6. Starting Privoxy

Before launching Privoxy for the first time, you will want to configure your browser(s) to use Privoxy as a HTTP and HTTPS proxy. The default is localhost for the proxy address, and port 8118 (earlier versions used port 8000). This is the one configuration step that must be done!

With Netscape (and Mozilla), this can be set under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies -> HTTP Proxy. For Internet Explorer: Tools -> Internet Properties -> Connections -> LAN Setting. Then, check "Use Proxy" and fill in the appropriate info (Address: localhost, Port: 8118). Include if HTTPS proxy support too.

After doing this, flush your browser's disk and memory caches to force a re-reading of all pages and to get rid of any ads that may be cached. You are now ready to start enjoying the benefits of using Privoxy!

Privoxy is typically started by specifying the main configuration file to be used on the command line. Example Unix startup command:

 
 # /usr/sbin/privoxy /etc/privoxy/config

See below for other command line options.

An init script is provided for SuSE and Red Hat.

For for SuSE: rcprivoxy start

For Red Hat and Debian: /etc/rc.d/init.d/privoxy start

If no configuration file is specified on the command line, Privoxy will look for a file named config in the current directory. Except on Win32 where it will try config.txt. If no file is specified on the command line and no default configuration file can be found, Privoxy will fail to start.

The included default configuration files should give a reasonable starting point. Most of the per site configuration is done in the "actions" files. These are where various cookie actions are defined, ad and banner blocking, and other aspects of Privoxy configuration. There are several such files included, with varying levels of aggressiveness.

You will probably want to keep an eye out for sites for which you may prefer persistent cookies, and add these to your actions configuration as needed. By default, most of these will be accepted only during the current browser session (aka "session cookies"), unless you add them to the configuration. If you want the browser to handle this instead, you will need to edit user.action (or through the web based interface) and disable this feature. If you use more than one browser, it would make more sense to let Privoxy handle this. In which case, the browser(s) should be set to accept all cookies.

Another feature where you will probably want to define exceptions for trusted sites is the popup-killing (through the +popup and +filter{popups} actions), because your favorite shopping, banking, or leisure site may need popups (explained below).

Privoxy is HTTP/1.1 compliant, but not all of the optional 1.1 features are as yet supported. In the unlikely event that you experience inexplicable problems with browsers that use HTTP/1.1 per default (like Mozilla or recent versions of I.E.), you might try to force HTTP/1.0 compatibility. For Mozilla, look under Edit -> Preferences -> Debug -> Networking. Alternatively, set the "+downgrade-http-version" config option in default.action which will downgrade your browser's HTTP requests from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0 before processing them.

After running Privoxy for a while, you can start to fine tune the configuration to suit your personal, or site, preferences and requirements. There are many, many aspects that can be customized. "Actions" can be adjusted by pointing your browser to http://config.privoxy.org/ (shortcut: http://p.p/), and then follow the link to "View & Change the Current Configuration". (This is an internal page and does not require Internet access.)

In fact, various aspects of Privoxy configuration can be viewed from this page, including current configuration parameters, source code version numbers, the browser's request headers, and "actions" that apply to a given URL. In addition to the actions file editor mentioned above, Privoxy can also be turned "on" and "off" (toggled) from this page.

If you encounter problems, try loading the page without Privoxy. If that helps, enter the URL where you have the problems into the browser based rule tracing utility. See which rules apply and why, and then try turning them off for that site one after the other, until the problem is gone. When you have found the culprit, you might want to turn the rest on again.

If the above paragraph sounds gibberish to you, you might want to read more about the actions concept or even dive deep into the Appendix on actions.

If you can't get rid of the problem at all, think you've found a bug in Privoxy, want to propose a new feature or smarter rules, please see the section "Contacting the Developers" below.

6.1. Command Line Options

Privoxy may be invoked with the following command-line options: