Install Privoxy. See the Installation Section below for platform specific information.
Advanced users and those who want to offer Privoxy service to more than just their local machine should check the main config file, especially the security-relevant options. These are off by default.
Start Privoxy, if the installation program has not done this already (may vary according to platform). See the section Starting Privoxy.
Set your browser to use Privoxy as HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) proxy by setting the proxy configuration for address of 127.0.0.1 and port 8118. DO NOT activate proxying for FTP or any protocols besides HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) unless you intend to prevent your browser from using these protocols.
Flush HTTP and bove. In Privoxy 3.0.7 and later, all of these options can also be disabled through the configuration file.
WARNING: If installing as root, the install will fail unless a non-root user or group is specified, or a privoxy user and group already exist on the system. If a non-root user is specified, and no group, then the installation will try to also use a group of the same name as "user". If a group is specified (and no user), then the support files will be installed as writable by that group, and owned by the user running the installation.
configure accepts --with-user and --with-group options for setting user and group ownership of the configuration files (which need to be writable by the daemon). The specified user must already exist. When starting Privoxy, it must be run as this same user to insure write access to configuration and log files!
Alternately, you can specify user and group on the make command line, but be sure both already exist:
make -s install USER=privoxy GROUP=privoxy |
The default installation path for make install is /usr/local. This may of course be customized with the various ./configure path options. If you are doing an install to anywhere besides /usr/local, be sure to set the appropriate paths with the correct configure options (./configure --help). Non-privileged users must of course have write access permissions to wherever the target installation is going.
If you do install to /usr/local, the install will use sysconfdir=$prefix/etc/privoxy by default. All other destinations, and the direct usage of --sysconfdir flag behave like normal, i.e. will not add the extra privoxy directory. This is for a safer install, as there may already exist another program that uses a file with the "config" name, and thus makes /usr/local/etc cleaner.
If installing to /usr/local, the documentation will go by default to $prefix/share/doc. But if this directory doesn't exist, it will then try $prefix/doc and install there before creating a new $prefix/share/doc just for Privoxy.
Again, if the installs goes to /usr/local, the localstatedir (ie: var/) will default to /var instead of $prefix/var so the logs will go to /var/log/privoxy/, and the pid file will be created in /var/run/privoxy.pid.
make install will attempt to set the correct values in config (main configuration file). You should check this to make sure all values are correct. If appropriate, an init script will be installed, but it is up to the user to determine how and where to start Privoxy. The init script should be checked for correct paths and values, if anything other than a default install is done.
If install finds previous versions of local configuration files, most of these will not be overwritten, and the new ones will be installed with a "new" extension. default.action and default.filter will be overwritten. You will then need to manually update the other installed configuration files as needed. The default template files will be overwritten. If you have customized, local templates, these should be stored safely in a separate directory and defined in config by the "templdir" directive. It is of course wise to always back-up any important configuration files "just in case". If a previous version of Privoxy is already running, you will have to restart it manually.
For more detailed instructions on how to build Redhat RPMs, Windows self-extracting installers, building on platforms with special requirements etc, please consult the developer manual.
As user feedback comes in and development continues, we will make updated versions of both the main actions file (as a separate package) and the software itself (including the actions file) available for download.
If you wish to receive an email notification whenever we release updates of Privoxy or the actions file, subscribe to our announce mailing list, ijbswa-announce@lists.sourceforge.net.
In order not to lose your personal changes and adjustments when updating to the latest default.action file we strongly recommend that you use user.action and user.filter for your local customizations of Privoxy. See the Chapter on actions files for details.