AB-Solution - The Ad Blocking Solution

[HardCat]

This worked for me and shows ads in the page now. I went the manual whitelist route without issue as comments are very helpful. I also had to temporary ad exceptions for the ad domains with NoScript while browsing this page as it doesn't appear to allow whitelist of all pages, including ad sites when doing so with the site you are on.

Oddly, I see the forum within the forum at the top of the page in Firefox, which appears misplaced.

I am also experiencing this forum within the forum with Chrome browser. SNBForums is now very slow to navigate in my case. Considering going back to the annoying banner.

 

[penguin22]

I am also experiencing this forum within the forum with Chrome browser. SNBForums is now very slow to navigate in my case. Considering going back to the annoying banner.

Besides the slower load time, I also wonder if pulling additional site bandwidth from the nested SNBForums in the top and sidebar is negating the ad revenue that would come in otherwise.

 

[juched]

Curious if the current or future version of AB-solution will support more than one instance of pixelserv for those of us that have additional AP, raspberry pi, edge routers, etc on our network as discussed here with kvic

pixelserv - A Better One-pixel Webserver for Adblock

Can you clarify what you are looking for? You want to run more than one instance or you want to point to an instance hosted on a different node?




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Spydawg]

I believe now is a really a good time to whitelist additional domains to support smallnetbuilder.com and snbforums.com

To help out, the whitelist needs expanding and your browsers tracking protection needs to be adjusted.

@thiggins (Tim Higgins) has been very supportive and understanding towards what my ad-blocking solution does to his revenue. I have included a default whitelist in AB-Solution from the beginning to support his two websites.
Now is the time to adjust to a new reality or face the consequences.

1. Whitelist change
For new AB-Solution installations I have expanded the default whitelist to additionally include a tracking site (pagead2.googlesyndication.com) and additional Amazon domains.

The old whitelist contained these entries:

ad2.netshelter.net
assets.omidoo.com
flashtalking.com
servedby.flashtalking.com
tgdaily.com
tgdaily.net
vma.tgdaily.com
vma.tgdaily.net
z-na.amazon-adsystem.com

The new default whitelist for new installs is now expanded and adds helpful comments to distinguish why they are added:

aax-eu.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
ad2.netshelter.net # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
assets.omidoo.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
flashtalking.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
fls-na.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
pagead2.googlesyndication.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
servedby.flashtalking.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
tgdaily.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
tgdaily.net # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
vma.tgdaily.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
vma.tgdaily.net # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
wms-eu.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
wms-na.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
wms-na.assoc-amazon.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com
z-na.amazon-adsystem.com # whitelisted for smallnetbuilder.com

For existing AB-Solution installations these would have to be added manually, either by using the el option and add one domain by one to it or by opening the /adblocking/whitelist.txt file with a text editor and paste the above list into it. To avoid duplicates while manually pasting, remove the old (uncommented) list entries first and paste the complete new list into it.
There's also a "Sort and verify whitelist" option in el that does this automatically, but it may remove the commented double when done so.

For the expanded whitelist to take effect, run el option "Process whitelist". This will also auto-update the shared-AB-whitelist and run a refresh of Skynet if it is installed on your router.

2. Browser change
In your browser, whitelist smallnetbuilder.com and snbforums.com in the Tracking protection settings. Or disable tracking protection entirely.
If you have DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials installed as an addon in your browser, add smallnetbuilder.com and snbforums.com to its whitelist.

If you have in-browser ad-blocking installed, such as uBlock origin or Adblock Plus, whitelist smallnetbuilder.com and snbforums.com in it.

You may have to restart your browser and clear the DNS cache of your operating system for these changes to take effect.
To clear the DNS cache in Windows, enter the following into a command prompt:

ipconfig /flushdns

Thanks This worked for me!

 

[vesalius]

Can you clarify what you are looking for? You want to run more than one instance or you want to point to an instance hosted on a different node?




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Point to the IP of other instances running on other nodes, in my case my ac68U AP or potentially my raspberry pi, in addition to the IP of the pixelserv instance running on my master router. As linked below, Kvic suggested it does not take much to alter an adblocker to take advantage of this, so I thought I would ask my fav adblocker author about it.

pixelserv - A Better One-pixel Webserver for Adblock
pixelserv - A Better One-pixel Webserver for Adblock

 

[thelonelycoder]

Oddly, I see the forum within the forum at the top of the page in Firefox, which appears misplaced.

I see the same thing, twice. Once in the header and another "window" in the right sidebar under the Amazon search.
Additionally, at the bottom there's a half-hidden "Hmm, We're having trouble..." ad.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Besides the slower load time, I also wonder if pulling additional site bandwidth from the nested SNBForums in the top and sidebar is negating the ad revenue that would come in otherwise.

We're used to a very fast page load, thanks to ad-blocking and pixelserv-tls handling it efficient.
(our) reality feels and looks different.

