though hopefully
104 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
106 <title>New Features</title>
108 In addition to <application>Internet Junkbuster's</application> traditional
109 feature of ad and banner blocking and cookie management,
110 <application>Privoxy</application> provides new features, some of them
111 currently under development:
115 The section is in both user-manual and faq. Please keep in sync.
122 Integrated browser based configuration and control utility (<ulink
123 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>). Browser-based tracing of rule
130 Modularized configuration that will allow for system wide settings, and
131 individual user settings. (not implemented yet, probably a 3.1 feature)
137 Blocking of annoying pop-up browser windows.
143 HTTP/1.1 compliant (most, but not all 1.1 features are supported).
149 Support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in the configuration files, and
150 generally a more sophisticated and flexible configuration syntax over
163 Web page content filtering (removes banners based on size,
164 invisible <quote>web-bugs</quote>, JavaScript, pop-ups, status bar abuse,
171 Bypass many click-tracking scripts (avoids script redirection).
178 Multi-threaded (POSIX and native threads).
184 Auto-detection and re-reading of config file changes.
190 User-customizable HTML templates (e.g. 404 error page).
196 Improved cookie management features (e.g. session based cookies).
202 Builds from source on most UNIX-like systems. Packages available for: Linux
203 (RedHat, SuSE, or Debian), Windows, Sun Solaris, Mac OSX, OS/2, HP-UX 11 and AmigaOS.
210 In addition, the configuration is much more powerful and versatile over-all.
221 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
224 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
225 <sect1 id="installation"><title>Installation</title>
227 <application>Privoxy</application> is available as raw source code, or
228 pre-compiled binaries. See the <ulink
229 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">Privoxy Home Page</ulink>
230 for binaries and current release info. <application>Privoxy</application>
231 is also available via <ulink
232 url="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ijbswa/current/">CVS</ulink>.
233 This is the recommended approach at this time. But please be aware that CVS
234 is constantly changing, and it may break in mysterious ways.
237 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
238 <sect2 id="installation-source"><title>Source</title>
240 For gzipped tar archives, unpack the source:
245 tar xzvf privoxy-2.9.13-beta-src* [.tgz or .tar.gz]
246 cd privoxy-2.9.13-beta
251 For retrieving the current CVS sources, you'll need the CVS
252 package installed first. To download CVS source:
257 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
258 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co current
264 This will create a directory named <filename>current/</filename>, which will
265 contain the source tree.
269 Then, in either case, to build from tarball/CVS source:
274 ./configure (--help to see options)
275 make (the make from gnu, gmake for *BSD)
277 make -n install (to see where all the files will go)
278 make install (to really install)
283 For Redhat and SuSE Linux RPM packages, see below.
289 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
290 <sect2 id="installation-rh"><title>Red Hat</title>
292 To build Redhat RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
305 This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places. Example:
309 /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
312 /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/privoxy-2.9.11-1.src.rpm
316 To install, of course:
321 rpm -Uvv /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
326 This will place the <application>Privoxy</application> configuration
327 files in <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename>, and log files in
328 <filename>/var/log/privoxy/</filename>.
333 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
334 <sect2 id="installation-suse"><title>SuSE</title>
336 To build SuSE RPM packages, install source as above. Then:
349 This will create both binary and src RPMs in the usual places. Example:
353 /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
356 /usr/src/packages/SRPMS/privoxy-2.9.11-1.src.rpm
360 To install, of course:
365 rpm -Uvv /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i686/privoxy-2.9.11-1.i686.rpm
370 This will place the <application>Privoxy</application> configuration
371 files in <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename>, and log files in
372 <filename>/var/log/privoxy/</filename>.
378 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
379 <sect2 id="installation-os2"><title>OS/2</title>
386 <application>Privoxy</application> is packaged in a WarpIN self-
387 installing archive. The self-installing program will be named depending
388 on the release version, something like:
389 <filename>ijbos2_setup_1.2.3.exe</filename>. In order to install it, simply
390 run this executable or double-click on its icon and follow the WarpIN
391 installation panels. A shadow of the <application>Privoxy</application>
392 executable will be placed in your startup folder so it will start
393 automatically whenever OS/2 starts.
397 The directory you choose to install <application>Privoxy</application>
398 into will contain all of the configuration files.
402 If you would like to build binary images on OS/2 yourself, you will need
403 a few Unix-like tools: autoconf, autoheader and sh. These tools will be
404 used to create the required config.h file, which is not part of the
405 source distribution because it differs based on platform. You will also
407 The distribution has been created using IBM VisualAge compilers, but you
408 can use any compiler you like. GCC/EMX has the disadvantage of needing
409 to be single-threaded due to a limitation of EMX's implementation of the
410 select() socket call.
414 In addition to needing the source code distribution as outlined earlier,
415 you will want to extract the <filename>os2seutp</filename> directory from CVS:
417 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
418 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ijbswa.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co os2setup
420 This will create a directory named os2setup/, which will contain the
421 <filename>Makefile.vac</filename> makefile and <filename>os2build.cmd</filename>
422 which is used to completely create the binary distribution. The sequence
423 of events for building the executable for yourself goes something like this:
430 nmake -f Makefile.vac
432 You will see this sequence laid out in <filename>os2build.cmd</filename>.
438 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
439 <sect2 id="installation-win"><title>Windows</title>
440 <para>Click-click. (I need help on this. Not a clue here. Also for
441 configuration section below. HB.)
445 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
446 <sect2 id="installation-other"><title>Other</title>
448 Some quick notes on other Operating Systems.
452 For FreeBSD (and other *BSDs?), the build will require <command>gmake</command>
453 instead of the included <command>make</command>. <command>gmake</command> is
454 available from <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org">http://www.gnu.org</ulink>.
455 The rest should be the same as above for Linux/Unix.
462 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
465 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
466 <sect1 id="configuration"><title><application>Privoxy</application> Configuration</title>
468 All <application>Privoxy</application> configuration is kept
469 in text files. These files can be edited with a text editor.
470 Many important aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> can
471 also be controlled easily with a web browser.
476 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
479 <title>Controlling <application>Privoxy</application> with Your Web Browser</title>
481 <application>Privoxy</application> can be reached by the special
482 URL <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink> (or alternately
483 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/">http://www.privoxy.org/config/</ulink>),
484 which is an internal page. You will see the following section:
491 Please choose from the following options:
493 * Show information about the current configuration
494 * Show the source code version numbers
495 * Show the client's request headers.
496 * Show which actions apply to a URL and why
497 * Toggle Privoxy on or off
498 * Edit the actions list
504 This should be self-explanatory. Note the last item is an editor for the
505 <quote>actions list</quote>, which is where much of the ad, banner, cookie,
506 and URL blocking magic is configured as well as other advanced features of
507 <application>Privoxy</application>. This is an easy way to adjust various
508 aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> configuration. The actions
509 file, and other configuration files, are explained in detail below.
510 <application>Privoxy</application> will automatically detect any changes
515 <quote>Toggle Privoxy On or Off</quote> is handy for sites that might
516 have problems with your current actions and filters, or just to test if
517 a site misbehaves, whether it is <application>Privoxy</application>
518 causing the problem or not. <application>Privoxy</application> continues
519 to run as a proxy in this case, but all filtering is disabled.
525 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
530 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
533 <title>Configuration Files Overview</title>
535 For Unix, *BSD and Linux, all configuration files are located in
536 <filename>/etc/privoxy/</filename> by default. For MS Windows, OS/2, and
537 AmigaOS these are all in the same directory as the
538 <application>Privoxy</application> executable. The name and number of
539 configuration files has changed from previous versions, and is subject to
540 change as development progresses.
544 The installed defaults provide a reasonable starting point, though possibly
545 aggressive by some standards. For the time being, there are only three
546 default configuration files (this will change in time):
554 The main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename>
555 on Linux, Unix, BSD, OS/2, and AmigaOS and <filename>config.txt</filename>
562 The <filename>default.action</filename> file is used to define various
563 <quote>actions</quote> relating to images, banners, pop-ups, access
564 restrictions, banners and cookies. There is a CGI based editor for this
565 file that can be accessed via <ulink
566 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>. (Other actions
567 files are included as well with differing levels of filtering
568 and blocking, e.g. <filename>ijb-basic.action</filename>.)
574 The <filename>default.filter</filename> file can be used to re-write the raw
575 page content, including viewable text as well as embedded HTML and JavaScript,
576 and whatever else lurks on any given web page.
584 <filename>default.action</filename> and <filename>default.filter</filename>
585 can use Perl style regular expressions for maximum flexibility. All files use
586 the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> character to denote a comment. Such
587 lines are not processed by <application>Privoxy</application>. After
588 making any changes, there is no need to restart
589 <application>Privoxy</application> in order for the changes to take
590 effect. <application>Privoxy</application> should detect such changes
595 While under development, the configuration content is subject to change.
596 The below documentation may not be accurate by the time you read this.
597 Also, what constitutes a <quote>default</quote> setting, may change, so
598 please check all your configuration files on important issues.
603 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
606 <title>The Main Configuration File</title>
608 Again, the main configuration file is named <filename>config</filename> on
609 Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2, and <filename>config.txt</filename> on Windows.
610 Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword followed by a list of
611 values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For
619 <emphasis>blockfile blocklist.ini</emphasis>
626 Indicates that the blockfile is named <quote>blocklist.ini</quote>. (A
627 default installation does not use this.)
631 A <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> indicates a comment. Any part of a
632 line following a <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> is ignored, except if
633 the <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> is preceded by a
634 <quote><literal>\</literal></quote>.
638 Thus, by placing a <quote><literal>#</literal></quote> at the start of an
639 existing configuration line, you can make it a comment and it will be treated
640 as if it weren't there. This is called <quote>commenting out</quote> an
641 option and can be useful to turn off features: If you comment out the
642 <quote>logfile</quote> line, <application>Privoxy</application> will not
643 log to a file at all. Watch for the <quote>default:</quote> section in each
644 explanation to see what happens if the option is left unset (or commented
649 Long lines can be continued on the next line by using a
650 <quote><literal>\</literal></quote> as the very last character.
654 There are various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application> behavior
659 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
662 <title>Defining Other Configuration Files</title>
665 <application>Privoxy</application> can use a number of other files to tell it
666 what ads to block, what cookies to accept, etc. This section of the
667 configuration file tells <application>Privoxy</application> where to find
668 all those other files.
672 On <application>Windows</application> and <application>AmigaOS</application>,
673 <application>Privoxy</application> looks for these files in the same
674 directory as the executable. On Unix and OS/2,
675 <application>Privoxy</application> looks for these files in the current
676 working directory. In either case, an absolute path name can be used to
681 When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
682 per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of <quote>confdir</quote>.
683 For now, only <filename>confdir/templates</filename> is used for storing HTML
684 templates for CGI results.
688 The location of the configuration files:
695 <emphasis>confdir /etc/privoxy</emphasis> # No trailing /, please.
702 The directory where all logging (i.e. <filename>logfile</filename> and
703 <filename>jarfile</filename>) takes place. No trailing
704 <quote><literal>/</literal></quote>, please:
711 <emphasis>logdir /var/log/privoxy</emphasis>
718 Note that all file specifications below are relative to
719 the above two directories!
723 The <quote>default.action</quote> file contains patterns to specify the
724 actions to apply to requests for each site. Default: Cookies to and from all
725 destinations are kept only during the current browser session (i.e. they are
726 not saved to disk). Pop-ups are disabled for all sites. All sites are
727 filtered through selected sections of <quote>default.filter</quote>. No sites
728 are blocked. <application>Privoxy</application> displays a checkboard type
729 pattern for filtered ads and other images. The syntax of this file is
730 explained in detail <link linkend="actionsfile">below</link>. Other
731 <quote>actions</quote> files are included, and you are free to use any of
732 them. They have varying degrees of aggressiveness.
739 <emphasis>actionsfile default.action</emphasis>
746 The <quote>default.filter</quote> file contains content modification rules
747 that use <quote>regular expressions</quote>. These rules permit powerful
748 changes on the content of Web pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite
749 JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some
750 fun replacing <quote>Microsoft</quote> with <quote>MicroSuck</quote> wherever
751 it appears on a Web page. Default: whatever the developers are playing with
756 Filtering requires buffering the page content, which may appear to slow down
757 page rendering since nothing is displayed until all content has passed
758 the filters. (It does not really take longer, but seems that way since
759 the page is not incrementally displayed.) This effect will be more noticeable
760 on slower connections.
768 <emphasis>filterfile default.filter</emphasis>
775 The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The logfile
776 can be useful for tracking down a problem with
777 <application>Privoxy</application> (e.g., it's not blocking an ad you
778 think it should block) but in most cases you probably will never look at it.
782 Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
783 periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
784 (see <quote>man cron</quote>). For Redhat, a <command>logrotate</command>
785 script has been included.
789 On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like <quote>/var/log/privoxy.*
790 +1024k 644 nobody.nogroup</quote> in <filename>/etc/logfiles</filename>, with
791 the effect that cron.daily will automatically archive, gzip, and empty the
792 log, when it exceeds 1M size.
796 Default: Log to the a file named <filename>logfile</filename>.
797 Comment out to disable logging.
804 <emphasis>logfile logfile</emphasis>
811 The <quote>jarfile</quote> defines where
812 <application>Privoxy</application> stores the cookies it intercepts. Note
813 that if you use a <quote>jarfile</quote>, it may grow quite large. Default:
814 Don't store intercepted cookies.
821 <emphasis>#jarfile jarfile</emphasis>
828 If you specify a <quote>trustfile</quote>,
829 <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow access to sites that
830 are named in the trustfile. You can also mark sites as trusted referrers,
831 with the effect that access to untrusted sites will be granted, if a link
832 from a trusted referrer was used. The link target will then be added to the
833 <quote>trustfile</quote>. This is a very restrictive feature that typical
834 users most probably want to leave disabled. Default: Disabled, don't use the
842 <emphasis>#trustfile trust</emphasis>
849 If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
850 documentation about your blocking policy and to specify the URL(s) here. They
851 will appear on the page that your users receive when they try to access
852 untrusted content. Use multiple times for multiple URLs. Default: Don't
853 display links on the <quote>untrusted</quote> info page.
860 <emphasis>trust-info-url http://www.your-site.com/why_we_block.html</emphasis>
861 <emphasis>trust-info-url http://www.your-site.com/what_we_allow.html</emphasis>
869 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
873 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
876 <title>Other Configuration Options</title>
879 This part of the configuration file contains options that control how
880 <application>Privoxy</application> operates.
884 <quote>Admin-address</quote> should be set to the email address of the proxy
885 administrator. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages. Default:
893 <emphasis>#admin-address fill@me.in.please</emphasis>
900 <quote>Proxy-info-url</quote> can be set to a URL that contains more info
901 about this <application>Privoxy</application> installation, it's
902 configuration and policies. It is used in many of the proxy-generated pages
903 and its use is highly recommended in multi-user installations, since your
904 users will want to know why certain content is blocked or modified. Default:
905 Don't show a link to on-line documentation.
912 <emphasis>proxy-info-url http://www.your-site.com/proxy.html</emphasis>
919 <quote>Listen-address</quote> specifies the address and port where
920 <application>Privoxy</application> will listen for connections from your
921 Web browser. The default is to listen on the localhost port 8118, and
922 this is suitable for most users. (In your web browser, under proxy
923 configuration, list the proxy server as <quote>localhost</quote> and the
924 port as <quote>8118</quote>).
928 If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
929 serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well, you
930 will need to override the default. The syntax is
931 <quote>listen-address [<ip-address>]:<port></quote>. If you leave
932 out the IP address, <application>Privoxy</application> will bind to all
933 interfaces (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable from the
934 Internet. In that case, consider using access control lists (acl's) (see
935 <quote>aclfile</quote> above), or a firewall.
939 For example, suppose you are running <application>Privoxy</application> on
940 a machine which has the address 192.168.0.1 on your local private network
941 (192.168.0.0) and has another outside connection with a different address.
942 You want it to serve requests from inside only:
949 <emphasis>listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118</emphasis>
956 If you want it to listen on all addresses (including the outside
964 <emphasis>listen-address :8118</emphasis>
971 If you do this, consider using ACLs (see <quote>aclfile</quote> above). Note:
972 you will need to point your browser(s) to the address and port that you have
973 configured here. Default: localhost:8118 (127.0.0.1:8118).
977 The debug option sets the level of debugging information to log in the
978 logfile (and to the console in the Windows version). A debug level of 1 is
979 informative because it will show you each request as it happens. Higher
980 levels of debug are probably only of interest to developers.
987 debug 1 # GPC = show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
988 debug 2 # CONN = show each connection status
989 debug 4 # IO = show I/O status
990 debug 8 # HDR = show header parsing
991 debug 16 # LOG = log all data into the logfile
992 debug 32 # FRC = debug force feature
993 debug 64 # REF = debug regular expression filter
994 debug 128 # = debug fast redirects
995 debug 256 # = debug GIF de-animation
996 debug 512 # CLF = Common Log Format
997 debug 1024 # = debug kill pop-ups
998 debug 4096 # INFO = Startup banner and warnings.
999 debug 8192 # ERROR = Non-fatal errors
1006 It is <emphasis>highly recommended</emphasis> that you enable ERROR
1007 reporting (debug 8192), at least until v3.0 is released.
1011 The reporting of FATAL errors (i.e. ones which crash
1012 <application>Privoxy</application>) is always on and cannot be disabled.
1016 If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set <quote>debug
1017 512</quote> ONLY, do not enable anything else.
1021 Multiple <quote>debug</quote> directives, are OK - they're logical-OR'd
1029 <emphasis>debug 15 # same as setting the first 4 listed above</emphasis>
1043 <emphasis>debug 1 # URLs</emphasis>
1044 <emphasis>debug 4096 # Info</emphasis>
1045 <emphasis>debug 8192 # Errors - *we highly recommended enabling this*</emphasis>
1052 <application>Privoxy</application> normally uses
1053 <quote>multi-threading</quote>, a software technique that permits it to
1054 handle many different requests simultaneously. In some cases you may wish to
1055 disable this -- particularly if you're trying to debug a problem. The
1056 <quote>single-threaded</quote> option forces
1057 <application>Privoxy</application> to handle requests sequentially.
1058 Default: Multi-threaded mode.
1065 <emphasis>#single-threaded</emphasis>
1072 <quote>toggle</quote> allows you to temporarily disable all
1073 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering. Just set <quote>toggle
1078 The Windows version of <application>Privoxy</application> puts an icon in
1079 the system tray, which also allows you to change this option. If you
1080 right-click on that icon (or select the <quote>Options</quote> menu), one
1081 choice is <quote>Enable</quote>. Clicking on enable toggles
1082 <application>Privoxy</application> on and off. This is useful if you want
1083 to temporarily disable <application>Privoxy</application>, e.g., to access
1084 a site that requires cookies which you would otherwise have blocked. This can also
1085 be toggled via a web browser at the <application>Privoxy</application>
1086 internal address of <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink> on
1091 <quote>toggle 1</quote> means <application>Privoxy</application> runs
1092 normally, <quote>toggle 0</quote> means that
1093 <application>Privoxy</application> becomes a non-anonymizing non-blocking
1094 proxy. Default: 1 (on).
1101 <emphasis>toggle 1</emphasis>
1108 For content filtering, i.e. the <quote>+filter</quote> and
1109 <quote>+deanimate-gif</quote> actions, it is necessary that
1110 <application>Privoxy</application> buffers the entire document body.
1111 This can be potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending
1112 data indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust. With nasty consequences.
1116 The <application>buffer-limit</application> option lets you set the maximum
1117 size in Kbytes that each buffer may use. When the documents buffer exceeds
1118 this size, it is flushed to the client unfiltered and no further attempt to
1119 filter the rest of it is made. Remember that there may multiple threads
1120 running, which might require increasing the <quote>buffer-limit</quote>
1121 Kbytes <emphasis>each</emphasis>, unless you have enabled
1122 <quote>single-threaded</quote> above.
1129 <emphasis>buffer-limit 4069</emphasis>
1136 To enable the web-based <filename>default.action</filename> file editor set
1137 <application>enable-edit-actions</application> to 1, or 0 to disable. Note
1138 that you must have compiled <application>Privoxy</application> with
1139 support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect. This
1140 internal page can be reached at <ulink
1141 url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>.
1145 Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy
1146 can edit the actions file, and their changes will affect all users.
1147 For shared proxies, you probably want to disable this. Default: enabled.
1154 <emphasis>enable-edit-actions 1</emphasis>
1161 Allow <application>Privoxy</application> to be toggled on and off
1162 remotely, using your web browser. Set <quote>enable-remote-toggle</quote>to
1163 1 to enable, and 0 to disable. Note that you must have compiled
1164 <application>Privoxy</application> with support for this feature,
1165 otherwise this option has no effect.
1169 Security note: If this is enabled, anyone who can use the proxy can toggle
1170 it on or off (see <ulink url="http://p.p">http://p.p</ulink>), and
1171 their changes will affect all users. For shared proxies, you probably want to
1172 disable this. Default: enabled.
1179 <emphasis>enable-remote-toggle 1</emphasis>
1187 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1190 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1193 <title>Access Control List (ACL)</title>
1195 Access controls are included at the request of some ISPs and systems
1196 administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users. Please note
1197 the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a substitute
1198 for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic security
1203 If no access settings are specified, the proxy talks to anyone that
1204 connects. If any access settings file are specified, then the proxy
1205 talks only to IP addresses permitted somewhere in this file and not
1206 denied later in this file.
