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accesskey="N">Next</a></td>
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+ <hr align="left" width="100%">
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<div class="SECT1">
Troubleshooting</a></h1>
<div class="SECT2">
- <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="AEN1100" id="AEN1100">5.1. I cannot connect
+ <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="REFUSED" id="REFUSED">5.1. I cannot connect
to any websites. Or, I am getting <span class="QUOTE">"connection
refused"</span> message with every web page. Why?</a></h3>
</div>
<div class="SECT2">
- <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="AEN1123" id="AEN1123">5.3. I just added a
+ <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="FLUSHIT" id="FLUSHIT">5.3. I just added a
new rule, but the steenkin ad is still getting through. How?</a></h3>
<p>If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will
(meaning caught and BLOCKED) quite a few items in this example, but
perhaps missed a few as well.</p>
- <table class="c2" border="0" width="100%">
+ <table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="SCREEN">
need to be enabled in the main config file). Many sites are complex and
require a number of related pages to help present their content. Look
at what else might be used by the page in question, and what of that
- might be <span class="emphasis EMPHASIS c3">required</span>. Now, armed
- with this information, go to <a href=
- "http://config.privoxy.org/show-status" target=
+ might be <span class="emphasis"><i class=
+ "EMPHASIS">required</i></span>. Now, armed with this information, go to
+ <a href="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status" target=
"_top">http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</a> and select the
appropriate actions files for editing.</p>
<h3 class="SECT2"><a name="DUN" id="DUN">5.5. After installing Privoxy,
I have to log in every time I start IE. What gives?</a></h3>
- <p>This is a quirk that effects the installation of <span class=
+ <p>This is a quirk that affects the installation of <span class=
"APPLICATION">Privoxy</span>, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The
symptoms may appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or
<p><span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> cannot act as a proxy for
FTP traffic, so do not configure your browser to use <span class=
"APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> as an FTP proxy. The same is true for
- <span class="emphasis EMPHASIS c3">any protocol other than HTTP or
- HTTPS (SSL)</span>.</p>
+ <span class="emphasis"><i class="EMPHASIS">any protocol other than HTTP
+ or HTTPS (SSL)</i></span>.</p>
<p>Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a
site, with a URL like <tt class="LITERAL">ftp://ftp.example.com</tt>,
<p>To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <span class=
"QUOTE">"proxy"</span> setting, which will enable various protocols,
- including <span class="emphasis EMPHASIS c3">both</span> HTTP and FTP
- proxying! So it is possible to accidentally enable FTP proxying in
- these cases. And of course, if this happens, <span class=
+ including <span class="emphasis"><i class="EMPHASIS">both</i></span>
+ HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to accidentally enable FTP
+ proxying in these cases. And of course, if this happens, <span class=
"APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> will indeed cause problems since it does
not know FTP. Newer version will give a sane error message if a FTP
connection is attempted. Just disable the FTP setting and all will be
</div>
<div class="SECT2">
- <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="BLANKPAGE" id="BLANKPAGE">5.10. I get a
- completely blank page at one site. <span class="QUOTE">"View
- Source"</span> shows only: <span class=
- "MARKUP"><html><body></body></html></span>.
- Without Privoxy the page loads fine.</a></h3>
-
- <p>Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in <a href=
- "http://www.php.net/" target="_top"><span class=
- "APPLICATION">PHP</span></a>, which results in empty pages being sent
- if the client explicitly requests an uncompressed page, like
- <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> does. This bug has been fixed
- in PHP 4.2.3.</p>
-
- <p>To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
- the site to a <tt class="LITERAL">-prevent-compression</tt> section in
- <tt class="FILENAME">user.action</tt>:</p>
-
- <table class="c2" border="0" width="100%">
- <tr>
- <td>
- <pre class="SCREEN">
- # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
- #
- {-prevent-compression}
- .example.com
-</pre>
- </td>
- </tr>
- </table>
-
- <p>If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the site's
- webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression instead of
- ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround) or upgrade to PHP
- 4.2.3 or later (fix).</p>
+ <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="MACOSXACCOUNTDELETION" id=
+ "MACOSXACCOUNTDELETION">5.10. I just upgraded to Mac OS X 10.9
+ (Mavericks) and now <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> has
+ stopped working.</a></h3>
+
+ <p>The upgrade process to Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9) from an earlier
+ version of OS X deletes all user accounts that are either not part of
+ OS X itself or are not interactive user accounts (ones you log in
+ with). Since, for the sake of security, <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> runs as a non-privileged user that is
+ created by its installer (_privoxy), it can no longer start up once
+ that account gets deleted. The solution is to perform a complete
+ uninstall using the supplied <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">uninstall.command</span> script (either back up your
+ configuration files or select to not have the uninstaller remove them
+ when it prompts you) and then reinstall <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> using the installer package and merge in
+ your configuration.</p>
</div>
<div class="SECT2">
<p><span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> tries to get the hostname
of the system its running on from the IP address of the system
interface it is bound to (from the <tt class="FILENAME">config</tt>
- file <span class="emphasis EMPHASIS c3">listen-address</span> setting).
