5 ms·

Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.

by jkot 12y ago

__Joker 12y ago
Where do you get the filter list to modify /etc/host ? Or Is there a easier way to get the filter list from ABP or mu-block ?
- Dosenpfand 12y ago
  I use this list and it works quite well: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
- mih 12y ago
  Quite a few sources actually. Beware, some of them can be too restrictive. If the hosts file is too big, it can also impact performance. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip (too restrictive) http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip (ad-servers n tracking only) http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=1&mimetype=plaintext http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showi... http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt
  - edwintorok 12y ago
    http://adaway.org/hosts.txt http://adaway.org/hosts.txt I also replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 and duplicate each entry to have it for IPV6 as well, as in this script except I don't do the iptables rules: https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752 https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752
  - chippy 12y ago
    curious about the performance issue. Would the impact on performance be larger than a similarly sized block list in a browser plugin? I have a netbook, so always want to keep an eye out on performance. I wonder if there's a GUI application which enables these hosts sources to be tweaked, searched, whitelisted etc
    - mih 12y ago
      I use this on Windows. For a large hosts file (several megabytes), I find the DNS client service hangs until it reads the whole file. Further, there is also a noticeable delay in the order of a few seconds until the hostname is resolved. For smaller files, I find there is no noticeable lag. Can't offer you any numbers though. Hostsman (http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman) on windows is the my choice of a frontend for hosts management. It's free but not open source.
      - marios 12y ago
        Slower DNS responses with big hosts file is something to be expected. The solution is to feed the data to a DNS caching resolver such as unbound or dnsmasq, as I have explained in reply to UserRights. Answering here also to point out I originally implemented this on a 5y old netbook (Atom CPU, 1GB RAM) because I tend to have a lot of tabs open in firefox, and ABP's memory usage quickly becomes noticeable, and then comes the swapping. Running unbound+nginx scales remarquably well, without hogging too much memory at startup. (Sorry, I don't have access to the netbook right now to report real numbers).
UserRights 12y ago
Blocking at the DNS level produces a lot of requests to 127.0.0.1, which can be quite annoying e.g. if you are using a local webserver for development. Also if you do not have a local webserver on 127.0.0.1 the browser still will wait for answers to your request, what can be an annoying experience. Would be interesting to measure how much CPU and memory actually is wasted with many tabs waitung for elements from 127.0.0.1. It is the better approach to not let these requests happen right in the browser, what this plugin does, if I get it right. A warm and big THANK YOU to the developer of this great software, it is so important and good to see that many developers are helping users to protect against the morally challenged who are stealing the privacy of millions every day.
- mike-cardwell 12y ago
  If you choose to send the blocked requests to an IP address where you also choose to put a web server, then what do you expect? There's nothing stopping you from sending blocked requests to 127.0.0.2 and configuring your dev web server to listen on 127.0.0.1. "the browser still will wait for answers to your request" - Shouldn't have to wait. You should get a near instant rejection if you attempt to connect to a TCP port on your local host and there's nothing listening there... Unless you screwed up your firewall.
- marios 12y ago
  DNS blocking works quite well. It's also very effective if you can set it up on your gateway so that it blocks ads/malware for all devices (PCs, phones, tablets ... even your guests will get adblocking for free!). However, while the /etc/hosts trick works I don't think it's the best way. The reason is that while parsing a plaintext file is easy and generally fast, it doesn't scale well especially when you have to traverse several megabytes of it for _every_ DNS request. The way I have done it is by installing unbound[0]. If you aren't using something else like dnsmasq, you will notice a speedup from the DNS caching alone. While unbound isn't supposed to serve authoritative answers (i.e.: don't use it to manage your zone) the possibility is there. The unbound-block-hosts script[1] can be used to convert Dan Pollocks' hosts file to the appropriate unbound syntax. To avoid the timeout from localhost, my first approach was to setup a firewall rules that discards the request (the browser receives a connection refused message _immediately_) Another way of proceeding is to setup nginx to serve a 1*1 transparent GIF for every request it receives. If you find nginx to be too big a dependency, there are alternatives such as pixelserv[2]. The issue is that you can't block a specific element, but you still catch a fair share of ads. I have explored the possibility of running a http proxy to address this, but I haven't got around to it yet. (In addition, I'll probably need to MITM myself if I want to block elements in HTTPS; still needs some thinking :)). [0] https://unbound.net/ https://unbound.net/ [1] https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block-hosts https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block-hosts [2] https://github.com/h0tw1r3/pixelserv https://github.com/h0tw1r3/pixelserv

Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.

by jkot 12y ago

Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.

