Again, the main configuration file is named config on
Linux/Unix/BSD and OS/2, and config.txt on Windows.
Configuration lines consist of an initial keyword followed by a list of
values, all separated by whitespace (any number of spaces or tabs). For
example:
confdir /etc/privoxy
Assigns the value /etc/privoxy to the option
confdir and thus indicates that the configuration
directory is named "/etc/privoxy/".
All options in the config file except for confdir and
logdir are optional. Watch out in the below description
for what happens if you leave them unset.
The main config file controls all aspects of Privoxy's
operation that are not location dependent (i.e. they apply universally, no matter
where you may be surfing).
Privoxy can (and normally does) use a number of
other files for additional configuration, help and logging.
This section of the configuration file tells Privoxy
where to find those other files.
The user running Privoxy, must have read
permission for all configuration files, and write permission to any files
that would be modified, such as log files and actions files.
The directory where the other configuration files are located
Type of value:
Path name
Default value:
/etc/privoxy (Unix) orPrivoxy installation dir (Windows)
Effect if unset:
Mandatory
Notes:
No trailing "/", please
When development goes modular and multi-user, the blocker, filter, and
per-user config will be stored in subdirectories of "confdir".
For now, the configuration directory structure is flat, except for
confdir/templates, where the HTML templates for CGI
output reside (e.g. Privoxy's 404 error page).
File name, relative to confdir, without the .action suffix
Default values:
standard # Internal purposes, no editing recommended
default # Main actions file
user # User customizations
Effect if unset:
No actions are taken at all. Simple neutral proxying.
Notes:
Multiple actionsfile lines are permitted, and are in fact recommended!
The default values include standard.action, which is used for internal
purposes and should be loaded, default.action, which is the
"main" actions file maintained by the developers, and
user.action, where you can make your personal additions.
Actions files are where all the per site and per URL configuration is done for
ad blocking, cookie management, privacy considerations, etc.
There is no point in using Privoxy without at
least one actions file.
default.filter (Unix) or default.filter.txt (Windows)
Effect if unset:
No textual content filtering takes place, i.e. all
+filter{name}
actions in the actions files are turned neutral.
Notes:
The filter file contains content modification
rules that use regular expressions. These rules permit
powerful changes on the content of Web pages, e.g., you could disable your favorite
JavaScript annoyances, re-write the actual displayed text, or just have some
fun replacing "Microsoft" with "MicroSuck" wherever
it appears on a Web page.
The
+filter{name}
actions rely on the relevant filter (name)
to be defined in the filter file!
A pre-defined filter file called default.filter that contains
a bunch of handy filters for common problems is included in the distribution.
See the section on the filter
action for a list.
No log file is used, all log messages go to the console (STDERR).
Notes:
The windows version will additionally log to the console.
The logfile is where all logging and error messages are written. The level
of detail and number of messages are set with the debug
option (see below). The logfile can be useful for tracking down a problem with
Privoxy (e.g., it's not blocking an ad you
think it should block) but in most cases you probably will never look at it.
Your logfile will grow indefinitely, and you will probably want to
periodically remove it. On Unix systems, you can do this with a cron job
(see "man cron"). For Red Hat, a logrotate
script has been included.
On SuSE Linux systems, you can place a line like "/var/log/privoxy.*
+1024k 644 nobody.nogroup" in /etc/logfiles, with
the effect that cron.daily will automatically archive, gzip, and empty the
log, when it exceeds 1M size.
Any log files must be writable by whatever user Privoxy
is being run as (default on UNIX, user id is "privoxy").
Unset (commented out). When activated: trust (Unix) or trust.txt (Windows)
Effect if unset:
The whole trust mechanism is turned off.
Notes:
The trust mechanism is an experimental feature for building white-lists and should
be used with care. It is NOT recommended for the casual user.
If you specify a trust file, Privoxy will only allow
access to sites that are named in the trustfile.
You can also mark sites as trusted referrers (with +), with
the effect that access to untrusted sites will be granted, if a link from a
trusted referrer was used.