 

[thelonelycoder]

For those seeing about five instances of the SNBForums banner (and probably as many pageloads):
Add googleads.g.doubleclick.net to the new whitelist. You may regret it elsewhere but for SNB it eliminates this:

 

[Butterfly Bones]

Ok, this is nutty. In AB-Solution, follow log file, option 2. Watch for a few minutes. Hit Ctrl-C to exit and

Mar 30 11:57:24 dnscrypt-proxy[3801]: Stopped.
Mar 30 11:57:26 user: Warning: dnscrypt-proxy is dead
Mar 30 11:57:26 user: Start dnscrypt-proxy
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Source [https://download.dnscrypt.info/resolvers-list/v2/public-resolvers.md] loaded
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.7
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [UDP]
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [TCP]

I did it two more time because I could not believe my eyes!
Sure enough, every time I enter Ctrl-C DNSCrypt stops and then restarts. I tried it in the standard ssh terminal and it only happens in AB-S after following the log file, any option, then Ctrl-C.

Mar 30 12:04:18 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Stopped.
Mar 30 12:04:27 user: Warning: dnscrypt-proxy is dead
Mar 30 12:04:27 user: Start dnscrypt-proxy
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: Source [https://download.dnscrypt.info/resolvers-list/v2/public-resolvers.md] loaded
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.7
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [UDP]
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [TCP]

Not a big deal, just odd, since I have never seen it before, and I use "follow the log file" almost daily.

 

[penguin22]

For those seeing about five instances of the SNBForums banner (and probably as many pageloads):
Add googleads.g.doubleclick.net to the new whitelist. You may regret it elsewhere but for SNB it eliminates this:

Well, it did the trick, but oh does it hurt to see completely useless non-relevant advertising. In the name of supporting Tim and this site, I will bear the brunt of living with it .

 

[thelonelycoder]

Ok, this is nutty. In AB-Solution, follow log file, option 2. Watch for a few minutes. Hit Ctrl-C to exit and

Mar 30 11:57:24 dnscrypt-proxy[3801]: Stopped.
Mar 30 11:57:26 user: Warning: dnscrypt-proxy is dead
Mar 30 11:57:26 user: Start dnscrypt-proxy
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Source [https://download.dnscrypt.info/resolvers-list/v2/public-resolvers.md] loaded
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.7
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [UDP]
Mar 30 11:57:26 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [TCP]

I did it two more time because I could not believe my eyes!
Sure enough, every time I enter Ctrl-C DNSCrypt stops and then restarts. I tried it in the standard ssh terminal and it only happens in AB-S after following the log file, any option, then Ctrl-C.

Mar 30 12:04:18 dnscrypt-proxy[3930]: Stopped.
Mar 30 12:04:27 user: Warning: dnscrypt-proxy is dead
Mar 30 12:04:27 user: Start dnscrypt-proxy
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: Source [https://download.dnscrypt.info/resolvers-list/v2/public-resolvers.md] loaded
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.7
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [UDP]
Mar 30 12:04:27 dnscrypt-proxy[6689]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [TCP]

Not a big deal, just odd, since I have never seen it before, and I use "follow the log file" almost daily.

Do me a favour:
Install htop:

opkg install htop

First test:
- Open a second terminal and open htop in it, filter (F4) by ab
- Open AB in the first terminal and follow the logfile
You should see about two processes running when following the logfile, the main ab-solution.sh process and a subshell doing the tail on dnsmasq.
Then hit CTRL-C and the tail process should be gone, with the one remaining ab-solution.sh.

Second test:
- In htop filter by dnscrypt
- In AB follow the logfile and then hit CTRL-C
Does the dnscrypt instance get killed at the same time?

 

[Butterfly Bones]

I had htop from long ago. But wow, never knew I could have two links to the router! Seems I tried before and it did not work, and I remember seeing comments about only one login to the router, but that must mean the WebUI, so thanks for new info!

Test one - yes the second instance of ab-solution stops

Mar 30 13:37:37 dnscrypt-proxy[17131]: Stopped.
Mar 30 13:37:41 mtn_dance: Warning: dnscrypt-proxy is dead
Mar 30 13:37:41 mtn_dance: Start dnscrypt-proxy
Mar 30 13:37:41 dnscrypt-proxy[18294]: Source [https://download.dnscrypt.info/resolvers-list/v2/public-resolvers.md] loaded
Mar 30 13:37:41 dnscrypt-proxy[18294]: dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.7
Mar 30 13:37:41 dnscrypt-proxy[18294]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [UDP]
Mar 30 13:37:41 dnscrypt-proxy[18294]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [TCP]

For some reason I seem to have issues with images on SNB. (shrug) I'll change the links if this does not work.

Test two - yes dnscrypt gets killled.

