7. The Main Configuration File
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).
7.1. Configuration and Log File Locations
7.1.1. confdir
7.1.3. actionsfile
- Specifies:
The actions file(s) to use
- Type of value:
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.
7.1.4. filterfile
- Specifies:
The filter file to use
- Type of value:
File name, relative to confdir
- Default value:
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.
7.1.5. logfile
7.2. Local Set-up Documentation
7.2.1. user-manual
- Specifies:
- Type of value:
- Default value:
- Effect if unset:
http://www.privoxy.org/version/user-manual/ will be used, where version is the Privoxy version.
- Notes:
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.
Examples:
Unix, in local filesystem:
user-manual file:///usr/share/doc/privoxy-3.0.0/user-manual/
Any platform, on local webserver (called "local-webserver"):
user-manual http://local-webserver/privoxy-user-manual/
Warning If set, this option should be the first option in the config file, because it is used while the config file is being read.
7.2.2. trust-info-url
- Specifies:
- Type of value:
- Default value:
- Effect if unset:
- 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!
7.2.3. admin-address
7.3. Debugging
7.3.1. debug
- Specifies:
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.
7.4. Access Control and Security
This section of the config file controls the security-relevant aspects of Privoxy's configuration.
7.4.1. listen-address
- Specifies:
The IP address and TCP port on which Privoxy will listen for client requests.
- Type of value:
- Default value:
- Effect if unset:
- Notes:
You will need to configure your browser(s) to this proxy address and port.
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.
If you open Privoxy to untrusted users, you will also want to turn off the enable-edit-actions and enable-remote-toggle options!
- Example:
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:
listen-address 192.168.0.1:8118
7.4.2. toggle
- Specifies:
- Type of value:
- Default value:
- Effect if unset:
- Notes:
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.
7.4.3. enable-remote-toggle
- Specifies:
Whether or not the web-based toggle feature may be used
- Type of value:
0 or 1
- Default value:
1
- Effect if unset:
The web-based toggle feature is disabled.
- Notes:
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.
7.4.4. enable-edit-actions
- Specifies:
Whether or not the web-based actions file editor may be used
- Type of value:
0 or 1
- Default value:
1
- Effect if unset:
The web-based actions file editor is disabled.
- Notes:
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.
7.4.5. ACLs: permit-access and deny-access
- Specifies:
Who can access what.
- Type of value:
src_addr[/src_masklen] [dst_addr[/dst_masklen]]
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:
permit-access www.privoxy.org/24 www.example.com/32
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:
permit-access 192.168.45.64/26 deny-access 192.168.45.73 www.dirty-stuff.example.com
7.5. Forwarding
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.
7.5.1. forward
- Specifies:
To which parent HTTP proxy specific requests should be routed.
- Type of value:
target_pattern http_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):
forward / anon-proxy.example.org:8080 forward :443 .
Everything goes to our example ISP's caching proxy, except for requests to that ISP's sites:
forward / caching-proxy.example-isp.net:8000 forward .example-isp.net .
7.5.2. forward-socks4 and forward-socks4a
- Specifies:
Through which SOCKS proxy (and to which parent HTTP proxy) specific requests should be routed.
- Type of value:
target_pattern socks_proxy[:port] http_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 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.
forward-socks4a / socks-gw.example.com:1080 www-cache.example-isp.net:8080 forward .example.com .
A rule that uses a SOCKS 4 gateway for all destinations but no HTTP parent looks like this:
forward-socks4 / socks-gw.example.com:1080 .
7.5.3. Advanced Forwarding Examples
forward / . forward .isp-b.net host-b:8118 |
forward / . forward .isp-a.net host-a:8118 |
# 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 |
forward / . forward /.*\.(exe|com|dll|zip)$ antivir.example.com:8010 |
7.6. Windows GUI Options
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.
#hide-console