4 >Troubleshooting</TITLE
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40 >Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</TH
78 >5. Troubleshooting</H1
86 >5.1. I am getting <SPAN
88 >"connection refused"</SPAN
90 with every web page?</H3
95 > is not running, or your
96 browser is configured for a different port than what
105 > 2.x versions (and also
110 default. This has been changed to port 8118 now, due to a conflict
111 with NAS (Network Audio Service), which uses port 8000. If you haven't,
112 you need to change your browser to the new port number, or alternately
114 HREF="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS"
125 HREF="../user-manual/config.html"
127 >main configuration file</A
137 >5.2. I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
138 still getting through. How?</H3
140 > If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
141 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
142 the need for any request to the server, and <SPAN
146 will not be in the picture. The best thing to do is try flushing the browser's
147 caches. And then try again.</P
149 > If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
150 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <A
151 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
153 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
155 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
156 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game.</P
165 >5.3. One of my favorite sites does not work with <SPAN
171 > First verify that it is indeed a <SPAN
175 by toggling off <SPAN
179 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle"
181 >http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</A
183 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
184 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
187 > If still a problem, go to <A
188 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
190 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
192 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which actions
193 are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions files are
194 responsible for that. Now, armed with this information, go to <A
195 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status"
197 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</A
199 and select the appropriate actions files for editing.</P
201 > You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
202 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
203 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
204 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
205 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
206 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
207 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!</P
209 > Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
210 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
211 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
219 which is an alias that turns off most <SPAN
223 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
224 your privacy and protection more than necessary, </P
226 > Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <A
227 HREF="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT"
229 >user-manual appendix</A
232 HREF="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES"
244 >5.4. After installing <SPAN
248 every time I start IE. What gives?</H3
250 > This is a quirk that effects the installation of
254 >, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
255 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
256 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.</P
258 > When setting up an NT based Windows system with
262 > you may find that things do not seem to be
263 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
264 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
265 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
266 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
267 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
268 configured for the kids.</P
270 > When setting up <SPAN
273 > in this environment you
274 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
275 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
279 >. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
280 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
281 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
282 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
283 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
284 you have to store the password under each different user!</P
286 > The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
287 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
288 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
289 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
290 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
291 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.</P
293 >[Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]</P
302 >5.5. I cannot connect to any FTP sites. <SPAN
306 seems to be blocking me.</H3
311 > cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
312 so do not configure your browser to use <SPAN
316 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <SPAN
320 >any protocol other than HTTP
326 > Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
329 >ftp://ftp.example.com</TT
330 >, your browser is making
331 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
335 > does not, and cannot proxy
339 > To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <SPAN
343 setting, which will silently various protocols, including
350 > HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
351 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
355 > will indeed cause problems since
356 it does not know FTP. Newer version will give a sane error message if a FTP
357 connection is attempted.
363 > ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
364 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
375 >5.6. In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
379 > as the HTTP proxy.</H3
381 > Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
382 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
383 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
384 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
385 is checked and enter <TT
388 > in the entry field.
392 > in the Port field. The next time you start
393 IE, it should reflect these values.
403 >5.7. In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
404 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
407 > Just dragging the <SPAN
410 > folder to the trash is
411 not enough to delete it. <SPAN
417 >uninstall.command</SPAN
418 > file that takes care of
419 these details. Open the trash, drag the <SPAN
421 >uninstall.command</SPAN
423 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
424 confirmation and the administration password.
427 > The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
428 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
438 >5.8. In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
439 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
443 > as my browser's proxy setting.</H3
445 > We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in OSX, but don't fully
446 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
454 works around the problem.
464 >5.9. I get a completely blank page at one site. <SPAN
470 ><html><body></body></html></SPAN
475 > the page loads fine.</H3
477 > Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
479 HREF="http://www.php.net/"
486 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
487 an uncompressed page, like <SPAN
491 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
494 > To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
497 >-prevent-compression</TT
512 > # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
514 {-prevent-compression}
520 > If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
521 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
522 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
523 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
533 >5.10. Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</H3
535 > More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
536 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running. The solution is
537 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
538 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
539 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
549 >5.11. My logs show many <SPAN
551 >"Unable to get my own hostname"</SPAN
558 > tries to get the hostname of the system
559 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
570 > setting). If the system cannot supply
571 this information, <SPAN
574 > logs this condition. </P
576 > Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
577 not a fatal error to <SPAN
581 result in a much slower response from <SPAN
585 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.</P
594 >5.12. When I try to launch <SPAN
600 >"port 8118 is already in use"</SPAN
601 > (or similar wording).
611 > port. Typically this message would mean that there
612 is already one instance of <SPAN
616 you are actually trying to start a second <SPAN
620 on the same port, which will not work. (You can have multiple instances but
621 they must be assigned different ports.) How and why this might happen varies
622 from platform to platform, but you need to check your installation and
623 start-up procedures.</P
632 >5.13. Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.</H3
634 > This is caused by the <SPAN
637 > filter. You should either
641 >, or at least upgrade to the most
645 > file available from <A
646 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
650 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.</P
659 >5.14. Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when <SPAN
665 > This may also be caused by the <SPAN
669 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting a file type. Binary
670 files are exempted from <SPAN
674 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
678 >, or go to the most recent
682 > file available from <A
683 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
695 >5.15. What is the <SPAN
698 > and why is it there?</H3
700 > The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
701 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
702 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
703 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
704 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
705 displayed correctly. <SPAN
709 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
710 correct these errors on the fly. </P
712 > But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
715 > If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
716 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
717 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <SPAN
725 > On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
726 notice wierd characters on pages, you might want to try it.</P
735 >5.16. Why do I keep seeing <SPAN
737 >"PrivoxyWindowOpen()"</SPAN
738 > in raw source code?</H3
743 > is attempting to disable malicious
744 Javascript in this case, with the <TT
746 >unsolicited-popups</TT
751 > cannot tell very well
755 > code snippets from <SPAN
760 > If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
761 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
762 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
763 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
764 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.</P
773 >5.17. I am getting too many DNS errors like <SPAN
775 >"404 No Such Domain"</SPAN
780 > do this better?</H3
782 > There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
783 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
791 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
792 whatever the outcome was. And tries to give a coherent message if there seems
793 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
794 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alernate approaches (e.g
798 > to the URL). In other cases, if
802 > is being chained with another proxy, this
803 could complicate the issue, and cause undue
804 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <SPAN
808 server handles all the DNS. <SPAN
815 > which is reporting whatever problem occurred
816 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.</P
818 > In any case, v. 3.0.4 includes various improvements to help
822 > better handle these cases.</P
831 >5.18. At one site <SPAN
834 > just hangs, and starts taking
835 all CPU. Why is this?</H3
837 > This is probably a manifestation of the <SPAN
841 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
842 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
843 pattern matching in <SPAN
847 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
848 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete. Until a better
849 solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages, particularly the
855 >unsolicited-popups</TT
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