1210 Summary -- if using an ACL:
1215 Client must have permission to receive service.
1220 LAST match in ACL wins.
1225 Default behavior is to deny service.
1230 The syntax for an entry in the Access Control List is:
1237 ACTION SRC_ADDR[/SRC_MASKLEN] [ DST_ADDR[/DST_MASKLEN] ]
1244 Where the individual fields are:
1251 <emphasis>ACTION</emphasis> = <quote>permit-access</quote> or <quote>deny-access</quote>
1253 <emphasis>SRC_ADDR</emphasis> = client hostname or dotted IP address
1254 <emphasis>SRC_MASKLEN</emphasis> = number of bits in the subnet mask for the source
1256 <emphasis>DST_ADDR</emphasis> = server or forwarder hostname or dotted IP address
1257 <emphasis>DST_MASKLEN</emphasis> = number of bits in the subnet mask for the target
1265 The field separator (FS) is whitespace (space or tab).
1269 IMPORTANT NOTE: If <application>Privoxy</application> is using a
1270 forwarder (see below) or a gateway for a particular destination URL, the
1271 <literal>DST_ADDR</literal> that is examined is the address of the forwarder
1272 or the gateway and <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> the address of the ultimate
1273 target. This is necessary because it may be impossible for the local
1274 <application>Privoxy</application> to determine the address of the
1275 ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
1279 Here are a few examples to show how the ACL features work:
1283 <quote>localhost</quote> is OK -- no DST_ADDR implies that
1284 <emphasis>ALL</emphasis> destination addresses are OK:
1291 <emphasis>permit-access localhost</emphasis>
1298 A silly example to illustrate permitting any host on the class-C subnet with
1299 <application>Privoxy</application> to go anywhere:
1306 <emphasis>permit-access www.privoxy.com/24</emphasis>
1313 Except deny one particular IP address from using it at all:
1320 <emphasis>deny-access ident.privoxy.com</emphasis>
1327 You can also specify an explicit network address and subnet mask.
1328 Explicit addresses do not have to be resolved to be used.
1335 <emphasis>permit-access 207.153.200.0/24</emphasis>
1342 A subnet mask of 0 matches anything, so the next line permits everyone.
1349 <emphasis>permit-access 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis>
1356 Note, you <emphasis>cannot</emphasis> say:
1363 <emphasis>permit-access .org</emphasis>
1370 to allow all *.org domains. Every IP address listed must resolve fully.
1374 An ISP may want to provide a <application>Privoxy</application> that is
1375 accessible by <quote>the world</quote> and yet restrict use of some of their
1376 private content to hosts on its internal network (i.e. its own subscribers).
1377 Say, for instance the ISP owns the Class-B IP address block 123.124.0.0 (a 16
1378 bit netmask). This is how they could do it:
1385 <emphasis>permit-access 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis> # other clients can go anywhere
1386 # with the following exceptions:
1388 <emphasis>deny-access</emphasis> 0.0.0.0/0 123.124.0.0/16 # block all external requests for
1389 # sites on the ISP's network
1391 <emphasis>permit 0.0.0.0/0 www.my_isp.com</emphasis> # except for the ISP's main
1394 <emphasis>permit 123.124.0.0/16 0.0.0.0/0</emphasis> # the ISP's clients can go
1402 Note that if some hostnames are listed with multiple IP addresses,
1403 the primary value returned by DNS (via gethostbyname()) is used. Default:
1404 Anyone can access the proxy.
1409 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1412 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1415 <title>Forwarding</title>
1418 This feature allows chaining of HTTP requests via multiple proxies.
1419 It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
1420 accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains
1421 to a special purpose filtering proxy such as lpwa.com. Or to use
1422 a caching proxy to speed up browsing.
1426 It can also be used in an environment with multiple networks to route
1427 requests via multiple gateways allowing transparent access to multiple
1428 networks without having to modify browser configurations.
1432 Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. <application>Privoxy</application>
1433 SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 4A. The difference is that SOCKS 4A will resolve the target
1434 hostname using DNS on the SOCKS server, not our local DNS client.
1438 The syntax of each line is:
1445 <emphasis>forward target_domain[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1446 <emphasis>forward-socks4 target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1447 <emphasis>forward-socks4a target_domain[:port] socks_proxy_host[:port] http_proxy_host[:port]</emphasis>
1454 If http_proxy_host is <quote>.</quote>, then requests are not forwarded to a
1455 HTTP proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
1459 Lines are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
1463 There is an implicit line equivalent to the following, which specifies that
1464 anything not finding a match on the list is to go out without forwarding
1465 or gateway protocol, like so:
1472 <emphasis>forward .* . </emphasis># implicit
1479 In the following common configuration, everything goes to Lucent's LPWA,
1480 except SSL on port 443 (which it doesn't handle):
1487 <emphasis>forward .* lpwa.com:8000</emphasis>
1488 <emphasis>forward :443 .</emphasis>
1496 See the FAQ for instructions on how to automate the login procedure for LPWA.
1498 Some users have reported difficulties related to LPWA's use of
1499 <quote>.</quote> as the last element of the domain, and have said that this
1500 can be fixed with this:
1507 <emphasis>forward lpwa. lpwa.com:8000</emphasis>
1514 (NOTE: the syntax for specifying target_domain has changed since the
1515 previous paragraph was written -- it will not work now. More information
1520 In this fictitious example, everything goes via an ISP's caching proxy,
1521 except requests to that ISP:
1528 <emphasis>forward .* caching.myisp.net:8000</emphasis>
1529 <emphasis>forward myisp.net .</emphasis>
1536 For the @home network, we're told the forwarding configuration is this:
1544 <emphasis>forward .* proxy:8080</emphasis>
1551 Also, we're told they insist on getting cookies and JavaScript, so you should
1552 allow cookies from home.com. We consider JavaScript a potential security risk.
1553 Java need not be enabled.
1557 In this example direct connections are made to all <quote>internal</quote>
1558 domains, but everything else goes through Lucent's LPWA by way of the
1559 company's SOCKS gateway to the Internet.
1566 <emphasis>forward-socks4 .* lpwa.com:8000 firewall.my_company.com:1080</emphasis>
1567 <emphasis>forward my_company.com .</emphasis>
1574 This is how you could set up a site that always uses SOCKS but no forwarders:
1581 <emphasis>forward-socks4a .* . firewall.my_company.com:1080</emphasis>
1588 An advanced example for network administrators:
1592 If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content to
1593 their subscribers, you can configure forwarding to pass requests to the
1594 specific host that's connected to that ISP so that everybody can see all
1595 of the content on all of the ISPs.
1599 This is a bit tricky, but here's an example:
1604 host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.com. And host-b has a PPP connection to
1605 isp-b.com. host-a can run a <application>Privoxy</application> proxy with
1606 forwarding like this:
1613 <emphasis>forward .* .</emphasis>
1614 <emphasis>forward isp-b.com host-b:8118</emphasis>
1621 host-b can run a <application>Privoxy</application> proxy with forwarding
1629 <emphasis>forward .* .</emphasis>
1630 <emphasis>forward isp-a.com host-a:8118</emphasis>
1637 Now, <emphasis>anyone</emphasis> on the Internet (including users on host-a
1638 and host-b) can set their browser's proxy to <emphasis>either</emphasis>
1639 host-a or host-b and be able to browse the content on isp-a or isp-b.
1643 Here's another practical example, for University of Kent at
1644 Canterbury students with a network connection in their room, who
1645 need to use the University's Squid web cache.
1652 <emphasis>forward *. ssbcache.ukc.ac.uk:3128</emphasis> # Use the proxy, except for:
1653 <emphasis>forward .ukc.ac.uk . </emphasis> # Anything on the same domain as us
1654 <emphasis>forward * . </emphasis> # Host with no domain specified
1655 <emphasis>forward 129.12.*.* . </emphasis> # A dotted IP on our /16 network.
1656 <emphasis>forward 127.*.*.* . </emphasis> # Loopback address
1657 <emphasis>forward localhost.localdomain . </emphasis> # Loopback address
1658 <emphasis>forward www.ukc.mirror.ac.uk . </emphasis> # Specific host
1665 If you intend to chain <application>Privoxy</application> and
1666 <application>squid</application> locally, then chain as
1667 <literal>browser -> squid -> privoxy</literal> is the recommended way.
1671 Your squid configuration could then look like this:
1678 # Define Privoxy as parent cache
1679 <!-- per feedback from user...
1680 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 8118 parent 0 no-query
1682 cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 0 no-query
1684 # Define ACL for protocol FTP
1687 # Do not forward ACL FTP to privoxy
1688 always_direct allow FTP
1690 # Do not forward ACL CONNECT (https) to privoxy
1691 always_direct allow CONNECT
1693 # Forward the rest to privoxy
1694 never_direct allow all
1702 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1705 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1708 <title>Windows GUI Options</title>
1710 Removed references to Win32. HB 09/23/01
1713 <application>Privoxy</application> has a number of options specific to the
1714 Windows GUI interface:
1718 If <quote>activity-animation</quote> is set to 1, the
1719 <application>Privoxy</application> icon will animate when
1720 <quote>Privoxy</quote> is active. To turn off, set to 0.
1727 <emphasis>activity-animation 1</emphasis>
1734 If <quote>log-messages</quote> is set to 1,
1735 <application>Privoxy</application> will log messages to the console
1743 <emphasis>log-messages 1</emphasis>
1750 If <quote>log-buffer-size</quote> is set to 1, the size of the log buffer,
1751 i.e. the amount of memory used for the log messages displayed in the
1752 console window, will be limited to <quote>log-max-lines</quote> (see below).
1756 Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and
1757 eat up all your memory!
1764 <emphasis>log-buffer-size 1</emphasis>
1771 <application>log-max-lines</application> is the maximum number of lines held
1772 in the log buffer. See above.
1779 <emphasis>log-max-lines 200</emphasis>
1786 If <quote>log-highlight-messages</quote> is set to 1,
1787 <application>Privoxy</application> will highlight portions of the log
1788 messages with a bold-faced font:
1795 <emphasis>log-highlight-messages 1</emphasis>
1802 The font used in the console window:
1809 <emphasis>log-font-name Comic Sans MS</emphasis>
1816 Font size used in the console window:
1823 <emphasis>log-font-size 8</emphasis>
1830 <quote>show-on-task-bar</quote> controls whether or not
1831 <application>Privoxy</application> will appear as a button on the Task bar
1839 <emphasis>show-on-task-bar 0</emphasis>
1846 If <quote>close-button-minimizes</quote> is set to 1, the Windows close
1847 button will minimize <application>Privoxy</application> instead of closing
1848 the program (close with the exit option on the File menu).
