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43 >Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</TH
80 >5. Troubleshooting</A
88 >5.1. I cannot connect to any websites. Or, I am getting
91 >"connection refused"</SPAN
92 > message with every web page. Why?</A
95 > There are several possibilities:</P
105 > is not running. Solution: verify
109 > is installed correctly, has not crashed, and is indeed running.
113 > logging, and look at the logs to see what they say.</P
117 >Or your browser is configured for a different port than what
121 > is using. Solution: verify that <SPAN
125 and your browser are set to the same port (<TT
132 >Or if using a forwarding rule, you have a configuration problem or a
133 problem with a host in the forwarding chain. Solution: temporarily alter your
134 configuration and take the forwarders out of the equation.</P
138 > Or you have a firewall that is interfering and blocking you. Solution:
139 try disabling or removing the firewall as a simple test.
151 >5.2. Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</A
154 > More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
155 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running! The solution is
156 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
157 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
158 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
167 >5.3. I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
168 still getting through. How?</A
171 > If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
172 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
173 the need for any request to the server, and <SPAN
177 will not be involved. Flush the browser's caches, and then try again.</P
179 > If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
180 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <A
181 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
183 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
185 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
186 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game. And
187 remember you need to block the URL of the ad in question, which may be
188 entirely different from the site URL itself. Most ads are hosted on different
189 servers than the main site itself. If you right-click on the ad, you should
190 be able to get all the relevant information you need. Alternately, you can
191 find the correct URL by looking at <SPAN
195 (you may need to enable logging in the main config file if its disabled).</P
197 > Below is a slightly modified real-life log snippet that originates with one
201 > (name of site was changed
202 for this example, the number of requests is real). You can see in this the
203 complexity of what goes into making up this one <SPAN
207 are eight different domains involved here, with thirty two separate URLs
208 requested in all, making up all manner of images, Shockwave Flash,
209 JavaScript, CSS stylesheets, scripts, and other related content. Some of this
210 content is obviously <SPAN
217 Many of the more questionable looking requests, are going to outside domains
218 that seem to be identifying themselves with suspicious looking names, making
219 our job a little easier. <SPAN
226 and BLOCKED) quite a few items in this example, but perhaps missed a few as well. </P
236 >Request: www.example.com/
237 Request: www.example.com/favicon.ico
238 Request: img.example.com/main.css
239 Request: img.example.com/sr.js
240 Request: example.betamarker.com/example.html
241 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/bestsellers/skyscraper.php?likref=BSellers
242 Request: img.example.com/pb.png
243 Request: www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js crunch! (Blocked)
244 Request: www.advertising-department.com/ats/switch.ps.php?26856 crunch! (Blocked)
245 Request: img.example.com/p.gif
246 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example&mode=behind crunch! (Blocked)
247 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=5c3cf&tmpl=PBa.tmpl crunch! (Blocked)
248 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/assign.php?l=example crunch! (Blocked)
249 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/best_sellers.css
250 Request: www.adtrak.net/adx.js crunch! (Blocked)
251 Request: img.example.com/hbg.gif
252 Request: img.example.com/example.jpg
253 Request: img.example.com/mt.png
254 Request: img.example.com/mm.png
255 Request: img.example.com/mb.png
256 Request: www.popuptraffic.com/scripts/popup.php?hid=a71b91fa5&tmpl=Ua.tmp crunch! (Blocked)
257 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js
258 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/lsi_head.gif
259 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=020548130&what=zone:61 crunch! (Blocked)
260 Request: www.adtrak.net/adjs.php?n=463594413&what=zone:58&source=Ua crunch! (Blocked)
261 Request: www.lik-sang.com/Banners/best_sellers/bottomani.swf
262 Request: mmm.elitemediagroup.net/install.php?allowpop=no&popupmincook=0&allowsp2=1 crunch! (Blocked)
263 Request: www.example.com/tracker.js?screen=1400x1050&win=962x693
264 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=61 crunch! (Blocked)
265 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=5c3cf599a9efd0320d26&si
266 Request: 66.70.21.80/img/pixel.gif
267 Request: www.adtrak.net/adlog.php?bannerid=1309&clientid=439&zoneid=58&source=Ua&block=86400 crunch! (Blocked)
268 Request: 66.70.21.80/scripts/click.php?hid=a71b9f6504b0c5681fa5&si=Ua</PRE
274 > Despite 12 out of 32 requests being blocked, the page looked, and seemed to
275 behave perfectly <SPAN
278 > (minus some ads, of course).</P
286 >5.4. One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
290 > First verify that it is indeed a <SPAN
294 by toggling off <SPAN
298 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle"
300 >http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</A
302 (the toggle feature may need to be enabled in the main
307 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
308 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
311 > If the problem went away, we know we have a configuration related problem.
313 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
315 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
317 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which
318 actions are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions
319 files are responsible for that. It might be helpful also to look at your logs
320 for this site too, to see what else might be happening (note: logging may need
321 to be enabled in the main config file). Many sites are
322 complex and require a number of related pages to help present their content.
