There are many improvements and new features since Privoxy 3.0.6, the last stable release:
Privoxy 3.0.16 is a stable release. + The changes since 3.0.15 beta are:
Two new actions server-header-tagger - and client-header-tagger - that can be used to create arbitrary "tags" - based on client and server headers. - These "tags" can then subsequently be used - to control the other actions used for the current request, - greatly increasing Privoxy's flexibility and selectivity. See tag patterns for more information on tags. +> Fixed last-chunk-detection for responses where the content was small + enough to be read with the body, causing Privoxy to wait for the + end of the content until the server closed the connection. + Reported by "Karsten" in #3028326.
Header filtering is done with dedicated header filters now. As a result - the actions "filter-client-headers" and "filter-server-headers" - that were introduced with Privoxy 3.0.5 to apply - content filters to the headers have been removed. - See the new actions server-header-filter - and client-header-filter for details. +> Responses with status code 204 weren't properly detected as body-less + like RFC2616 mandates. Like the previous bug, this caused Privoxy + to wait for the end of the content until the server closed the connection. + Fixes #3022042 and #3025553, reported by a user with no visible name. + Most likely also fixes a bunch of other AJAX-related problem reports + that got closed in the past due to insufficient information and lack + of feedback.
There are four new options for the main config file: +> Fixed an ACL bug that made it impossible to build a blacklist. + Usually the ACL directives are used in a whitelist, which worked + as expected, but blacklisting is still useful for public proxies + where one only needs to deny known abusers access. +
Added LOG_LEVEL_RECEIVED to log the not-yet-parsed data read from the + network. This should make debugging various parsing issues a lot easier. +
The IPv6 code is enabled by default on Windows versions that support it. + Patch submitted by oCameLo in #2942729. +
In mingw32 versions, the user.filter file is reachable through the + GUI, just like default.filter is. Feature request 3040263. +
Added the configure option --enable-large-file-support to set a few + defines that are required by platforms like GNU/Linux to support files + larger then 2GB. Mainly interesting for users without proper logfile + management. +
Logging with "debug 16" no longer stops at the first nul byte which is + pretty useless. Non-printable characters are replaced with their hex value + so the result can't span multiple lines making parsing them harder then + necessary. +
Privoxy logs when reading an action, filter or trust file. +
Fixed incorrect regression test markup which caused a test in + 3.0.16 to fail while Privoxy itself was working correctly. + While Privoxy accepts hide-referer, too, the action name is actually + hide-referrer which is also the name used one the final results page, + where the test expected the alias.
CGI interface improvements: +
allow-cgi-request-crunching - which allows requests for Privoxy's internal CGI pages to be - blocked, redirected or (un)trusted like ordinary requests. -
In finish_http_response(), continue to add the 'Connection: close' + header if the client connection will not be kept alive. + Anonymously pointed out in #2987454. +split-large-forms - that will work around a browser bug that caused IE6 and IE7 to - ignore the Submit button on the Privoxy's edit-actions-for-url CGI - page. -
Apostrophes in block messages no longer cause parse errors + when the blocked page is viewed with JavaScript enabled. + Reported by dg1727 in #3062296. +accept-intercepted-requests - which allows to combine Privoxy with any packet filter to create an - intercepting proxy for HTTP/1.1 requests (and for HTTP/1.0 requests - with Host header set). This means clients can be forced to use - Privoxy even if their proxy settings are configured differently. -
Fix a bunch of anchors that used underscores instead of dashes. +templdir - to designate an alternate location for Privoxy's - locally customized CGI templates so that - these are not overwritten during upgrades. -
Allow to keep the client connection alive after crunching the previous request. + Already opened server connections can be kept alive, too. +In cgi_show_url_info(), don't forget to prefix URLs that only contain http:// or https:// in the path. + Fixes #2975765 reported by Adam Piggott. +
A new command line option --pre-chroot-nslookup hostname to - initialize the resolver library before chroot'ing. On some systems this - reduces the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree. - (Patch provided by Stephen Gildea) +> Show the 404 CGI page if cgi_send_user_manual() is called while + local user manual delivery is disabled. +
The forward-override action - allows changing of the forwarding settings through the actions files. - Combined with tags, this allows to choose the forwarder based on - client headers like the User-Agent, or the request origin. -
Action file improvements: +Enable user.filter by default. Suggested by David White in #3001830. +
The redirect action can now use regular - expression substitutions against the original URL. -
Block .sitestat.com/. Reported by johnd16 in #3002725. +zlib support is now available as a compile - time option to filter compressed content. Patch provided by Wil Mahan. -
Block .atemda.com/. Reported by johnd16 in #3002723. +Block js.adlink.net/. Reported by johnd16 in #3002720. +
Block .analytics.yahoo.com/. Reported by johnd16 in #3002713. +
Block sb.scorecardresearch.com, too. Reported by dg1727 in #2992652. +
Improve various filters, and add new ones. +> Fix problems noticed on Yahoo mail and news pages. +
Remove the too broad yahoo section, only keeping the + fast-redirects exception as discussed on ijbswa-devel@. +
Don't block adesklets.sourceforge.net. Reported in #2974204. +
Block chartbeat ping tracking. Reported in #2975895. +
Tag CSS and image requests with cautious and medium settings, too. +
Don't handle view.atdmt.com as image. It's used for click-throughs + so users should be able to "go there anyway". + Reported by Adam Piggott in #2975927. +
Also let the refresh-tags filter remove invalid refresh tags where + the 'url=' part is missing. Anonymously reported in #2986382. + While at it, update the description to mention the fact that only + refresh tags with refresh times above 9 seconds are covered. +