1855 <emphasis>close-button-minimizes 1</emphasis>
1862 The <quote>hide-console</quote> option is specific to the MS-Win console
1863 version of <application>Privoxy</application>. If this option is used,
1864 <application>Privoxy</application> will disconnect from and hide the
1881 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
1884 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1885 <sect2 id="actionsfile">
1886 <title>The Actions File</title>
1889 The <quote>default.action</quote> file (formerly
1890 <filename>actionsfile</filename> or <filename>ijb.action</filename>) is used to define what actions
1891 <application>Privoxy</application> takes, and thus determines how images,
1892 cookies and various other aspects of HTTP content and transactions are
1893 handled. Images can be anything you want, including ads, banners, or just
1894 some obnoxious URL that you would rather not see. Cookies can be accepted
1895 or rejected, or accepted only during the current browser session (i.e.
1896 not written to disk). Changes to <filename>default.action</filename> should
1897 be immediately visible to <application>Privoxy</application> without
1898 the need to restart.
1902 The easiest way to edit <quote>actions</quote> file is with a browser by
1903 loading <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, and then select
1904 <quote>Edit Actions List</quote>. A text editor can also be used.
1908 To determine which actions apply to a request, the URL of the request is
1909 compared to all patterns in this file. Every time it matches, the list of
1910 applicable actions for the URL is incrementally updated. You can trace
1911 this process by visiting <ulink
1912 url="http://p.p/show-url-info">http://p.p/show-url-info</ulink>.
1917 There are four types of lines in this file: comments (begin with a
1918 <quote>#</quote> character), actions, aliases and patterns, all of which are
1919 explained below, as well as the configuration file syntax that
1920 <application>Privoxy</application> understands.
1925 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
1927 <title>URL Domain and Path Syntax</title>
1929 Generally, a pattern has the form <domain>/<path>, where both the
1930 <domain> and <path> part are optional. If you only specify a
1931 domain part, the <quote>/</quote> can be left out:
1935 <emphasis>www.example.com</emphasis> - is a domain only pattern and will match any request to
1936 <quote>www.example.com</quote>.
1940 <emphasis>www.example.com/</emphasis> - means exactly the same.
1944 <emphasis>www.example.com/index.html</emphasis> - matches only the single
1945 document <quote>/index.html</quote> on <quote>www.example.com</quote>.
1949 <emphasis>/index.html</emphasis> - matches the document <quote>/index.html</quote>, regardless of
1954 <emphasis>index.html</emphasis> - matches nothing, since it would be
1955 interpreted as a domain name and there is no top-level domain called
1956 <quote>.html</quote>.
1960 The matching of the domain part offers some flexible options: if the
1961 domain starts or ends with a dot, it becomes unanchored at that end.
1966 <emphasis>.example.com</emphasis> - matches any domain that <emphasis>ENDS</emphasis> in
1967 <quote>.example.com</quote>.
1971 <emphasis>www.</emphasis> - matches any domain that <emphasis>STARTS</emphasis> with
1976 Additionally, there are wild-cards that you can use in the domain names
1977 themselves. They work pretty similar to shell wild-cards: <quote>*</quote>
1978 stands for zero or more arbitrary characters, <quote>?</quote> stands for
1979 any single character. And you can define character classes in square
1980 brackets and they can be freely mixed:
1984 <emphasis>ad*.example.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>adserver.example.com</quote>,
1985 <quote>ads.example.com</quote>, etc but not <quote>sfads.example.com</quote>.
1989 <emphasis>*ad*.example.com</emphasis> - matches all of the above, and then some.
1993 <emphasis>.?pix.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>www.ipix.com</quote>,
1994 <quote>pictures.epix.com</quote>, <quote>a.b.c.d.e.upix.com</quote>, etc.
1998 <emphasis>www[1-9a-ez].example.com</emphasis> - matches <quote>www1.example.com</quote>,
1999 <quote>www4.example.com</quote>, <quote>wwwd.example.com</quote>,
2000 <quote>wwwz.example.com</quote>, etc., but <emphasis>not</emphasis>
2001 <quote>wwww.example.com</quote>.
2005 If <application>Privoxy</application> was compiled with
2006 <quote>pcre</quote> support (default), Perl compatible regular expressions
2007 can be used. See the <filename>pcre/docs/</filename> directory or <quote>man
2008 perlre</quote> (also available on <ulink
2009 url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>)
2010 for details. A brief discussion of regular expressions is in the
2011 <link linkend="regex">Appendix</link>. For instance:
2015 <emphasis>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpe?g</emphasis> - would match a URL from any
2016 domain, with any path that includes <quote>advert</quote> followed
2017 immediately by one or more digits, then a <quote>.</quote> and ending in
2018 either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>. So we match
2019 <quote>example.com/ads/advert2.jpg</quote>, and
2020 <quote>www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.jpeg</quote>, but not
2021 <quote>www.example.com/ads/banners/advert39.gif</quote> (no gifs in the
2026 Please note that matching in the path is case
2027 <emphasis>INSENSITIVE</emphasis> by default, but you can switch to case
2028 sensitive at any point in the pattern by using the
2029 <quote>(?-i)</quote> switch:
2033 <emphasis>www.example.com/(?-i)PaTtErN.*</emphasis> - will match only
2034 documents whose path starts with <quote>PaTtErN</quote> in
2035 <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> this capitalization.
2040 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2044 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2047 <title>Actions</title>
2049 Actions are enabled if preceded with a <quote>+</quote>, and disabled if
2050 preceded with a <quote>-</quote>. Actions are invoked by enclosing the
2051 action name in curly braces (e.g. {+some_action}), followed by a list of
2052 URLs to which the action applies. There are three classes of actions:
2060 Boolean (e.g. <quote>+/-block</quote>):
2066 <emphasis>{+name}</emphasis> # enable this action
2067 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable this action
2077 parameterized (e.g. <quote>+/-hide-user-agent</quote>):
2083 <emphasis>{+name{param}}</emphasis> # enable action and set parameter to <quote>param</quote>
2084 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable action
2093 Multi-value (e.g. <quote>{+/-add-header{Name: value}}</quote>, <quote>{+/-wafer{name=value}}</quote>):
2099 <emphasis>{+name{param}}</emphasis> # enable action and add parameter <quote>param</quote>
2100 <emphasis>{-name{param}}</emphasis> # remove the parameter <quote>param</quote>
2101 <emphasis>{-name}</emphasis> # disable this action totally
2112 If nothing is specified in this file, no <quote>actions</quote> are taken.
2113 So in this case <application>Privoxy</application> would just be a
2114 normal, non-blocking, non-anonymizing proxy. You must specifically
2115 enable the privacy and blocking features you need (although the
2116 provided default <filename>default.action</filename> file will
2117 give a good starting point).
2121 Later defined actions always over-ride earlier ones. For multi-valued
2122 actions, the actions are applied in the order they are specified.
2126 The list of valid <application>Privoxy</application> <quote>actions</quote> are:
2134 Add the specified HTTP header, which is not checked for validity.
2135 You may specify this many times to specify many different headers:
2141 <emphasis>+add-header{Name: value}</emphasis>
2151 Block this URL totally. In a default installation, a <quote>blocked</quote>
2152 URL will result in bright red banner that says <quote>BLOCKED</quote>,
2153 with a reason why it is being blocked.
2159 <emphasis>+block</emphasis>
2169 De-animate all animated GIF images, i.e. reduce them to their last frame.
2170 This will also shrink the images considerably (in bytes, not pixels!). If
2171 the option <quote>first</quote> is given, the first frame of the animation
2172 is used as the replacement. If <quote>last</quote> is given, the last frame
2173 of the animation is used instead, which probably makes more sense for most
2174 banner animations, but also has the risk of not showing the entire last
2175 frame (if it is only a delta to an earlier frame).
2181 <emphasis>+deanimate-gifs{last}</emphasis>
2182 <emphasis>+deanimate-gifs{first}</emphasis>
2191 <quote>+downgrade</quote> will downgrade HTTP/1.1 client requests to
2192 HTTP/1.0 and downgrade the responses as well. Use this action for servers
2193 that use HTTP/1.1 protocol features that
2194 <application>Privoxy</application> doesn't handle well yet. HTTP/1.1
2195 is only partially implemented. Default is not to downgrade requests.
2201 <emphasis>+downgrade</emphasis>
2210 Many sites, like yahoo.com, don't just link to other sites. Instead, they
2211 will link to some script on their own server, giving the destination as a
2212 parameter, which will then redirect you to the final target. URLs resulting
2213 from this scheme typically look like:
2214 http://some.place/some_script?http://some.where-else.
2217 Sometimes, there are even multiple consecutive redirects encoded in the
2218 URL. These redirections via scripts make your web browsing more traceable,
2219 since the server from which you follow such a link can see where you go to.
2220 Apart from that, valuable bandwidth and time is wasted, while your browser
2221 ask the server for one redirect after the other. Plus, it feeds the
2225 The <quote>+fast-redirects</quote> option enables interception of these
2226 requests by <application>Privoxy</application>, who will cut off all but
2227 the last valid URL in the request and send a local redirect back to your
2228 browser without contacting the remote site.
2234 <emphasis>+fast-redirects</emphasis>
2243 Apply the filters in the <literal>section_header</literal>
2244 section of the <filename>default.filter</filename> file to the site(s).
2245 <filename>default.filter</filename> sections are grouped according to like
2253 <emphasis>+filter{section_header}</emphasis>
2260 Filter sections that are pre-defined in the supplied
2261 <filename>default.filter</filename> include:
2267 <emphasis>html-annoyances</emphasis>: Get rid of particularly annoying HTML abuse.
2272 <emphasis>js-annoyances</emphasis>: Get rid of particularly annoying JavaScript abuse
2277 <emphasis>no-poups</emphasis>: Kill all popups in JS and HTML
2282 <emphasis>frameset-borders</emphasis>: Give frames a border
2287 <emphasis>webbugs</emphasis>: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
2292 <emphasis>no-refresh</emphasis>: Automatic refresh sucks on auto-dialup lines
2297 <emphasis>fun</emphasis>: Text replacements for subversive browsing fun!
2302 <emphasis>nimda</emphasis>: Remove (virus) Nimda code.
2307 <emphasis>banners-by-size</emphasis>: Kill banners by size
2312 <emphasis>crude-parental</emphasis>: Kill all web pages that contain the words "sex" or "warez"
2321 Block any existing X-Forwarded-for header, and do not add a new one:
2327 <emphasis>+hide-forwarded</emphasis>
2336 If the browser sends a <quote>From:</quote> header containing your e-mail
2337 address, this either completely removes the header (<quote>block</quote>), or
2338 changes it to the specified e-mail address.