Mar 30 13:51:53 dnscrypt-proxy[20171]: Stopped.
Mar 30 13:52:03 mtn_dance: Warning: dnscrypt-proxy is dead
Mar 30 13:52:03 mtn_dance: Start dnscrypt-proxy
Mar 30 13:52:03 dnscrypt-proxy[20656]: Source [https://download.dnscrypt.info/resolvers-list/v2/public-resolvers.md] loaded
Mar 30 13:52:03 dnscrypt-proxy[20656]: dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.7
Mar 30 13:52:03 dnscrypt-proxy[20656]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [UDP]
Mar 30 13:52:03 dnscrypt-proxy[20656]: Now listening to 127.0.0.1:65053 [TCP]

In case the images don't show here is a link to all three.
https://ibb.co/album/jsx10a

edit - one more thing I saw. I had AMTM running, went to AB-S to do the tests and when I used "e" to exit AB-S I was in the term, not back to AMTM. No big deal, but my Ctrl-C seems to knock out everything. (shrug)

 

[thelonelycoder]

edit - one more thing I saw. I had AMTM running, went to AB-S to do the tests and when I used "e" to exit AB-S I was in the term, not back to AMTM. No big deal, but my Ctrl-C seems to knock out everything. (shrug)

That would have been my next question.
Exit amtm and start AB directly with ab-solution
Then do the second test again.

BTW, I run multiple SSH sessions to routers all the time. Up to four on Xshell 5 and another on WinSCP.
Just make sure you only have one AB instance running per router - or else

 

[Butterfly Bones]

That would have been my next question.
Exit amtm and start AB directly with ab-solution
Then do the second test again.

BTW, I run multiple SSH sessions to routers all the time. Up to four on Xshell 5 and another on WinSCP.
Just make sure you only have one AB instance running per router - or else

No, DNSCrypt was NOT stopped by running ab-solution from the terminal.

I can imagine the mess of running more than one instance of AB-S, that is an experiment I will not conduct.

 

[thelonelycoder]

No, DNSCrypt was NOT stopped by running ab-solution from the terminal.

I can imagine the mess of running more than one instance of AB-S, that is an experiment I will not conduct.

When starting AB through amtm, AB runs in a subshell. And when function f is run this adds another subshell.
Maybe this is the cause of it. I'll do some tests tomorrow.

 

[Butterfly Bones]

When starting AB through amtm, AB runs in a subshell. And when function f is run this adds another subshell.
Maybe this is the cause of it. I'll do some tests tomorrow.

Like I need to give you something else to do!

Sorry, it is not that big a deal, I can just run AB-S from the term. I'm lazy with using AMTM to get to all other utilities. I'll just keep three or four SSH terms open.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Like I need to give you something else to do!

Indeed, with my new professional commitment my spare time has become a scarce commodity. I have MUCH less time to code, figure out reasons for problems and answer the questions, sudden changes by Forum owners or other script writers that tangent my scripts.
I'm not complaining, the new job is fascinating, fulfilling and suited exactly to my interests, experience and knowledge. But god damn, it's a demanding job!

Sorry, it is not that big a deal, I can just run AB-S from the term. I'm lazy with using AMTM to get to all other utilities. I'll just keep three or four SSH terms open.

It is a big deal. Turns out @bigeyes0x0 has built in a trap in his script that watches for any SIGHUP (trap on the system and restarts itself if encountered.
I happen to trap it as well for killing the tail function.
We'll need to figure this out, maybe @ColinTaylor or @Adamm has a good idea how to tie a trap 2, or any trap for that matter, to a specific shell or subshell?

 

[OsoTheBear]

I believe now is a really good time to whitelist additional domains to support smallnetbuilder.com and snbforums.com

Thanks! I thought my setup was messed up when I saw the banner. Then I read the post that the others had the same problem. Applied your solution and it worked. I don't mind ads on this site at all as the forum has been very helpful.

 

[OOo]

I was hacked the other day (well documented on snb as it happened to many others)

Trying to get back to whole with my A-B Solution install.

I copied the blacklist/whitelist txt files out of my usb drive.
Someone said I should
run "Format JFFS partition at next boot" (I guess this is to erase any files the intruder may have left??)
Then I should check JFFS - don't know how/where to do that and what I am looking for??
Then I guess I am going to have to go through the A-B Solution Install process again?
Then I will replace the black/whitelist.txt files

Does this all sound right? And again, where do I check JFFS and what am I looking for?
I

thanks

 

[Butterfly Bones]

I was hacked the other day (well documented on snb as it happened to many others)

Trying to get back to whole with my A-B Solution install.

I copied the blacklist/whitelist txt files out of my usb drive.
Someone said I should
run "Format JFFS partition at next boot" (I guess this is to erase any files the intruder may have left??)
Then I should check JFFS - don't know how/where to do that and what I am looking for??
Then I guess I am going to have to go through the A-B Solution Install process again?
Then I will replace the black/whitelist.txt files

Does this all sound right? And again, where do I check JFFS and what am I looking for?
I

thanks

Check this post on the restore technique @thelonelycoder recommends.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ab-solution-the-ad-blocking-solution.37511/page-89#post-357054