javascript needs to be blocked with +handle-as-empty-document to + work around Firefox bug 492459. So move .js blockers from + +block{Might be a web-bug.} -handle-as-empty-document + to + +block{Might be a web-bug.} +handle-as-empty-document +
ijbswa-Feature Requests-3006719 - Block 160x578 Banners. +
Block another omniture tracking domain +
Added a range-requests tagger. +
Added two sections to get Flickr's Ajax interface working with + default pre-settings. If you change the configuration to block + cookies by default, you'll need additional exceptions. + Reported by Mathias Homann in #3101419 and by Patrick on ijbswa-users@ +
Include support for RFC 3253 so that Subversion works - with Privoxy. Patch provided by Petr Kadlec. +> Documentation improvements: +
Explicitly mention how to match all URLs. +
Consistently recommend socks5 in the Tor FAQ entry and mention + its advantage compared to socks4a. Reported by David in #2960129. +
Slightly improve the explanation of why filtering may appear + slower than it is. +
Grammar fixes for the ACL section. +
Logging can be completely turned off by not specifying a logfile directive. +> Privoxy-Log-Parser improvements: +
Also gather statistics for blocked and redirected requests. +
Provide the percentage of keep-alive offers the client accepted. +
Add a --url-statistics-threshold option. +
Also gather statistics for ressources, methods, and HTTP versions + used by the client. +
Add a --host-statistics-threshold option to also gather + statistics about how many request where made per host. +
Fix a bug in handle_loglevel_header() where a 'scan: ' got lost. +
Add a --shorten-thread-ids option to replace the thread id with + a decimal number. +
Accept and ignore: Looks like we got the last chunk together + with the server headers. We better stop reading. +
Accept and ignore: Continue hack in da house. +
Accept and higlight: Rejecting connection from 10.0.0.2. + Maximum number of connections reached. +
Accept and highlight: Loading actions file: /usr/local/etc/privoxy/default.action +
Accept and highlight: Loading filter file: /usr/local/etc/privoxy/default.filter +
Accept and highlight: Killed all-caps Host header line: HOST: bestproxydb.com +
Accept and highlight: Reducing expected bytes to 0. Marking + the server socket tainted after throwing 4 bytes away. +
Accept: Merged multiple header lines to: 'X-FORWARDED-PROTO: http X-HOST: 127.0.0.1' +
A number of improvements to Privoxy's internal CGI pages, including the - use of favicons for error and control pages. +> Code cleanups: +
Remove the next member from the client_state struct. Only the main + thread needs access to all client states so give it its own struct. +
Garbage-collect request_contains_null_bytes(). +
Ditch redundant code in unload_configfile(). +
Ditch LogGetURLUnderCursor() which doesn't seem to be used anywhere. +
In write_socket(), remove the write-only variable write_len in + an ifdef __OS2__ block. Spotted by cppcheck. +
In connect_to(), don't declare the variable 'flags' on OS/2 where + it isn't used. Spotted by cppcheck. +
Limit the scope of various variables. Spotted by cppcheck. +
In add_to_iob(), turn an interestingly looking for loop into a + boring while loop. +
Code cleanup in preparation for external filters. +
In listen_loop(), mention the socket on which we accepted the + connection, not just the source IP address. +
In write_socket(), also log the socket we're writing to. +
In log_error(), assert that escaped characters get logged + completely or not at all. +
In log_error(), assert that ival and sval have reasonable values. + There's no reason not to abort() if they don't. +
Remove an incorrect cgi_error_unknown() call in a + cannnot-happen-situation in send_crunch_response(). +
Clean up white-space in http_response definition and + move the crunch_reason to the beginning. +
Turn http_response.reason into an enum and rename it + to http_response.crunch_reason. +
Silence a 'gcc (Debian 4.3.2-1.1) 4.3.2' warning on i686 GNU/Linux. +
Many bugfixes, memory leaks addressed, code improvements, and logging - improvements. +> GNUmakefile improvements: +
Use $(SSH) instead of ssh, so one only needs to specify a username once. +
Removed references to the action feedback thingy that hasn't been + working for years. +
Consistently use shell.sourceforge.net instead of shell.sf.net so + one doesn't need to check server fingerprints twice. +
Removed GNUisms in the webserver and webactions targets so they + work with standard tar. +
For a more detailed list of changes please have a look at the ChangeLog.
The recommended way to upgrade Privoxy is to backup your old + configuration files, install the new ones, verify that Privoxy + is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using + diff and maybe patch. +
There are a number of new features in each Privoxy release and + most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration + files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due + to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new + Privoxy isn't always possible anyway. +
- Some installers may remove earlier versions completely, including - configuration files. Save any important configuration files! + Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely, + including configuration files, therefore you should really save + any important configuration files!
- On the other hand, other installers may not overwrite any existing configuration - files, thinking you will want to do that. You may want to manually check - your saved files against the newer versions to see if the improvements have - merit, or whether there are new options that you may want to consider. - There are a number of new features, but most won't be available unless - these features are incorporated into your configuration somehow. + On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration + files, thinking you will want to do that yourself.
Logging is off by default now. If you need logging, it can be turned on - in the config file. -
In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now. + You can change that in the debug section + of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose + logging until you verified that the new Privoxy version is working + as expected. +The "filter-client-headers" and - "filter-server-headers" actions that were introduced with - Privoxy 3.0.5 to apply content filters to - the headers have been removed and replaced with new actions. - See the What's New section above. -