The link target will then be added to the "trustfile".
Possible applications include limiting Internet access for children.
If you use + operator in the trust file, it may grow considerably over time.
If you intend to operate Privoxy for more users
than just yourself, it might be a good idea to let them know how to reach
you, what you block and why you do that, your policies, etc.
The User Manual URI is used for help links from some of the internal CGI pages.
The manual itself is normally packaged with the binary distributions, so you probably want
to set this to a locally installed copy. For multi-user setups, you could provide a copy on
a local webserver for all your users and use the corresponding URL here.
A URL to be displayed in the error page that users will see if access to an untrusted page is denied.
Type of value:
URL
Default value:
Two example URL are provided
Effect if unset:
No links are displayed on the "untrusted" error page.
Notes:
The value of this option only matters if the experimental trust mechanism has been
activated. (See trustfile above.)
If you use the trust mechanism, it is a good idea to write up some on-line
documentation about your trust policy and to specify the URL(s) here.
Use multiple times for multiple URLs.
The URL(s) should be added to the trustfile as well, so users don't end up
locked out from the information on why they were locked out in the first place!
These options are mainly useful when tracing a problem.
Note that you might also want to invoke
Privoxy with the --no-daemon
command line option when debugging.
Key values that determine what information gets logged to the
logfile.
Type of value:
Integer values
Default value:
12289 (i.e.: URLs plus informational and warning messages)
Effect if unset:
Nothing gets logged.
Notes:
The available debug levels are:
debug 1 # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
debug 2 # show each connection status
debug 4 # show I/O status
debug 8 # show header parsing
debug 16 # log all data into the logfile
debug 32 # debug force feature
debug 64 # debug regular expression filter
debug 128 # debug fast redirects
debug 256 # debug GIF de-animation
debug 512 # Common Log Format
debug 1024 # debug kill pop-ups
debug 2048 # CGI user interface
debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings.
debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors
To select multiple debug levels, you can either add them or use
multiple debug lines.
A debug level of 1 is informative because it will show you each request
as it happens. 1, 4096 and 8192 are highly recommended
so that you will notice when things go wrong. The other levels are probably
only of interest if you are hunting down a specific problem. They can produce
a hell of an output (especially 16).
The reporting of fatal errors (i.e. ones which crash
Privoxy) is always on and cannot be disabled.
If you want to use CLF (Common Log Format), you should set "debug
512"ONLY and not enable anything else.
The IP address and TCP port on which Privoxy will
listen for client requests.
Type of value:
[IP-Address]:Port
Default value:
127.0.0.1:8118
Effect if unset:
Bind to 127.0.0.1 (localhost), port 8118. This is suitable and recommended for
home users who run Privoxy on the same machine as
their browser.
Notes:
You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy address and port.
If you already have another service running on port 8118, or if you want to
serve requests from other machines (e.g. on your local network) as well, you
will need to override the default.
If you leave out the IP address, Privoxy will
bind to all interfaces (addresses) on your machine and may become reachable
from the Internet. In that case, consider using access control lists (ACL's, see below), and/or
a firewall.
Suppose you are running Privoxy on
a machine which has the address 192.168.0.1 on your local private network
(192.168.0.0) and has another outside connection with a different address.
You want it to serve requests from inside only:
If set to 0, Privoxy will start in
"toggled off" mode, i.e. behave like a normal, content-neutral
proxy where all ad blocking, filtering, etc are disabled. See
enable-remote-toggle below. This is not really useful
anymore, since toggling is much easier via the web interface than via
editing the conf file.
The windows version will only display the toggle icon in the system tray
if this option is present.
When toggled off, Privoxy acts like a normal,
content-neutral proxy, i.e. it acts as if none of the actions applied to
any URL.
For the time being, access to the toggle feature can not be
controlled separately by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication,
so that everybody who can access Privoxy (see
"ACLs" and listen-address above) can
toggle it for all users. So this option is not recommended
for multi-user environments with untrusted users.
Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with
support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect.
For the time being, access to the editor can not be
controlled separately by "ACLs" or HTTP authentication,
so that everybody who can access Privoxy (see
"ACLs" and listen-address above) can
modify its configuration for all users. So this option is not
recommended for multi-user environments with untrusted users.
Note that you must have compiled Privoxy with
support for this feature, otherwise this option has no effect.
Where src_addr and
dst_addr are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or valid
DNS names, and src_masklen and
dst_masklen are subnet masks in CIDR notation, i.e. integer
values from 2 to 30 representing the length (in bits) of the network address. The masks and the whole
destination part are optional.
Default value:
Unset
Effect if unset:
Don't restrict access further than implied by listen-address
Notes:
Access controls are included at the request of ISPs and systems
administrators, and are not usually needed by individual users.
For a typical home user, it will normally suffice to ensure that
Privoxy only listens on the localhost
(127.0.0.1) or internal (home) network address by means of the
listen-address
option.
Please see the warnings in the FAQ that this proxy is not intended to be a substitute
for a firewall or to encourage anyone to defer addressing basic security
weaknesses.
Multiple ACL lines are OK.
If any ACLs are specified, then the Privoxy
talks only to IP addresses that match at least one permit-access line
and don't match any subsequent deny-access line. In other words, the
last match wins, with the default being deny-access.
If Privoxy is using a forwarder (see forward below)
for a particular destination URL, the dst_addr
that is examined is the address of the forwarder and NOT the address
of the ultimate target. This is necessary because it may be impossible for the local
Privoxy to determine the IP address of the
ultimate target (that's often what gateways are used for).
You should prefer using IP addresses over DNS names, because the address lookups take
time. All DNS names must resolve! You can not use domain patterns
like "*.org" or partial domain names. If a DNS name resolves to multiple
IP addresses, only the first one is used.
Denying access to particular sites by ACL may have undesired side effects
if the site in question is hosted on a machine which also hosts other sites.
Examples:
Explicitly define the default behavior if no ACL and
listen-address are set: "localhost"
is OK. The absence of a dst_addr implies that
all destination addresses are OK:
permit-access localhost
Allow any host on the same class C subnet as www.privoxy.org access to
nothing but www.example.com:
Allow access from any host on the 26-bit subnet 192.168.45.64 to anywhere,
with the exception that 192.168.45.73 may not access www.dirty-stuff.example.com:
For content filtering, i.e. the +filter and
+deanimate-gif actions, it is necessary that
Privoxy buffers the entire document body.
This can be potentially dangerous, since a server could just keep sending
data indefinitely and wait for your RAM to exhaust -- with nasty consequences.
Hence this option.
When a document buffer size reaches the buffer-limit, it is
flushed to the client unfiltered and no further attempt to
filter the rest of the document is made. Remember that there may be multiple threads
running, which might require up to buffer-limit Kbytes
each, unless you have enabled "single-threaded"
above.
This feature allows routing of HTTP requests through a chain of
multiple proxies.
It can be used to better protect privacy and confidentiality when
accessing specific domains by routing requests to those domains
through an anonymous public proxy (see e.g. http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_list.htm)
Or to use a caching proxy to speed up browsing. Or chaining to a parent
proxy may be necessary because the machine that Privoxy
runs on has no direct Internet access.
Also specified here are SOCKS proxies. Privoxy
supports the SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 4A protocols.
To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be routed.
Type of value:
target_patternhttp_parent[:port]
where target_pattern is a URL pattern
that specifies to which requests (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall apply. Use / to
denote "all URLs".
http_parent[:port]
is the DNS name or IP address of the parent HTTP proxy through which the requests should be forwarded,
optionally followed by its listening port (default: 8080).
Use a single dot (.) to denote "no forwarding".
Default value:
Unset
Effect if unset:
Don't use parent HTTP proxies.
Notes:
If http_parent is ".", then requests are not
forwarded to another HTTP proxy but are made directly to the web servers.
Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
Examples:
Everything goes to an example anonymizing proxy, except SSL on port 443 (which it doesn't handle):
where target_pattern is a URL pattern
that specifies to which requests (i.e. URLs) this forward rule shall apply. Use / to
denote "all URLs".
http_parent and socks_proxy
are IP addresses in dotted decimal notation or valid DNS names (http_parent
may be "." to denote "no HTTP forwarding"), and the optional
port parameters are TCP ports, i.e. integer values from 1 to 64535
Default value:
Unset
Effect if unset:
Don't use SOCKS proxies.
Notes:
Multiple lines are OK, they are checked in sequence, and the last match wins.
The difference between forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
is that in the SOCKS 4A protocol, the DNS resolution of the target hostname happens on the SOCKS
server, while in SOCKS 4 it happens locally.
If http_parent is ".", then requests are not
forwarded to another HTTP proxy but are made (HTTP-wise) directly to the web servers, albeit through
a SOCKS proxy.
Examples:
From the company example.com, direct connections are made to all
"internal" domains, but everything outbound goes through
their ISP's proxy by way of example.com's corporate SOCKS 4A gateway to
the Internet.
If you have links to multiple ISPs that provide various special content
only to their subscribers, you can configure multiple Privoxies
which have connections to the respective ISPs to act as forwarders to each other, so that
your users can see the internal content of all ISPs.
Assume that host-a has a PPP connection to isp-a.net. And host-b has a PPP connection to
isp-b.net. Both run Privoxy. Their forwarding
configuration can look like this:
host-a:
forward / .
forward .isp-b.net host-b:8118
host-b:
forward / .
forward .isp-a.net host-a:8118
Now, your users can set their browser's proxy to use either
host-a or host-b and be able to browse the internal content
of both isp-a and isp-b.
If you intend to chain Privoxy and
squid locally, then chain as
browser -> squid -> privoxy is the recommended way.
Assuming that Privoxy and squid
run on the same box, your squid configuration could then look like this:
# Define Privoxy as parent proxy (without ICP)
cache_peer 127.0.0.1 parent 8118 7 no-query
# Define ACL for protocol FTP
acl ftp proto FTP
# Do not forward FTP requests to Privoxy
always_direct allow ftp
# Forward all the rest to Privoxy
never_direct allow all
You would then need to change your browser's proxy settings to squid's address and port.
Squid normally uses port 3128. If unsure consult http_port in squid.conf.
You could just as well decide to only forward requests for Windows executables through
a virus-scanning parent proxy, say, on antivir.example.com, port 8010:
Privoxy has a number of options specific to the
Windows GUI interface:
If "activity-animation" is set to 1, the
Privoxy icon will animate when
"Privoxy" is active. To turn off, set to 0.
activity-animation 1
If "log-messages" is set to 1,
Privoxy will log messages to the console
window:
log-messages 1
If "log-buffer-size" is set to 1, the size of the log buffer,
i.e. the amount of memory used for the log messages displayed in the
console window, will be limited to "log-max-lines" (see below).
Warning: Setting this to 0 will result in the buffer to grow infinitely and
eat up all your memory!
log-buffer-size 1
log-max-lines is the maximum number of lines held
in the log buffer. See above.
log-max-lines 200
If "log-highlight-messages" is set to 1,
Privoxy will highlight portions of the log
messages with a bold-faced font:
log-highlight-messages 1
The font used in the console window:
log-font-name Comic Sans MS
Font size used in the console window:
log-font-size 8
"show-on-task-bar" controls whether or not
Privoxy will appear as a button on the Task bar
when minimized:
show-on-task-bar 0
If "close-button-minimizes" is set to 1, the Windows close
button will minimize Privoxy instead of closing
the program (close with the exit option on the File menu).
close-button-minimizes 1
The "hide-console" option is specific to the MS-Win console
version of Privoxy. If this option is used,
Privoxy will disconnect from and hide the
command console.