[Release] AB-Solution 3 - The Ad Blocking Solution

[thelonelycoder]

I don't know what I am doing wrong here, so if someone could help me out that would be great:

1) www.di.se - it uses some ad's, of course, and they are javascript triggered from when you enter the site
2) When I use my ANDROID mobile (Samsung Note 4) from my HOME WIFI, AdBlock works just great - and everything is blocked even if javascript is turned on
3) When I use my ANDROID mobile from say work, AND I am connected over Open VPN to my home router, I do get ad's when javascript is turned on

Now #3 above should not happened as far as I am aware - or am I doing something wrong here? I am trying to use OpenVPN connection to (among other things) remove ad's - but I still have them when I am not on my Home WiFi network.

Is there something that separates OpenVPN connections from WiFi (or cable direct attached to my router) within AdBlock solution/OpenVPN?

I also believe I have asked this before, so if I have, please forgive me - I'm obviously getting older...

I'm getting older too, have to write things down or make a screenshot...

OpenVPN Servers/ Advanced Settings (dropdown)
I have these set, then it always works:
Push LAN to clients: Yes
Direct clients to redirect Internet traffic: No
Respond to DNS: Yes
Advertise DNS to clients: Yes

Edit: Added 'Direct clients'

 

[Wutikorn]

Direct clients to redirect Internet traffic: No
Respond to DNS: Yes
Advertise DNS to clients: Yes
'

Thanks to that, I now know that I don't actually have to redirect Internet Traffic in order to be able to use Ad-Blocker. That would save lots of my phone battery. I directed internet traffic before and OpenVPN used up 25% of total power usage when I was surfing internet. I will probably have one server that redirects, while the other doesn't.

 

[Bamsefar]

I'm getting older too, have to write things down or make a screenshot...

OpenVPN Servers/ Advanced Settings (dropdown)
I have these set, then it always works:
Push LAN to clients: Yes
Direct clients to redirect Internet traffic: No
Respond to DNS: Yes
Advertise DNS to clients: Yes

Edit: Added 'Direct clients'

This made it working.

I had Respond and Advertise set to NO, changed to yes, problem solved.

Extremly large thanks, and a very happy christmas!!!!!

 

[thelonelycoder]

God Jul to you too.

 

[Xentrk]

Thx guys,

If you need any test on the "fake" ext3 USB i can test things for you.
Maybe you could try writing a small file from out the script to see if that is able to write to the USB stick.
If it fails abort the rest of the script?

A different note, i now have two routers where i have the pixelservthing running.
Can i have 2 certificates on my local devices as one is at work and the other one at home.

Learning how to format a thumb drive in Linux format and mount it to the router was a new learning experience for me. I started with Ease US Partition Manager on my Win 10 laptop but ended up switching to MiniTool Partition Wizard. I used the MiniTool Partition Wizard to first format as ext2 as that was the recommended format for small USB thumb drives. I then used the information from the following links to make it all work:

http://www.algissalys.com/how-to/format-and-partition-usb-asuswrt-routers
http://www.lostsaloon.com/technology/how-to-mount-or-load-an-usb-flash-drive-in-linux/

One of the Sandisk's had the U3 software installed and it would survive a format. I found I had to go into the U3 directory itself and run an uninstaller program first. This would then make the entire thumb drive available when it was reformatted.

Also good to know that the cheap little USB 2.0 powered up that I had bought for another reason but ended up not needing, was able to be put to good use after all and that the ASUS router supports using a hub on the USB 2.0 port. I saw another thread where someone got their hub working on the USB 3.0 port as well but at USB 2.0 speeds. I now have a printer and two thumb drives, one for ab-solution and one for entware, connected to the hub.

 

[pirx73]

Does AB-Solution 3 eats a a lot of router's CPU power?
Asking because i am unsure can my RT-N66U handle it.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Learning how to format a thumb drive in Linux format and mount it to the router was a new learning experience for me. I started with Ease US Partition Manager on my Win 10 laptop but ended up switching to MiniTool Partition Wizard. I used the MiniTool Partition Wizard to first format as ext2 as that was the recommended format for small USB thumb drives. I then used the information from the following links to make it all work:

http://www.algissalys.com/how-to/format-and-partition-usb-asuswrt-routers
http://www.lostsaloon.com/technology/how-to-mount-or-load-an-usb-flash-drive-in-linux/

One of the Sandisk's had the U3 software installed and it would survive a format. I found I had to go into the U3 directory itself and run an uninstaller program first. This would then make the entire thumb drive available when it was reformatted.

Also good to know that the cheap little USB 2.0 powered up that I had bought for another reason but ended up not needing, was able to be put to good use after all and that the ASUS router supports using a hub on the USB 2.0 port. I saw another thread where someone got their hub working on the USB 3.0 port as well but at USB 2.0 speeds. I now have a printer and two thumb drives, one for ab-solution and one for entware, connected to the hub.