2344 <emphasis>+hide-from{block}</emphasis>
2345 <emphasis>+hide-from{spam@sittingduck.xqq}</emphasis>
2354 Don't send the <quote>Referer:</quote> (sic) header to the web site. You
2355 can block it, forge a URL to the same server as the request (which is
2356 preferred because some sites will not send images otherwise) or set it to a
2357 constant string of your choice.
2363 <emphasis>+hide-referer{block}</emphasis>
2364 <emphasis>+hide-referer{forge}</emphasis>
2365 <emphasis>+hide-referer{http://nowhere.com}</emphasis>
2374 Alternative spelling of <quote>+hide-referer</quote>. It has the same
2375 parameters, and can be freely mixed with, <quote>+hide-referer</quote>.
2376 (<quote>referrer</quote> is the correct English spelling, however the HTTP
2377 specification has a bug - it requires it to be spelled <quote>referer</quote>.)
2383 <emphasis>+hide-referrer{...}</emphasis>
2392 Change the <quote>User-Agent:</quote> header so web servers can't tell your
2393 browser type. Warning! This breaks many web sites. Specify the
2394 user-agent value you want. Example, pretend to be using Netscape on
2401 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{Mozilla (X11; I; Linux 2.0.32 i586)}</emphasis>
2408 Or to identify yourself explicitly as a <application>Privoxy</application> user:
2414 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{Privoxy/1.0}</emphasis>
2419 (Don't change the version number from 1.0 - after all, why tell them?)
2426 <emphasis>+hide-user-agent{browser-type}</emphasis>
2436 Treat this URL as an image. This only matters if it's also <quote>+block</quote>ed,
2437 in which case a <quote>blocked</quote> image can be sent rather than a HTML page.
2438 See <quote>+image-blocker{}</quote> below for the control over what is actually sent.
2439 If you want <emphasis>invisible</emphasis> ads, they should be defined as
2440 <emphasis>images</emphasis> and <emphasis>blocked</emphasis>. And also,
2441 <quote>image-blocker</quote> should be set to <quote>blank</quote>.
2447 <emphasis>+image</emphasis>
2455 <para> Decides what to do with URLs that end up tagged with <quote>{+block
2456 +image}</quote>, e.g an advertizement. There are five options.
2457 <quote>-image-blocker</quote> will send a HTML <quote>blocked</quote> page,
2458 usually resulting in a <quote>broken image</quote> icon.
2459 <!-- <quote>+image-blocker{logo}</quote> will send a -->
2460 <!-- <application>Privoxy</application> logo -->
2462 <quote>+image-blocker{blank}</quote> will send a 1x1 transparent GIF
2463 image. And finally, <quote>+image-blocker{http://xyz.com}</quote> will send a
2464 HTTP temporary redirect to the specified image. This has the advantage of the
2465 icon being being cached by the browser, which will speed up the display.
2466 <quote>+image-blocker{pattern}</quote> will send a checkboard type pattern
2468 <!-- which scales better than the logo (which can get blocky if the browser -->
2469 <!-- enlarges it too much). -->
2475 <!-- <emphasis>+image-blocker{logo}</emphasis> -->
2476 <emphasis>+image-blocker{blank}</emphasis>
2477 <emphasis>+image-blocker{pattern}</emphasis>
2478 <emphasis>+image-blocker{http://p.p/send-banner}</emphasis>
2487 By default (i.e. in the absence of a <quote>+limit-connect</quote>
2488 action), <application>Privoxy</application> will only allow CONNECT
2489 requests to port 443, which is the standard port for https as a
2494 The CONNECT methods exists in HTTP to allow access to secure websites
2495 (https:// URLs) through proxies. It works very simply: the proxy
2496 connects to the server on the specified port, and then short-circuits
2497 its connections to the client <emphasis>and</emphasis> to the remote proxy.
2498 This can be a big security hole, since CONNECT-enabled proxies can
2499 be abused as TCP relays very easily.
2503 If you want to allow CONNECT for more ports than this, or want to forbid
2504 CONNECT altogether, you can specify a comma separated list of ports and
2505 port ranges (the latter using dashes, with the minimum defaulting to 0 and
2513 <emphasis>+limit-connect{443} # This is the default and need no be specified.</emphasis>
2514 <emphasis>+limit-connect{80,443} # Ports 80 and 443 are OK.</emphasis>
2515 <emphasis>+limit-connect{-3, 7, 20-100, 500-} # Port less than 3, 7, 20 to 100</emphasis>
2516 <emphasis> #and above 500 are OK.</emphasis>
2526 <quote>+no-compression</quote> prevents the website from compressing the
2527 data. Some websites do this, which can be a problem for
2528 <application>Privoxy</application>, since <quote>+filter</quote>,
2529 <quote>+no-popup</quote> and <quote>+gif-deanimate</quote> will not work on
2530 compressed data. This will slow down connections to those websites,
2531 though. Default is <quote>nocompression</quote> is turned on.
2538 <emphasis>+nocompression</emphasis>
2547 If the website sets cookies, <quote>no-cookies-keep</quote> will make sure
2548 they are erased when you exit and restart your web browser. This makes
2549 profiling cookies useless, but won't break sites which require cookies so
2550 that you can log in for transactions. Default: on.
2556 <emphasis>+no-cookies-keep</emphasis>
2565 Prevent the website from reading cookies:
2571 <emphasis>+no-cookies-read</emphasis>
2580 Prevent the website from setting cookies:
2586 <emphasis>+no-cookies-set</emphasis>
2595 Filter the website through a built-in filter to disable those obnoxious
2596 JavaScript pop-up windows via window.open(), etc. The two alternative
2597 spellings are equivalent.
2603 <emphasis>+no-popup</emphasis>
2604 <emphasis>+no-popups</emphasis>
2613 This action only applies if you are using a <filename>jarfile</filename>
2614 for saving cookies. It sends a cookie to every site stating that you do not
2615 accept any copyright on cookies sent to you, and asking them not to track
2616 you. Of course, this is a (relatively) unique header they could use to
2623 <emphasis>+vanilla-wafer</emphasis>
2632 This allows you to add an arbitrary cookie. It can be specified multiple
2633 times in order to add as many cookies as you like.
2639 <emphasis>+wafer{name=value}</emphasis>
2650 The meaning of any of the above is reversed by preceding the action with a
2651 <quote>-</quote>, in place of the <quote>+</quote>.
2659 Turn off cookies by default, then allow a few through for specified sites:
2666 # Turn off all persistent cookies
2667 { +no-cookies-read }
2669 # Allow cookies for this browser session ONLY
2670 { +no-cookies-keep }
2672 # Exceptions to the above, sites that benefit from persistent cookies
2673 { -no-cookies-read }
2675 { -no-cookies-keep }
2682 # Alternative way of saying the same thing
2683 {-no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-keep}
2692 Now turn off <quote>fast redirects</quote>, and then we allow two exceptions:
2702 # Reverse it for these two sites, which don't work right without it.
2704 www.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wac\.cgi\?
2712 Turn on page filtering according to rules in the defined sections
2713 of <filename>refilterfile</filename>, and make one exception for
2721 # Run everything through the filter file, using only the
2722 # specified sections:
2723 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}\
2724 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size}
2726 # Then disable filtering of code from sourceforge!
2728 .cvs.sourceforge.net
2735 Now some URLs that we want <quote>blocked</quote>, ie we won't see them.
2736 Many of these use regular expressions that will expand to match multiple
2746 /.*/(.*[-_.])?ads?[0-9]?(/|[-_.].*|\.(gif|jpe?g))
2747 /.*/(.*[-_.])?count(er)?(\.cgi|\.dll|\.exe|[?/])
2748 /.*/(ng)?adclient\.cgi
2749 /.*/(plain|live|rotate)[-_.]?ads?/
2750 /.*/(sponsor)s?[0-9]?/
2751 /.*/_?(plain|live)?ads?(-banners)?/
2753 /.*/ad(sdna_image|gifs?)/
2754 /.*/ad(server|stream|juggler)\.(cgi|pl|dll|exe)
2758 /.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/
2762 /.*/cgi-bin/centralad/getimage
2763 /.*/images/addver\.gif
2764 /.*/images/marketing/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
2768 /.*/sponsors?[0-9]?/
2769 /.*/advert[0-9]+\.jpg
2776 /graphics/defaultAd/
2778 /image\.ng/transactionID
2779 /images/.*/.*_anim\.gif # alvin brattli
2780 /ip_img/.*\.(gif|jpe?g)
2784 /cgi-bin/nph-adclick.exe/
2785 /.*/Image/BannerAdvertising/
2787 /.*/adlib/server\.cgi
2795 Note that many of these actions have the potential to cause a page to
2796 misbehave, possibly even not to display at all. There are many ways
2797 a site designer may choose to design his site, and what HTTP header
2798 content he may depend on. There is no way to have hard and fast rules
2799 for all sites. See the <link linkend="ACTIONSANAT">Appendix</link>
2800 for a brief example on troubleshooting actions.
2806 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2809 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2811 <title>Aliases</title>
2813 Custom <quote>actions</quote>, known to <application>Privoxy</application>
2814 as <quote>aliases</quote>, can be defined by combining other <quote>actions</quote>.
2815 These can in turn be invoked just like the built-in <quote>actions</quote>.
2816 Currently, an alias can contain any character except space, tab, <quote>=</quote>,
2817 <quote>{</quote> or <quote>}</quote>. But please use only <quote>a</quote>-
2818 <quote>z</quote>, <quote>0</quote>-<quote>9</quote>, <quote>+</quote>, and
2819 <quote>-</quote>. Alias names are not case sensitive, and
2820 <emphasis>must be defined before anything</emphasis> else in the
2821 <filename>default.action</filename>file ! And there can only be one set of
2822 <quote>aliases</quote> defined.
2826 Now let's define a few aliases:
2833 # Useful customer aliases we can use later. These must come first!
2835 +no-cookies = +no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
2836 -no-cookies = -no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
2837 fragile = -block -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects -hide-referer -no-popups
2838 shop = -no-cookies -filter -fast-redirects
2839 +imageblock = +block +image
2841 #For people who don't like to type too much: ;-)
2844 c2 = -no-cookies-set +no-cookies-read
2845 c3 = +no-cookies-set -no-cookies-read
2846 #... etc. Customize to your heart's content.
2853 Some examples using our <quote>shop</quote> and <quote>fragile</quote>
2861 # These sites are very complex and require
2862 # minimal interference.
2864 .office.microsoft.com
2865 .windowsupdate.microsoft.com
2868 # Shopping sites - still want to block ads.
2871 .worldpay.com # for quietpc.com
2875 # These shops require pop-ups
2887 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2890 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2891 <sect2 id="filterfile">
2892 <title>The Filter File</title>
2894 Any web page can be dynamically modified with the filter file. This
2895 modification can be removal, or re-writing, of any web page content,
2896 including tags and non-visible content. The default filter file is
2897 <filename>default.filter</filename>, located in the config directory.
