A little speed up....

Given the nature of the modern web, it seems like many
sites drown visitors with adverts, tracking scripts, etc
etc. Of course, Oddity his quite vulnerable to all this.

Raziel suggested using the "hosts" file in AmigaOS to
sidetrack all those scripts. He also found a site where
they maintain hosts files that will block those web
denizens:

https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Raziel, that smart guy (!!), also came up with a WGet
command line to download the hosts file to your Amiga.

Here's how I hacked all that into my Amiga...

First, get the latest WGet from OSDepot and put it in your
C: dir so you can do the downloading:

http://os4depot.net/index.php?functio ... utility/misc/wget-bin.lha

Then make a copy of your original hosts file, just in case
you want to access all the spammers and web spies (aka
FaceCult) from time to time:


Next, add these lines to your S:network-startup after the
line with "AddNetInterface":

-------------------------


-------------------------

What those lines will do is download the latest & greatest
"clean" hosts file to your Amiga every time you boot up.
Furthermore, they will check to see if you are using the
"clean" file at time and make sure the new version is in
use.

Finally, I set up another little CLI script to toggle my
Amiga between these two hosts files. Just open Notepad and
save these lines to a file ("ToggleCleanHostsFile.cli"?):

-------------------------


-------------------------

Then you just go into and WBInfo on this CLI script file
and set these things to make it run with a double-click or
from AmiDock:


Then you can drag'n'drop this icon into AmiDock and you
have a simple way to check which host file you're running
and to switch it with one click.

Just to give you a sense for what difference I found this
change makes, here are some times for fully (almost)
loading a webpage:

http://www.autoblog.com/news/?icid=autoblog|news|latest
original hosts file = 22.5 secs
clean hosts file = 11.7 secs

"Almost" = without blocking the spammer hosts, there are
often sockets that constantly appear to be left open -
watching whether you're seeing the adverts?

One other little fringe benefit with this hack: when you
quit Oddity, you run into far fewer DSI's and "child
process unresponsive" messages.

Have fun,

PJS

Thanks !

But what if I already have some hosts set (to reach other home computers) ? They will be deleted

It should be possible to append the new hosts file onto your original, which will then retain your existing hosts setup.

(NOTE: I haven't tried this...)
Try something like this alternative to the copy line in the network-startup script:

c:Type devs:Internet/hosts.clean >>devs:Internet/hosts

Hey guys,

Yeah, this little trick, as coded, isn't going help any
local hosts you might have set up. But who does such
things? ;D

I guess adding the Join command after downloading the new
hosts file could concatenate the "clean" hosts to your
original file... I think. hmmm

...or you could use your router to set up your local hosts
for all LAN machines. ;)

Thanks,

PJS

I may be doing something wrong but none of your script works :

In Network-startup

http://www.amiga-ng.org/resources/ScriptsErrors.jpg

The second script to test the host file :

http://www.amiga-ng.org/resources/ScriptsErrors2.jpg

http://www.amiga-ng.org/resources/ScriptsErrors3.jpg

Indeed! There's something messed up with the simple
texts and how they're getting pasted or copied back off
these webpages.

:/

At this link you'll find a proper LHA file with the two
texts - the excerpt to add into S:Network-Startup and the
Toggle script (with icon!):

http://www.pjsa.net/hostsTricks.lha

That should make things easier... ;)

Good luck,

PJS

Thanks !

It works but I only get an empty host file (0 byte). Weird.

I tried the wget command in a cli and I also get an empty file.

@K-L

At the risk of being difficult, did you install the
latest WGet from OS4Depot (URL above)?

What about going to the guy's page and making sure you
can download the linked files. Maybe Le Republique doesn't
want you blocking spammers? ;)

Otherwise, I just don't know what to say.

I've been running this for a month or two and its been
work rather well.

hmmm....

PJS

I found the culprit : wget OS4 1.12

68k version of wget works flawlessly but the OS4 versions gives me 0 byte files. I get the same result when using wget OS4 with SmTube.

I'll have to find an older version of wget OS4.

Wow!

You were running the "1.12rev2" version from OS4Depot?
If so, maybe you should start a new thred on this here
so kas1e sees it and can maybe help.

Is this happening on OS4.1 FE or?

I wonder whether there's some OS dependency at issue.

hmmm...

PJS

Yep, the latest version (1.12rev2) on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Eidtion Update 1.

Same result both on my Sam440 and my X1000.

I'll try to contact Diego or Kas1e

@K-L,pjs
To be honest i do not remember if it me port that, but as homepage point out on http://amiga.sourceforge.net/, then probably 6 years ago i just upload it with Diego's bless. Currently http://amiga.sourceforge.net/ offline, so we can't check if there was something new after ..

Here is the culprit :



I'm using AmiSSL 4.1 (latest version).

Edited : ok, solved with setenv amissl/ssl_client_version tls1

@pjs



You give me far too much credit, mate, but thank you for the flowers

There are two things i changed since the time i glued that hacky stuff together which you might want to take into consideration.

1) I canned WGet in favour of cURL

Reason a:
WGet is too old, it can't do what i needed it to do and is still not working with https: sites (probably needs a recompile with AmiSSL4), unless one circumvents the savety by using --no-check-certificate

Reason b:
cURL doesn't have that limitations

2) I hacked together an AREXX script, which will take care of the randomly changed/updated files of HOSTS, pci.ids and ca-bundle.crt.

- It checks for new versions of said files and only if they were changed/updated downloads and installs them (faster and more economical than fully downloading an already installed file - makes it faster on reboots, aswell)

- It will update all instances of said files in their corresponding destinations (user enhancable/changable, albeit not user friendly - one has to add personal destinations to the corresponding lines, respectively add those lines to the script)

- It will write a really small text file to T: (four lines) where the user can check if the files has been updated...or not.
Without the need to load the files.

It looks like this:


Known Bugs:
- It sometimes "freezes" the workbench for some minutes on the first boot...seems to be the HOSTS file not being updated on the first run, or rather a bug in the script...investigating.

I haven't released it anywhere due to it's "special" nature of use and the above mentioned "bug". Works great for my everyday use, though.
And it doesn't clutter up the network-startup sequence with dozens of lines, looks clean
Quote:

I also use it to amend my personal IP-List to the HOSTS file, so i can access all my LAN stuff with names instead of IP addresses.

If anyone wants to look at it, use it, fix bugs, enhance it or make fun of my AREXX scripting...here it is