- If the system cannot supply this information, <span class=
- "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> logs this condition.</p>
+ file <span class="emphasis"><i class=
+ "EMPHASIS">listen-address</i></span> setting). If the system cannot
+ supply this information, <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> logs
+ this condition.</p>
<p>Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration
error. It is not a fatal error to <span class=
<h3 class="SECT2"><a name="DEMORONIZER" id="DEMORONIZER">5.13. Pages
with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.</a></h3>
- <p>This is caused by the <span class="QUOTE">"demoronizer"</span>
- filter. You should either upgrade <span class=
- "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span>, or at least upgrade to the most recent
- <tt class="FILENAME">default.action</tt> file available from <a href=
- "http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118" target=
- "_top">SourceForge</a>. Or you can simply disable the demoronizer
- filter.</p>
+ <p>This may be the result of an overly aggressive filter. The filters
+ that are enabled in the default configuration aren't expected to cause
+ problems like this. If you enabled the <span class=
+ "QUOTE">"demoronizer"</span> filter, please try temporarily disabling
+ it.</p>
+
+ <p>If that doesn't help, temporarily disable all filters to see if
+ another filter could be the culprit. If the problem disappears, enable
+ the filters one by one, until the problem reappears and the offending
+ filter is found.</p>
+
+ <p>Once the problem-causing filter is known, it can be fixed or
+ disabled.</p>
+
+ <p>Upgrading <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span>, or going to the
+ most recent <tt class="FILENAME">default.action</tt> file available
+ from <a href=
+ "https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118" target=
+ "_top">SourceForge</a> might be worth a try, too.</p>
</div>
<div class="SECT2">
are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy is
used?</a></h3>
- <p>This may also be caused by the <span class=
- "QUOTE">"demoronizer"</span> filter, in conjunction with a web server
- that is misreporting the content type. Binary files are exempted from
- <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy's</span> filtering (unless the web
- server by mistake says the file is something else). Either upgrade
- <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span>, or go to the most recent
- <tt class="FILENAME">default.action</tt> file available from <a href=
- "http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118" target=
- "_top">SourceForge</a>.</p>
+ <p>This may also be caused by an (<a href=
+ "trouble.html#DEMORONIZER">overly aggressive filter</a> in conjunction
+ with a web server that is misreporting the content type. By default
+ binary files are exempted from <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy's</span> filtering (unless the web server by
+ mistake says the file is something else).</p>
</div>
<div class="SECT2">
<p>If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need
to view pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then
it will cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <span class=
- "emphasis EMPHASIS c3">should not be on</span>.</p>
+ "emphasis"><i class="EMPHASIS">should not be on</i></span>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you
occasionally notice weird characters on pages, you might want to try
by <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> and add the hosts (no path
patterns) to a section like this:</p>
- <table class="c2" border="0" width="100%">
+ <table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="SCREEN">
"QUOTE">"FEATURE_PTHREAD"</span> as <span class=
"QUOTE">"enabled"</span>.</p>
</div>
+
+ <div class="SECT2">
+ <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="TAINTED-SOCKETS" id="TAINTED-SOCKETS">5.24.
+ What are tainted sockets and how do I prevent them?</a></h3>
+
+ <p><span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> marks sockets as tainted
+ when it can't use them to serve additional requests. This does not
+ necessarily mean that something went wrong and information about
+ tainted sockets is only logged if connection debugging is enabled
+ (debug 2).</p>
+
+ <p>For example server sockets that were used for CONNECT requests
+ (which are used to tunnel https:// requests) are considered tainted
+ once the client closed its connection to <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span>. Technically <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> could keep the connection to the server
+ open, but the server would not accept requests that do not belong to
+ the previous TLS/SSL session (and the client may even have terminated
+ the session).</p>
+
+ <p>Server sockets are also marked tainted when a client requests a
+ resource, but closes the connection before <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> has completely received (and forwarded)
+ the resource to the client. In this case the server would (probably)
+ accept additional requests, but <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> could not get the response without
+ completely reading the leftovers from the previous response.</p>
+
+ <p>These are just two examples, there are currently a bit more than 25
+ scenarios in which a socket is considered tainted.</p>
+
+ <p>While sockets can also be marked tainted as a result of a technical
+ problem that may be worth fixing, the problem will be explicitly logged
+ as error.</p>
+ </div>
+
+ <div class="SECT2">
+ <h3 class="SECT2"><a name="PCRE-STACK-LIMIT" id=
+ "PCRE-STACK-LIMIT">5.25. After adding my custom filters, <span class=
+ "APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> crashes when visitting certain
+ websites</a></h3>
+
+ <p>This can happen if your custom filters require more memory than
+ <span class="APPLICATION">Privoxy</span> is allowed to use. Usually the
+ problem is that the operating system enforces a stack size limit that
+ isn't sufficient.</p>
+
+ <p>Unless the problem occurs with the filters available in the default
+ configuration, this is not considered a Privoxy bug.</p>
+
+ <p>To prevent the crashes you can rewrite your filter to use less
+ ressources, increase the relevant memory limit or recompile pcre to use
+ less stack space. For details please see the <a href=
+ "http://pcre.org/original/doc/html/pcrestack.html" target=
+ "_top">pcrestack man page</a> and the documentation of your operating
+ system.</p>
+ </div>
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