2901 The included example file is divided into sections. Each section begins
2902 with the <literal>FILTER</literal> keyword, followed by the identifier
2903 for that section, e.g. <quote>FILTER: webbugs</quote>. Each section performs
2904 a similar type of filtering, such as <quote>html-annoyances</quote>.
2909 This file uses regular expressions to alter or remove any string in the
2910 target page. The expressions can only operate on one line at a time. Some
2911 examples from the included default <filename>default.filter</filename>:
2915 Stop web pages from displaying annoying messages in the status bar by
2916 deleting such references:
2923 FILTER: html-annoyances
2925 # New browser windows should be resizeable and have a location and status
2928 s/resizable="?(no|0)"?/resizable=1/ig s/noresize/yesresize/ig
2929 s/location="?(no|0)"?/location=1/ig s/status="?(no|0)"?/status=1/ig
2930 s/scrolling="?(no|0|Auto)"?/scrolling=1/ig
2931 s/menubar="?(no|0)"?/menubar=1/ig
2933 # The <BLINK> tag was a crime!
2935 s*<blink>|</blink>**ig
2939 #s/framespacing="?(no|0)"?//ig
2940 #s/margin(height|width)=[0-9]*//gi
2947 Just for kicks, replace any occurrence of <quote>Microsoft</quote> with
2948 <quote>MicroSuck</quote>, and have a little fun with topical buzzwords:
2957 s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/ig
2961 s/industry-leading|cutting-edge|award-winning/<font color=red><b>BINGO!</b></font>/ig
2968 Kill those pesky little web-bugs:
2975 # webbugs: Squish WebBugs (1x1 invisible GIFs used for user tracking)
2978 s/<img\s+[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1\D[^>]*?(width|height)\s*=\s*['"]?1(\D[^>]*?)?>/<!-- Squished WebBug -->/sig
2986 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
2990 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
2993 <title>Templates</title>
2995 When <application>Privoxy</application> displays one of its internal
2996 pages, such as a 404 Not Found error page, it uses the appropriate template.
2997 On Linux, BSD, and Unix, these are located in
2998 <filename>/etc/privoxy/templates</filename> by default. These may be
2999 customized, if desired.
3006 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3010 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3011 <sect1 id="quickstart"><title>Quickstart to Using <application>Privoxy</application></title>
3013 Install package, then run and enjoy! <application>Privoxy</application>
3014 is typically started by specifying the main configuration file to be
3015 used on the command line. Example Unix startup command:
3021 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config
3027 An init script is provided for SuSE and Redhat.
3031 For for SuSE: /etc/rc.d/privoxy start
3035 For RedHat: /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start
3040 If no configuration file is specified on the command line,
3041 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
3042 <filename>config</filename> in the current directory. Except on Win32 where
3043 it will try <filename>config.txt</filename>. If no file is specified on the
3044 command line and no default configuration file can be found,
3045 <application>Privoxy</application> will fail to start.
3049 Be sure your browser is set to use the proxy which is by default at
3050 localhost, port 8118. With <application>Netscape</application> (and
3051 <application>Mozilla</application>), this can be set under <literal>Edit
3052 -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy</literal>.
3053 For <application>Internet Explorer</application>: <literal>Tools >
3054 Internet Properties -> Connections -> LAN Setting</literal>. Then,
3055 check <quote>Use Proxy</quote> and fill in the appropriate info (Address:
3056 localhost, Port: 8118). Include if HTTPS proxy support too.
3060 The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting
3061 point, though may be somewhat aggressive in blocking junk. You will probably
3062 want to keep an eye out for sites that require persistent cookies, and add these to
3063 <filename>default.action</filename> as needed. By default, most of these will
3064 be accepted only during the current browser session, until you add them to
3065 the configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will
3066 need to edit <filename>default.action</filename> and disable this feature. If you
3067 use more than one browser, it would make more sense to let
3068 <application>Privoxy</application> handle this. In which case, the
3069 browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.
3073 If a particular site shows problems loading properly, try adding it
3074 to the <literal>{fragile}</literal> section of
3075 <filename>default.action</filename>. This will turn off most actions for
3080 <application>Privoxy</application> is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all 1.1
3081 features are as yet implemented. If browsers that support HTTP/1.1 (like
3082 <application>Mozilla</application> or recent versions of I.E.) experience
3083 problems, you might try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look
3084 under <literal>Edit -> Preferences -> Debug -> Networking</literal>.
3085 Or set the <quote>+downgrade</quote> config option in
3086 <filename>default.action</filename>.
3090 After running <application>Privoxy</application> for a while, you can
3091 start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site,
3092 preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can
3093 be customized. <quote>Actions</quote> (as specified in <filename>default.action</filename>)
3094 can be adjusted by pointing your browser to
3095 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>,
3096 and then follow the link to <quote>edit the actions list</quote>.
3097 (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)
3101 In fact, various aspects of <application>Privoxy</application>
3102 configuration can be viewed from this page, including
3103 current configuration parameters, source code version numbers,
3104 the browser's request headers, and <quote>actions</quote> that apply
3105 to a given URL. In addition to the <filename>default.action</filename> file
3106 editor mentioned above, <application>Privoxy</application> can also
3107 be turned <quote>on</quote> and <quote>off</quote> from this page.
3111 If you encounter problems, please verify it is a
3112 <application>Privoxy</application> bug, by disabling
3113 <application>Privoxy</application>, and then trying the same page.
3114 Also, try another browser if possible to eliminate browser or site
3115 problems. Before reporting it as a bug, see if there is not a configuration
3116 option that is enabled that is causing the page not to load. You can
3117 then add an exception for that page or site. If a bug, please report it to
3118 the developers (see below).
3123 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3126 <title>Command Line Options</title>
3128 <application>Privoxy</application> may be invoked with the following
3129 command-line options:
3137 <emphasis>--version</emphasis>
3140 Print version info and exit, Unix only.
3145 <emphasis>--help</emphasis>
3148 Print a short usage info and exit, Unix only.
3153 <emphasis>--no-daemon</emphasis>
3156 Don't become a daemon, i.e. don't fork and become process group
3157 leader, don't detach from controlling tty. Unix only.
3162 <emphasis>--pidfile FILE</emphasis>
3166 On startup, write the process ID to <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>. Delete the
3167 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> on exit. Failiure to create or delete the
3168 <emphasis>FILE</emphasis> is non-fatal. If no <emphasis>FILE</emphasis>
3169 option is given, no PID file will be used. Unix only.
3174 <emphasis>--user USER[.GROUP]</emphasis>
3178 After (optionally) writing the PID file, assume the user ID of
3179 <emphasis>USER</emphasis>, and if included the GID of GROUP. Exit if the
3180 privileges are not sufficient to do so. Unix only.
3185 <emphasis>configfile</emphasis>
3188 If no <emphasis>configfile</emphasis> is included on the command line,
3189 <application>Privoxy</application> will look for a file named
3190 <quote>config</quote> in the current directory (except on Win32
3191 where it will look for <quote>config.txt</quote> instead). Specify
3192 full path to avoid confusion.
3203 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3207 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3209 <sect1 id="contact"><title>Contacting the Developers, Bug Reporting and Feature
3212 We value your feedback. However, to provide you with the best support,
3217 <listitem><para>Use the <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=211118">Sourceforge support forum</ulink> to get
3218 help.</para></listitem>
3220 <listitem><para>Submit bugs only thru our <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=111118">Sourceforge bug
3222 Make sure that the bug has not already been submitted. Please try to
3223 verify that it is a <application>Privoxy</application> bug, and not
3224 a browser or site bug first. If you are using your own custom configuration,
3225 please try the stock configs to see if the problem is a configuration
3226 related bug. And if not using the latest development snapshot, please
3227 try the latest one. Or even better, CVS sources.</para>
3231 <listitem><para>Submit feature requests only thru our <ulink
3232 url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118&func=browse">Sourceforge feature request forum</ulink>.</para></listitem>
3240 For any other issues, feel free to use the <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=11118">mailing lists</ulink>.
3244 Anyone interested in actively participating in development and related
3245 discussions can join the appropriate mailing list
3246 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=11118">here</ulink>.
3247 Archives are available here too.
3253 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3254 <sect1 id="copyright"><title>Copyright and History</title>
3257 <title>License</title>
3259 <application>Privoxy</application> is free software; you can
3260 redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
3261 License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
3262 License, or (at your option) any later version.
3266 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
3267 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
3268 FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
3269 details, which is available from <ulink
3270 url="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">the Free Software Foundation,
3271 Inc</ulink>, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
3276 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3279 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3282 <title>History</title>
3284 <application>Privoxy</application> is derived from
3285 <application>the Internet Junkbuster</application>, with many
3286 improvments and enhancements over the original.
3290 <application>Junkbuster</application> was originally written by Anonymous
3292 url="http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/ijbfaq.html">Junkbuster's
3293 Corporation</ulink>, and was released as free open-source software under the
3294 GNU GPL. <ulink url="http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/">Stefan
3295 Waldherr</ulink> made many improvements, and started the <ulink
3296 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/">SourceForge project
3297 Privoxy</ulink> to rekindle development. There are now several active
3298 developers contributing. The last stable release of
3299 <application>Junkbuster</application> was v2.0.2, which has now
3307 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3308 <sect1 id="seealso"><title>See also</title>
3313 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa">http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa</ulink>
3318 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/">http://www.privoxy.org/</ulink>
3323 <ulink url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>
3328 <ulink url="http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html">http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html</ulink>
3333 <ulink url="http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/">http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/</ulink>
3338 <ulink url="http://privacy.net/analyze/">http://privacy.net/analyze/</ulink>
3343 <ulink url="http://www.squid-cache.org/">http://www.squid-cache.org/</ulink>
3352 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3353 <sect1 id="appendix"><title>Appendix</title>
3356 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3358 <title>Regular Expressions</title>
3360 <application>Privoxy</application> can use <quote>regular expressions</quote>
3361 in various config files. Assuming support for <quote>pcre</quote> (Perl
3362 Compatible Regular Expressions) is compiled in, which is the default. Such
3363 configuration directives do not require regular expressions, but they can be
3364 used to increase flexibility by matching a pattern with wild-cards against
3369 If you are reading this, you probably don't understand what <quote>regular
3370 expressions</quote> are, or what they can do. So this will be a very brief
3371 introduction only. A full explanation would require a book ;-)
3375 <quote>Regular expressions</quote> is a way of matching one character
3376 expression against another to see if it matches or not. One of the
3377 <quote>expressions</quote> is a literal string of readable characters
3378 (letter, numbers, etc), and the other is a complex string of literal
3379 characters combined with wild-cards, and other special characters, called
3380 meta-characters. The <quote>meta-characters</quote> have special meanings and
3381 are used to build the complex pattern to be matched against. Perl Compatible
3382 Regular Expressions is an enhanced form of the regular expression language
3383 with backward compatibility.
3387 To make a simple analogy, we do something similar when we use wild-card
3388 characters when listing files with the <command>dir</command> command in DOS.
3389 <literal>*.*</literal> matches all filenames. The <quote>special</quote>
3390 character here is the asterisk which matches any and all characters. We can be
3391 more specific and use <literal>?</literal> to match just individual
3392 characters. So <quote>dir file?.text</quote> would match
3393 <quote>file1.txt</quote>, <quote>file2.txt</quote>, etc. We are pattern
3394 matching, using a similar technique to <quote>regular expressions</quote>!
3398 Regular expressions do essentially the same thing, but are much, much more
3399 powerful. There are many more <quote>special characters</quote> and ways of
3400 building complex patterns however. Let's look at a few of the common ones,
3401 and then some examples:
3406 <emphasis>.</emphasis> - Matches any single character, e.g. <quote>a</quote>,
3407 <quote>A</quote>, <quote>4</quote>, <quote>:</quote>, or <quote>@</quote>.
3413 <emphasis>?</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or ONE
3420 <emphasis>+</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ONE or MORE
3427 <emphasis>*</emphasis> - The preceding character or expression is matched ZERO or MORE
3434 <emphasis>\</emphasis> - The <quote>escape</quote> character denotes that
3435 the following character should be taken literally. This is used where one of the
3436 special characters (e.g. <quote>.</quote>) needs to be taken literally and
3437 not as a special meta-character.
3443 <emphasis>[]</emphasis> - Characters enclosed in brackets will be matched if
3444 any of the enclosed characters are encountered.
3450 <emphasis>()</emphasis> - parentheses are used to group a sub-expression,
3451 or multiple sub-expressions.
3457 <emphasis>|</emphasis> - The <quote>bar</quote> character works like an
3458 <quote>or</quote> conditional statement. A match is successful if the
3459 sub-expression on either side of <quote>|</quote> matches.
3465 <emphasis>s/string1/string2/g</emphasis> - This is used to rewrite strings of text.
3466 <quote>string1</quote> is replaced by <quote>string2</quote> in this
3472 These are just some of the ones you are likely to use when matching URLs with
3473 <application>Privoxy</application>, and is a long way from a definitive
3474 list. This is enough to get us started with a few simple examples which may
3475 be more illuminating:
3479 <emphasis><literal>/.*/banners/.*</literal></emphasis> - A simple example
3480 that uses the common combination of <quote>.</quote> and <quote>*</quote> to
3481 denote any character, zero or more times. In other words, any string at all.
3482 So we start with a literal forward slash, then our regular expression pattern
3483 (<quote>.*</quote>) another literal forward slash, the string
3484 <quote>banners</quote>, another forward slash, and lastly another
3485 <quote>.*</quote>. We are building
3486 a directory path here. This will match any file with the path that has a
3487 directory named <quote>banners</quote> in it. The <quote>.*</quote> matches
3488 any characters, and this could conceivably be more forward slashes, so it
3489 might expand into a much longer looking path. For example, this could match:
3490 <quote>/eye/hate/spammers/banners/annoy_me_please.gif</quote>, or just
3491 <quote>/banners/annoying.html</quote>, or almost an infinite number of other
3492 possible combinations, just so it has <quote>banners</quote> in the path
3497 A now something a little more complex:
3501 <emphasis><literal>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))?/</literal></emphasis> -
3502 We have several literal forward slashes again (<quote>/</quote>), so we are
3503 building another expression that is a file path statement. We have another
3504 <quote>.*</quote>, so we are matching against any conceivable sub-path, just so
3505 it matches our expression. The only true literal that <emphasis>must
3506 match</emphasis> our pattern is <application>adv</application>, together with
3507 the forward slashes. What comes after the <quote>adv</quote> string is the
3512 Remember the <quote>?</quote> means the preceding expression (either a
3513 literal character or anything grouped with <quote>(...)</quote> in this case)
3514 can exist or not, since this means either zero or one match. So
3515 <quote>((er)?ts?|ertis(ing|ements?))</quote> is optional, as are the
3516 individual sub-expressions: <quote>(er)</quote>,
3517 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, and the <quote>s</quote>. The <quote>|</quote>
3518 means <quote>or</quote>. We have two of those. For instance,
3519 <quote>(ing|ements?)</quote>, can expand to match either <quote>ing</quote>
3520 <emphasis>OR</emphasis> <quote>ements?</quote>. What is being done here, is an
3521 attempt at matching as many variations of <quote>advertisement</quote>, and
3522 similar, as possible. So this would expand to match just <quote>adv</quote>,
3523 or <quote>advert</quote>, or <quote>adverts</quote>, or
3524 <quote>advertising</quote>, or <quote>advertisement</quote>, or
3525 <quote>advertisements</quote>. You get the idea. But it would not match
3526 <quote>advertizements</quote> (with a <quote>z</quote>). We could fix that by
3527 changing our regular expression to:
3528 <quote>/.*/adv((er)?ts?|erti(s|z)(ing|ements?))?/</quote>, which would then match
3533 <emphasis><literal>/.*/advert[0-9]+\.(gif|jpe?g)</literal></emphasis> - Again
3534 another path statement with forward slashes. Anything in the square brackets
3535 <quote>[]</quote> can be matched. This is using <quote>0-9</quote> as a
3536 shorthand expression to mean any digit one through nine. It is the same as
3537 saying <quote>0123456789</quote>. So any digit matches. The <quote>+</quote>
3538 means one or more of the preceding expression must be included. The preceding
3539 expression here is what is in the square brackets -- in this case, any digit
3540 one through nine. Then, at the end, we have a grouping: <quote>(gif|jpe?g)</quote>.
3541 This includes a <quote>|</quote>, so this needs to match the expression on
3542 either side of that bar character also. A simple <quote>gif</quote> on one side, and the other
3543 side will in turn match either <quote>jpeg</quote> or <quote>jpg</quote>,
3544 since the <quote>?</quote> means the letter <quote>e</quote> is optional and
3545 can be matched once or not at all. So we are building an expression here to
3546 match image GIF or JPEG type image file. It must include the literal
3547 string <quote>advert</quote>, then one or more digits, and a <quote>.</quote>
3548 (which is now a literal, and not a special character, since it is escaped
3549 with <quote>\</quote>), and lastly either <quote>gif</quote>, or
3550 <quote>jpeg</quote>, or <quote>jpg</quote>. Some possible matches would
3551 include: <quote>//advert1.jpg</quote>,
3552 <quote>/nasty/ads/advert1234.gif</quote>,
3553 <quote>/banners/from/hell/advert99.jpg</quote>. It would not match
3554 <quote>advert1.gif</quote> (no leading slash), or
3555 <quote>/adverts232.jpg</quote> (the expression does not include an
3556 <quote>s</quote>), or <quote>/advert1.jsp</quote> (<quote>jsp</quote> is not
3557 in the expression anywhere).
3561 <emphasis><literal>s/microsoft(?!.com)/MicroSuck/i</literal></emphasis> - This is
3562 a substitution. <quote>MicroSuck</quote> will replace any occurrence of
3563 <quote>microsoft</quote>. The <quote>i</quote> at the end of the expression
3564 means ignore case. The <quote>(?!.com)</quote> means
3565 the match should fail if <quote>microsoft</quote> is followed by
3566 <quote>.com</quote>. In other words, this acts like a <quote>NOT</quote>
3567 modifier. In case this is a hyperlink, we don't want to break it ;-).
3571 We are barely scratching the surface of regular expressions here so that you
3572 can understand the default <application>Privoxy</application>
3573 configuration files, and maybe use this knowledge to customize your own
3574 installation. There is much, much more that can be done with regular
3575 expressions. Now that you know enough to get started, you can learn more on
3580 More reading on Perl Compatible Regular expressions:
3581 <ulink url="http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html">http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html</ulink>
3586 <!-- ~ End section ~ -->
3589 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3591 <title><application>Privoxy</application>'s Internal Pages</title>
3594 Since <application>Privoxy</application> proxies each requested
3595 web page, it is easy for <application>Privoxy</application> to
3596 trap certain URLs. In this way, we can talk directly to
3597 <application>Privoxy</application>, and see how it is
3598 configured, see how our rules are being applied, change these
3599 rules and other configuration options, and even turn
3600 <application>Privoxy's</application> filtering off, all with
3606 The URLs listed below are the special ones that allow direct access
3607 to <application>Privoxy</application>. Of course,
3608 <application>Privoxy</application> must be running to access these. If
3609 not, you will get a friendly error message. Internet access is not
3622 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/">http://www.privoxy.org/config/</ulink>
3626 Alternately, this may be reached at <ulink
3627 url="http://p.p/">http://p.p/</ulink>, but this
3628 variation may not work as reliably as the above in some configurations.
3634 Show information about the current configuration:
3638 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-status">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-status</ulink>
3645 Show the source code version numbers:
3649 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-version">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-version</ulink>
3656 Show the client's request headers:
3660 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-request">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-request</ulink>
3667 Show which actions apply to a URL and why:
3671 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info</ulink>
3678 Toggle Privoxy on or off:
3682 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle">http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle</ulink>
3686 Short cuts. Turn off, then on:
3690 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=disable">http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=disable</ulink>
3695 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=enable">http://www.privoxy.org/config/toggle?set=enable</ulink>
3702 Edit the actions list file:
3706 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/edit-actions">http://www.privoxy.org/config/edit-actions</ulink>
3715 These may be bookmarked for quick reference.
3722 <!-- ~~~~~ New section ~~~~~ -->
3723 <sect2 id="actionsanat">
3724 <title>Anatomy of an Action</title>
3727 The way <application>Privoxy</application> applies <quote>actions</quote>
3728 to any given URL can be complex, and not always so easy to understand what
3729 is happening. And sometimes we need to be able to <emphasis>see</emphasis>
3730 just what <application>Privoxy</application> is doing. Especially,
3731 if something <application>Privoxy</application> is doing is causing
3732 us a problem inadvertantly. It can be a little daunting to look at
3733 the actions files themselves, since they tend to be filled with
3734 <quote>regular expressions</quote> whose consequences are not always
3735 so obvious. <application>Privoxy</application> provides the
3736 <ulink url="http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info">http://www.privoxy.org/config/show-url-info</ulink>
3737 page that can show us very specifically how <application>actions</application>
3738 are being applied to any given URL. This is a big help for troubleshooting.