Where do you get the filter list to modify /etc/host ? Or Is there a easier way to get the filter list from ABP or mu-block ?

Dosenpfand 12y ago
I use this list and it works quite well: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
mih 12y ago
Quite a few sources actually. Beware, some of them can be too restrictive. If the hosts file is too big, it can also impact performance. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip (too restrictive) http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip (ad-servers n tracking only) http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=1&mimetype=plaintext http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showi... http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt
- edwintorok 12y ago
  http://adaway.org/hosts.txt http://adaway.org/hosts.txt I also replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 and duplicate each entry to have it for IPV6 as well, as in this script except I don't do the iptables rules: https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752 https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752
- chippy 12y ago
  curious about the performance issue. Would the impact on performance be larger than a similarly sized block list in a browser plugin? I have a netbook, so always want to keep an eye out on performance. I wonder if there's a GUI application which enables these hosts sources to be tweaked, searched, whitelisted etc
  - mih 12y ago
    I use this on Windows. For a large hosts file (several megabytes), I find the DNS client service hangs until it reads the whole file. Further, there is also a noticeable delay in the order of a few seconds until the hostname is resolved. For smaller files, I find there is no noticeable lag. Can't offer you any numbers though. Hostsman (http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman) on windows is the my choice of a frontend for hosts management. It's free but not open source.
    - marios 12y ago
      Slower DNS responses with big hosts file is something to be expected. The solution is to feed the data to a DNS caching resolver such as unbound or dnsmasq, as I have explained in reply to UserRights. Answering here also to point out I originally implemented this on a 5y old netbook (Atom CPU, 1GB RAM) because I tend to have a lot of tabs open in firefox, and ABP's memory usage quickly becomes noticeable, and then comes the swapping. Running unbound+nginx scales remarquably well, without hogging too much memory at startup. (Sorry, I don't have access to the netbook right now to report real numbers).

UserRights 12y ago

Blocking at the DNS level produces a lot of requests to 127.0.0.1, which can be quite annoying e.g. if you are using a local webserver for development. Also if you do not have a local webserver on 127.0.0.1 the browser still will wait for answers to your request, what can be an annoying experience. Would be interesting to measure how much CPU and memory actually is wasted with many tabs waitung for elements from 127.0.0.1. It is the better approach to not let these requests happen right in the browser, what this plugin does, if I get it right. A warm and big THANK YOU to the developer of this great software, it is so important and good to see that many developers are helping users to protect against the morally challenged who are stealing the privacy of millions every day.

mike-cardwell 12y ago
If you choose to send the blocked requests to an IP address where you also choose to put a web server, then what do you expect? There's nothing stopping you from sending blocked requests to 127.0.0.2 and configuring your dev web server to listen on 127.0.0.1. "the browser still will wait for answers to your request" - Shouldn't have to wait. You should get a near instant rejection if you attempt to connect to a TCP port on your local host and there's nothing listening there... Unless you screwed up your firewall.
marios 12y ago
DNS blocking works quite well. It's also very effective if you can set it up on your gateway so that it blocks ads/malware for all devices (PCs, phones, tablets ... even your guests will get adblocking for free!). However, while the /etc/hosts trick works I don't think it's the best way. The reason is that while parsing a plaintext file is easy and generally fast, it doesn't scale well especially when you have to traverse several megabytes of it for _every_ DNS request. The way I have done it is by installing unbound[0]. If you aren't using something else like dnsmasq, you will notice a speedup from the DNS caching alone. While unbound isn't supposed to serve authoritative answers (i.e.: don't use it to manage your zone) the possibility is there. The unbound-block-hosts script[1] can be used to convert Dan Pollocks' hosts file to the appropriate unbound syntax. To avoid the timeout from localhost, my first approach was to setup a firewall rules that discards the request (the browser receives a connection refused message _immediately_) Another way of proceeding is to setup nginx to serve a 1*1 transparent GIF for every request it receives. If you find nginx to be too big a dependency, there are alternatives such as pixelserv[2]. The issue is that you can't block a specific element, but you still catch a fair share of ads. I have explored the possibility of running a http proxy to address this, but I haven't got around to it yet. (In addition, I'll probably need to MITM myself if I want to block elements in HTTPS; still needs some thinking :)). [0] https://unbound.net/ https://unbound.net/ [1] https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block-hosts https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block-hosts [2] https://github.com/h0tw1r3/pixelserv https://github.com/h0tw1r3/pixelserv