Bug 103947 – bfilter-0.9.4.ebuild (New Package)

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Alan Swanson 2005-08-27 12:14:12 UTC]

BFilter is an advert filtering proxy that uses heuristic ad-detection algorithms
rather than blocklists to remove image and flash adverts, popups and webbugs. It
also uses a Javascript engine to remove Javascript generated adverts and popups.
Unlike most proxies it supports persistent connections and pipeling for HTTP/1.1
connections. (However it doesn't support CONNECT method used for HTTPS.)

I've made a patch that implements privilege dropping for chrooting and changing
users and groups. This is used in the default configuration for security. I've
also hashed together a man page aswell. I presume it would go into net-proxy
along with privoxy.

Files that should be attached here will include bfilter-0.9.4.ebuild,
bfilter-init.d, bfilter-conf.d, bfilter.8 and bfilter-0.9.4-droppriv.patch.

[Comment 1 Alan Swanson 2005-08-27 12:16:13 UTC]

Created attachment 67006 [details]
bfilter-0.9.4.ebuild

The ebuild. Uses a local "gui" USE flag which I've tested but expect nobody to
actually use.

[Comment 2 Alan Swanson 2005-08-27 12:17:11 UTC]

Created attachment 67008 [details]
bfilter.8

Man page for bfilter.

[Comment 3 Alan Swanson 2005-08-27 12:18:09 UTC]

Created attachment 67009 [details]
bfilter-init.d

The init script.

[Comment 4 Alan Swanson 2005-08-27 12:19:58 UTC]

Created attachment 67010 [details]
bfilter-conf.d

Configuration settings. This is secure by default as I'm paranoid...

[Comment 5 Alan Swanson 2005-08-27 12:29:02 UTC]

Created attachment 67013 [details, diff]
bfilter-0.9.4-droppriv.patch

The privilege dropping patch for chrooting and changing users and groups. The
parent process exits if user, group or chroot directory do not exist and
subsequent child processes which handle the proxy requests exit if the chroot
directory no longer exists.

To allow for an empty chroot directory you need to call gethostbyname for a
non-local host (i.e. not in /etc/hosts) before chrooting. This is run by each
child started but as bfilter supports persistent connections and pipelining
it's not really a worry. I've defaulted it to slashdot.org but you might want
it to be forums.gentoo.org for popularity!

[Comment 6 Alan Swanson 2005-08-28 04:14:26 UTC]

Created attachment 67058 [details]
bfilter.8

Tweaks to the man page fixing a spelling mistake, adding long options and
correcting the section number.

Also dithering regarding having the chroot configuration by default. The
default setting is to bind to 127.0.0.1 only so only local users would be using
the proxy. Other proxies in Gentoo are generally not chrooted by default. Not
chrooting would save two milliseconds for a local DNS server or approximately
50 milliseconds for a remote DNS server from startup time for each child
started to handle requests.

If the developer that decides to maintain this doesn't wany to chroot by
default, remove the /var/empty directory creation in the ebuild.

[Comment 7 Alan Swanson 2005-08-28 05:22:58 UTC]

Created attachment 67063 [details, diff]
bfilter-0.9.4-droppriv.patch

Tweak to the privilege dropping patch. If chroot is not set then the parent
process can also change to the unprivileged user.

That should be it for now, no more changes I promise.

[Comment 8 Alin Năstac (RETIRED) 2005-09-17 13:19:28 UTC]

First, congratulations for this pretty well written ebuild! All I had to do was
to replace gui useflag with gtk (no need to invent yet another useflag) and move
the pkg_preinst function after src_install.

However, upstream appears to be dead (more than a year since last release) and
HTTPS isn't supported (as you already observed). Also, the popularity of this
package isn't impressive (just a few downloads per month).

Is this package really useful for you? If you say so, I will submit it to the
tree , but I doubt you'll find another gentooer who would use this package.

[Comment 9 Alan Swanson 2005-09-17 15:28:49 UTC]

BFilter isn't well advertised IYKWIM and I'd only found it while doing a search
for proxies prior to (re)writing one for myself. Upstream are still developing
it and commits are currently being made to CVS (though without anything useful
like comments for each commit).

The GUI interface is not really useful in Linux. To explain, the GUI can't be
used with the proxy started by init as the GUI starts its own completely
seperate proxy. Users would have an always open window which allows editing of
their local configuration files only. I'd decided to disable it by default with
the undocumented USE flag (with the advantage that gtkmm would not be an
additional dependancy for GTK users).

I'm currently using bfilter in preference to privoxy or wwwoffle for filtering
though the lack of CONNECT (HTTPS) support is a wee bit inconvenient I'd agree.
To cut this ramble short I don't mind if bfilter is not added to Gentoo, anyone
else can use this bug as a reference and reopen it if they do start using
bfilter (showing I'm not alone in the Gentoo world).

[Comment 10 Alin Năstac (RETIRED) 2005-09-18 22:42:38 UTC]

Main problem was upstream being dead, so I'll submit it to the tree.

My changes are:
- replaced gui useflag with X - seems the best replacement
- double quote ${D} strings
- add info messages to die calls
- correct useflag? ( dep ) atom - you must use parentheses

Please send your patch and man page to upstream for inclusion in future versions.