Having running Linux boxes running and at the ready here I never have to use Disk formatting for ext* in Windows.
Therefore, I have no recommendation. Apart from staying away from EaseUS.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Does AB-Solution 3 eats a a lot of router's CPU power?
Asking because i am unsure can my RT-N66U handle it.

AB does not use much more CPU cycles but RAM usage will increase, depending on the size of the Hosts file you select.
Your router will handle this just fine.

 

[Xentrk]

Does AB-Solution 3 eats a a lot of router's CPU power?
Asking because i am unsure can my RT-N66U handle it.

I issued the top command in a SSH window and saw that pixelserv-tls, which is used for https ad blocking, took between 0.1 and 1.3 percent of CPU while I was doing some general web browsing. dnsmasq only went as high as 1.0 percent for a brief moment. I am not seeing anything in the Web GUI CPU graph that causes me concern.

 

[Xentrk]

Having running Linux boxes running and at the ready here I never have to use Disk formatting for ext* in Windows.
Therefore, I have no recommendation. Apart from staying away from EaseUS.

My Linux box is in the cloud. After the fact, It appears the Linux on ASUS routers supports the ability to format a USB thumb drive

e.g. mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1

Thanks again for a great ad blocking solution!

 

[thelonelycoder]

My Linux box is in the cloud. After the fact, It appears the Linux on ASUS routers supports the ability to format a USB thumb drive

e.g. mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1

Thanks again for a great ad blocking solution!

Would be simple, but for various reasons I am reluctant to built this into AB.
Mainly for being held accountable if for some reason it goes wrong and data is lost valuable to the user.

 

[tomsk]

Would be simple, but for various reasons I am reluctant to built this into AB.
Mainly for being held accountable if for some reason it goes wrong and data is lost valuable to the user.

Maybe just include some nice links on your website or the #1 post in the forum with some "how to do it" instructions. Its always so difficult to cater to the different skill levels of potential users.

 

[Xentrk]

Would be simple, but for various reasons I am reluctant to built this into AB.
Mainly for being held accountable if for some reason it goes wrong and data is lost valuable to the user.

I would not expect or want that either. Just wanted others to know they could format their USB thumb drive using the Linux on the router rather than downloading a tool like EaseUS or Mini Partition Wizard on their Windows client.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Maybe just include some nice links on your website or the #1 post in the forum with some "how to do it" instructions. Its always so difficult to cater to the different skill levels of potential users.

Make something simple and it gets complex elsewhere.

I'm not sure how many are turned away to use AB by the format requirement. Judging by the questions asked in former and this release thread, not too many.
But then, they may just drop the idea and give up right away of using AB.

 

[visortgw]

Maybe just include some nice links on your website or the #1 post in the forum with some "how to do it" instructions. Its always so difficult to cater to the different skill levels of potential users.

I use Paragon ExtFS for Mac. It is also available for Windows.

 

[thelonelycoder]

I use Paragon ExtFS for Mac. It is also available for Windows.

It's end of year rush, everything must be finished and done.
As always, there seems to be no next year.
But eventually I'll add a FAQ and Tools to use section to the website. Which reminds me that I wanted to port the hand coded html pages to a CMS.
Ah, well, there may in fact be a 2017 coming up, but you would not believe it at this time of the year.

 

[tomsk]

Make something simple and it gets complex elsewhere.

I'm not sure how many are turned away to use AB by the format requirement. Judging by the questions asked in former and this release thread, not too many.
But then, they may just drop the idea and give up right away of using AB.

I think you have a potential number of users that will get scared by many aspects of the install process... for some even ssh into the router is daunting, coupled with the fear of breaking something with a miss-type.
The complexity of the installer just mushrooms as you assume less knowledge. I guess you have to pick a base level and work from there.

 

[tomsk]

I use Paragon ExtFS for Mac. It is also available for Windows.

Im on a Mac too and have ExtFS. Nice to read and write to linux partitions but not the best of tools for formatting and such.
I will admit to total overkill, but i have a bootable .iso of ubuntu on a USB stick, and i run gparted if ever i need to muck around with partitions. Made it bootable with Mac Linux loader https://www.sevenbits.io/mlul/

 

[thelonelycoder]

I think you have a potential number of users that will get scared by many aspects of the install process... for some even ssh into the router is daunting, coupled with the fear of breaking something with a miss-type.
The complexity of the installer just mushrooms as you assume less knowledge. I guess you have to pick a base level and work from there.

DD-WRT and I believe Open-WRT have a WebUI based copy and past feature for custom scripts.
AB may be too complex for this, but as I'm looking into making AB portable to other routers and platforms I may have to figure out even simpler ways.
But I'm afraid with the storage and install requirements, SSH and a thumb drive or similar would be required anyway for routers.

 

[skeal]

I'm running 380.64 with AB-Solution 3 installed and running. This worked fine for the first few days it blocked almost everything. Now though Google ads from their system are getting through. Every site I test now suffers from this problem. The adds are coming from Google add servers. Am I missing something or is this program AB-Solution 3 not adapting fast enough. Any thoughts?