3742 First, enter one URL (or partial URL) at the prompt, and then
3743 <application>Privoxy</application> will tell us
3744 how the current configuration will handle it. This will not
3745 help with filtering effects from the <filename>default.filter</filename> file! It
3746 also will not tell you about any other URLs that may be embedded within the
3747 URL you are testing. For instance, images such as ads are expressed as URLs
3748 within the raw page source of HTML pages. So you will only get info for the
3749 actual URL that is pasted into the prompt area -- not any sub-URLs. If you
3750 want to know about embedded URLs like ads, you will have to dig those out of
3751 the HTML source. Use your browser's <quote>View Page Source</quote> option
3756 Let's look at an example, <ulink url="http://google.com">google.com</ulink>,
3757 one section at a time:
3762 System default actions:
3764 { -add-header -block -deanimate-gifs -downgrade -fast-redirects -filter
3765 -hide-forwarded -hide-from -hide-referer -hide-user-agent -image
3766 -image-blocker -limit-connect -no-compression -no-cookies-keep
3767 -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set -no-popups -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3773 This is the top section, and only tells us of the compiled in defaults. This
3774 is basically what <application>Privoxy</application> would do if there
3775 were not any <quote>actions</quote> defined, i.e. it does nothing. Every action
3776 is disabled. This is not particularly informative for our purposes here. OK,
3783 Matches for http://google.com:
3785 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade +fast-redirects
3786 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3787 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3788 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3789 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} +no-compression
3790 +no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups
3791 -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3794 { -no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set }
3804 This is much more informative, and tells us how we have defined our
3805 <quote>actions</quote>, and which ones match for our example,
3806 <quote>google.com</quote>. The first grouping shows our default
3807 settings, which would apply to all URLs. If you look at your <quote>actions</quote>
3808 file, this would be the section just below the <quote>aliases</quote> section
3809 near the top. This applies to all URLs as signified by the single forward
3810 slash -- <quote>/</quote>.
3815 These are the default actions we have enabled. But we can define additional
3816 actions that would be exceptions to these general rules, and then list
3817 specific URLs that these exceptions would apply to. Last match wins.
3818 Just below this then are two explict matches for <quote>.google.com</quote>.
3819 The first is negating our various cookie blocking actions (i.e. we will allow
3820 cookies here). The second is allowing <quote>fast-redirects</quote>. Note
3821 that there is a leading dot here -- <quote>.google.com</quote>. This will
3822 match any hosts and sub-domains, in the google.com domain also, such as
3823 <quote>www.google.com</quote>. So, apparently, we have these actions defined
3824 somewhere in the lower part of our actions file, and
3825 <quote>google.com</quote> is referenced in these sections.
3830 And now we pull it altogether in the bottom section and summarize how
3831 <application>Privoxy</application> is appying all its <quote>actions</quote>
3832 to <quote>google.com</quote>:
3841 -add-header -block -deanimate-gifs -downgrade -fast-redirects
3842 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3843 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3844 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3845 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} -limit-connect +no-compression
3846 -no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups -vanilla-wafer
3853 Now another example, <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>:
3872 We'll just show the interesting part here, the explicit matches. It is
3873 matched three different times. Each as an <quote>+block +image</quote>,
3874 which is the expanded form of one of our aliases that had been defined as:
3875 <quote>+imageblock</quote>. (<quote>Aliases</quote> are defined in the
3876 first section of the actions file and typically used to combine more
3881 Any one of these would have done the trick and blocked this as an unwanted
3882 image. This is unnecessarily redundant since the last case effectively
3883 would also cover the first. No point in taking chances with these guys
3884 though ;-) Note that if you want an ad or obnoxious
3885 URL to be invisible, it should be defined as <quote>ad.doubleclick.net</quote>
3886 is done here -- as both a <quote>+block</quote> <emphasis>and</emphasis> an
3887 <quote>+image</quote>. The custom alias <quote>+imageblock</quote> does this
3892 One last example. Let's try <quote>http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/</quote>.
3893 This one is giving us problems. We are getting a blank page. Hmmm...
3899 Matches for http://www.rhapsodyk.net/adsl/HOWTO/:
3901 { -add-header -block +deanimate-gifs -downgrade +fast-redirects
3902 +filter{html-annoyances} +filter{js-annoyances} +filter{no-popups}
3903 +filter{webbugs} +filter{nimda} +filter{banners-by-size} +filter{hal}
3904 +filter{fun} +hide-forwarded +hide-from{block} +hide-referer{forge}
3905 -hide-user-agent -image +image-blocker{blank} +no-compression
3906 +no-cookies-keep -no-cookies-read -no-cookies-set +no-popups
3907 -vanilla-wafer -wafer }
3917 Ooops, the <quote>/adsl/</quote> is matching <quote>/ads</quote>! But
3918 we did not want this at all! Now we see why we get the blank page. We could
3919 now add a new action below this that explictly does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
3920 block (-block) pages with <quote>adsl</quote>. There are various ways to
3921 handle such exceptions. Example:
3934 Now the page displays ;-)
3944 This program is free software; you can redistribute it
3945 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
3946 Public License as published by the Free Software
3947 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
3948 your option) any later version.
3950 This program is distributed in the hope that it will
3951 be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
3952 implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
3953 PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
3954 License for more details.
3956 The GNU General Public License should be included with
3957 this file. If not, you can view it at
3958 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
3959 or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
3960 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
3962 $Log: user-manual.sgml,v $
3963 Revision 1.57 2002/03/24 20:33:30 hal9
3964 A few minor catch ups with name change.
3966 Revision 1.56 2002/03/24 16:17:06 swa
3967 configure needs to be generated.
3969 Revision 1.55 2002/03/24 16:08:08 swa
3970 we are too lazy to make a block-built
3971 privoxy logo. hence removed the option.
3973 Revision 1.54 2002/03/24 15:46:20 swa
3974 name change related issue.
3976 Revision 1.53 2002/03/24 11:51:00 swa
3977 name change. changed filenames.
3979 Revision 1.52 2002/03/24 11:01:06 swa
3982 Revision 1.51 2002/03/23 15:13:11 swa
3983 renamed every reference to the old name with foobar.
3984 fixed "application foobar application" tag, fixed
3985 "the foobar" with "foobar". left junkbustser in cvs
3986 comments and remarks to history untouched.
3988 Revision 1.50 2002/03/23 05:06:21 hal9
3991 Revision 1.49 2002/03/21 17:01:05 hal9
3992 New section in Appendix.
3994 Revision 1.48 2002/03/12 06:33:01 hal9
3995 Catching up to Andreas and re_filterfile changes.
3997 Revision 1.47 2002/03/11 13:13:27 swa
3998 correct feedback channels
4000 Revision 1.46 2002/03/10 00:51:08 hal9
4001 Added section on JB internal pages in Appendix.
4003 Revision 1.45 2002/03/09 17:43:53 swa
4006 Revision 1.44 2002/03/09 17:08:48 hal9
4007 New section on Jon's actions file editor, and move some stuff around.
4009 Revision 1.43 2002/03/08 00:47:32 hal9
4010 Added imageblock{pattern}.
4012 Revision 1.42 2002/03/07 18:16:55 swa
4015 Revision 1.41 2002/03/07 16:46:43 hal9
4016 Fix a few markup problems for jade.
4018 Revision 1.40 2002/03/07 16:28:39 swa
4019 provide correct feedback channels
4021 Revision 1.39 2002/03/06 16:19:28 hal9
4022 Note on perceived filtering slowdown per FR.
4024 Revision 1.38 2002/03/05 23:55:14 hal9
4025 Stupid I did it again. Double hyphen in comment breaks jade.
4027 Revision 1.37 2002/03/05 23:53:49 hal9
4028 jade barfs on '- -' embedded in comments. - -user option broke it.
4030 Revision 1.36 2002/03/05 22:53:28 hal9
4031 Add new - - user option.
4033 Revision 1.35 2002/03/05 00:17:27 hal9
4034 Added section on command line options.
4036 Revision 1.34 2002/03/04 19:32:07 oes
4037 Changed default port to 8118
4039 Revision 1.33 2002/03/03 19:46:13 hal9
4040 Emphasis on where/how to report bugs, etc
4042 Revision 1.32 2002/03/03 09:26:06 joergs
4043 AmigaOS changes, config is now loaded from PROGDIR: instead of
4044 AmiTCP:db/junkbuster/ if no configuration file is specified on the
4047 Revision 1.31 2002/03/02 22:45:52 david__schmidt
4050 Revision 1.30 2002/03/02 22:00:14 hal9
4051 Updated 'New Features' list. Ran through spell-checker.
4053 Revision 1.29 2002/03/02 20:34:07 david__schmidt
4054 Update OS/2 build section
4056 Revision 1.28 2002/02/24 14:34:24 jongfoster
4057 Formatting changes. Now changing the doctype to DocBook XML 4.1
4058 will work - no other changes are needed.
4060 Revision 1.27 2002/01/11 14:14:32 hal9
4061 Added a very short section on Templates
4063 Revision 1.26 2002/01/09 20:02:50 hal9
4064 Fix bug re: auto-detect config file changes.
4066 Revision 1.25 2002/01/09 18:20:30 hal9
4067 Touch ups for *.action files.
4069 Revision 1.24 2001/12/02 01:13:42 hal9
4072 Revision 1.23 2001/12/02 00:20:41 hal9
4073 Updates for recent changes.
4075 Revision 1.22 2001/11/05 23:57:51 hal9
4076 Minor update for startup now daemon mode.
4078 Revision 1.21 2001/10/31 21:11:03 hal9
4079 Correct 2 minor errors
4081 Revision 1.18 2001/10/24 18:45:26 hal9
4082 *** empty log message ***
4084 Revision 1.17 2001/10/24 17:10:55 hal9
4085 Catching up with Jon's recent work, and a few other things.
4087 Revision 1.16 2001/10/21 17:19:21 swa
4088 wrong url in documentation
4090 Revision 1.15 2001/10/14 23:46:24 hal9
4091 Various minor changes. Fleshed out SEE ALSO section.
4093 Revision 1.13 2001/10/10 17:28:33 hal9
4096 Revision 1.12 2001/09/28 02:57:04 hal9
4099 Revision 1.11 2001/09/28 02:25:20 hal9
4102 Revision 1.9 2001/09/27 23:50:29 hal9
4103 A few changes. A short section on regular expression in appendix.
4105 Revision 1.8 2001/09/25 00:34:59 hal9
4106 Some additions, and re-arranging.
4108 Revision 1.7 2001/09/24 14:31:36 hal9
4111 Revision 1.6 2001/09/24 14:10:32 hal9
4112 Including David's OS/2 installation instructions.
4114 Revision 1.2 2001/09/13 15:27:40 swa
4117 Revision 1.1 2001/09/12 15:36:41 swa
4118 source files for junkbuster documentation
4120 Revision 1.3 2001/09/10 17:43:59 swa
4121 first proposal of a structure.
4123 Revision 1.2 2001/06/13 14:28:31 swa
4124 docs should have an author.
4126 Revision 1.1 2001/06/13 14:20:37 swa
4127 first import of project's documentation for the webserver.
projects / privoxy.git / blob