323 Look at what else might be used by the page in question, and what of that
331 Now, armed with this information, go to
333 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status"
335 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</A
337 and select the appropriate actions files for editing. </P
339 > You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
340 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
341 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
342 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
343 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
344 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
345 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!</P
347 > Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
348 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
349 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
357 which is an alias that turns off most <SPAN
361 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
362 your privacy and protection more than necessary, </P
364 > Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <A
365 HREF="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT"
367 >User Manual appendix,
368 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</A
371 HREF="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES"
375 with general configuration information and examples.</P
377 > As a last resort, you can always see if your browser has a setting that will
378 bypass the proxy setting for selective sites. Modern browsers can do this.</P
386 >5.5. After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
387 every time I start IE. What gives?</A
390 > This is a quirk that effects the installation of
394 >, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
395 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
396 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.</P
398 > When setting up an NT based Windows system with
402 > you may find that things do not seem to be
403 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
404 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
405 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
406 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
407 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
408 configured for the kids.</P
410 > When setting up <SPAN
413 > in this environment you
414 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
415 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
419 >. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
420 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
421 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
422 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
423 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
424 you have to store the password under each different user!</P
426 > The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
427 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
428 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
429 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
430 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
431 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.</P
433 >[Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]</P
441 >5.6. I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
448 > cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
449 so do not configure your browser to use <SPAN
453 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <SPAN
457 >any protocol other than HTTP
463 > Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
466 >ftp://ftp.example.com</TT
467 >, your browser is making
468 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
472 > does not, and cannot proxy
476 > To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <SPAN
480 setting, which will enable various protocols, including
487 > HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
488 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
492 > will indeed cause problems since
493 it does not know FTP. Newer version will give a sane error
494 message if a FTP connection is attempted. Just disable the FTP setting
495 and all will be well again.
501 > ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
502 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
512 >5.7. In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
513 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</A
516 > Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
517 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
518 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
519 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
520 is checked and enter <TT
523 > in the entry field.
527 > in the Port field. The next time you start
528 IE, it should reflect these values.
537 >5.8. In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
538 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
542 > Just dragging the <SPAN
545 > folder to the trash is
546 not enough to delete it. <SPAN
552 >uninstall.command</SPAN
553 > file that takes care of
554 these details. Open the trash, drag the <SPAN
556 >uninstall.command</SPAN
558 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
559 confirmation and the administration password.
562 > The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
563 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
572 >5.9. In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
573 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
577 > as my browser's proxy setting.</A
580 > We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in OSX, but don't fully
581 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
589 works around the problem.
598 >5.10. I get a completely blank page at one site. <SPAN
604 ><html><body></body></html></SPAN
606 Privoxy the page loads fine.</A
609 > Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
611 HREF="http://www.php.net/"
618 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
619 an uncompressed page, like <SPAN
623 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
626 > To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
629 >-prevent-compression</TT
644 > # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
646 {-prevent-compression}
652 > If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
653 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
654 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
655 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
664 >5.11. My logs show many <SPAN
666 >"Unable to get my own hostname"</SPAN
674 > tries to get the hostname of the system
675 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
686 > setting). If the system cannot supply
687 this information, <SPAN
690 > logs this condition. </P
692 > Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
693 not a fatal error to <SPAN
697 result in a much slower response from <SPAN
701 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.</P
703 > This can be caused by a problem with the local <TT
707 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
708 see if that helps. Make sure whatever name(s) are used for the local system,
709 that they resolve both ways.</P
717 >5.12. When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
720 >"port 8118 is already in use"</SPAN
721 > (or similar wording).
732 > port. Typically this message would mean that there
733 is already one instance of <SPAN
737 your system is actually trying to start a second
741 > on the same port, which will not work.
742 (You can have multiple instances but they must be assigned different ports.)
743 How and why this might happen varies from platform to platform, but you need
744 to check your installation and start-up procedures.</P
752 >5.13. Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.</A
755 > This is caused by the <SPAN
758 > filter. You should either
762 >, or at least upgrade to the most
766 > file available from <A
767 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
771 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.</P
779 >5.14. Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
783 > This may also be caused by the <SPAN
787 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting the content type. Binary
788 files are exempted from <SPAN
792 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
796 >, or go to the most recent
800 > file available from <A
801 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
812 >5.15. What is the <SPAN
815 > and why is it there?</A
818 > The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
819 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
820 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
821 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
822 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
823 displayed correctly. <SPAN
827 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
828 correct these errors on the fly. </P
830 > But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
833 > If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
834 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
835 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <SPAN
843 > On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
844 notice weird characters on pages, you might want to try it.</P
852 >5.16. Why do I keep seeing <SPAN
854 >"PrivoxyWindowOpen()"</SPAN
855 > in raw source code?</A
861 > is attempting to disable malicious
863 HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript"
867 in this case, with the <TT
869 >unsolicited-popups</TT
874 > cannot tell very well
878 > code snippets from <SPAN
883 > If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
884 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
885 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
886 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
887 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.</P
895 >5.17. I am getting too many DNS errors like <SPAN
897 >"404 No Such Domain"</SPAN
899 can't Privoxy do this better?</A
902 > There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
903 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
911 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
912 whatever the outcome was. And tries to give a coherent message if there seems
913 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
914 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
920 > In other cases, if <SPAN
924 with another proxy, this could complicate the issue, and cause undue
925 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <SPAN
929 server handles all the DNS. <SPAN
936 > which is reporting whatever problem occurred
937 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.</P
939 > In any case, versions newer than 3.0.3 include various improvements to help
943 > better handle these cases.</P
951 >5.18. At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
952 all CPU. Why is this?</A
955 > This is probably a manifestation of the <SPAN
959 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
960 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
961 pattern matching in <SPAN
965 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
966 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete. Until a better
967 solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages, particularly the
973 >unsolicited-popups</TT
983 >5.19. I just installed Privoxy, and all my
984 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives?</A
987 > This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
988 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
989 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
990 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
991 at a time and see if that helps.</P
999 >5.20. Why do my filters work on some sites but not on others?</A
1002 > It's probably due to compression. It is a common practice for web servers to
1003 send their content <SPAN
1006 > in order to speed things up, and
1007 then let the browser <SPAN
1010 > them. When compiled with zlib support
1014 > can decompress content before filtering, otherwise you may want to enable
1016 HREF="../user-manual/actions-file.html#PREVENT-COMPRESSION"
1018 >prevent-compression</A
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