TomatoUSB

Finally packaged up my adblocking package for Tomato. The tarball has all the necessary files and instructions. No ipkg or /opt required.

Here is the link:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/5iw8aignj63nikf/tomato-adblock-v1.tar.gz

Hi Ray,

if you create a wiki page about the adblock package (maybe in a new "add-on" section?), you can attach the download directly to it, so that you don't need to use these external file servers…

ray123,

Installed this last night while tweaking some other things. It seems to have installed correctly as far as I can tell after a reboot and a check of the system logs. Thanks for this. Just one more added layer of security on my network. I'll come back and tell you if I find any bugs, so you can perfect it if need be.

… and yes, I'd love to see a wiki page on this.

Thanks again,

LJ

Hey Ray,

After several days of using your ad-blocker I can say that it seems stable and I'm assuming it works due to an odd side effect that wasn't in your documentation: On certain flash-based videos all over the net I get a yellow triangle with black exclamation point overlayed on the top left of the video on any computer on my network. The triangle can't be accessed by right or left clicking on it as if it's "transparent" to the mouse, for lack of a better term. It's much bigger than a 1x1 pixel, though not large enough to be any real bother. The triangle is odd since I only see it on videos. Not a problem, just odd.

Since I have ad-blockers already plugged in to every browser in the house I am not seeing the actual ad-blocking effects - I simply installed this on the router as an added layer of security just in case the native plugins fail or miss something.

Thought you'd like to know. Thanks again for this addition.

LJ

Ha! You didn't read the write-up nad/or script carefully.

Edit the file and remove the "-w" option from the pixelserv line. That makes it give a 32x32 yellow warning picture instead of a 1x1. I use this to verify that it's working.

And so my wife can inform me of all the links that she doesn't want to be blocked.

So taking out "-w" would give me the 1x1 pixel? It's not that I missed that, I read it, I must have just read it wrong. The way I understood it, if I took out "-w" THEN it would give me the 30x30 warning picture, which I didn't want so I didn't change the script.

I'll have another wack at it.

BTW, why would it overlay the warning graphic on youtube (and other site's) videos and yet still play them underneath? I thought the whole point of the pixel was to take the place of an advertisement, not just overlay it. Just seems like it defeats the purpose. Obviously I'm missing something. I'm known to do that. :-/

Thanks again,

LJ

<EDIT>

Ok, found the mixup:

From your documentation (00-README-adblock.txt):

By default, pixelserv will serve up a 1x1 blank pixel.  For testing
purposes, you can have it serve up a 30x30 [y]ellow warning picture.

From the script itself (50-start_adblock.autorun):

# The pixelserv "-w" option replaces the ads with a 30x30 warning logo,
# for testing.
#  Without "-w" it replaces ads with a 1x1 empty pixel.

The documentation says that by default the script is set to use the 1x1 pixel. That's how I missed it. I didn't change the script so expected the 1x1 to be in effect. In fact, the 30x30 "-w" flag is included by default in the script.

*shrugs*

Now, am I understanding this correctly - that if I change the script to remove "-w" and start using the 1x1 pixel instead of the 30x30 warning sign (thereby taking it out of "testing" mode) it will replace the ads intead of overlaying them? And by extension, will this start blanking out youtube videos? So confused … LOL

LJ

It seems that I have a network access problem.
ping and wget doesn't work, even if my connection is up (those commands working from my computer).

So the script exit after ping test : 100% packet loss.

Is thatrelated to the fact that I'm using openvpn client ?

Thks

LJ:
All that adblock does is forcibly redefine the ip-address of a hostname. The new ipaddr is that of the router, specifically a hard coded ipaddr that the program "pixelserv" is listening to. When your browser tries to access any URL, pixelserv will give back a small gif.

That's it. Any "overlaying" that happens is just due to the way the web page is set up. Probably what is happening is that the link is set up to display a picture with a click-able link that is somewhere else. The picture is on one of the blocked hostnames and the link isn't.

I answer to myself: yes it is related to openvpn connection.

I must run adblock first then enable vpn.

Striatum:
Possibly, maybe even probably. I don't use vpn so can't speak to that. Hmmm, maybe all your internet accesses are going through whatever is at the other end of your vpn pipe, and that is filtering them out?

Both "ping -c1 -w1 4.2.2.5" and "wget "http://pgl.yoyo.org/…" should work. What does traceroute show?
Here's what mine shows on my Windows box:

>tracert 4.2.2.5
Tracing route to vnsc-bak-dsl.genuity.net [4.2.2.5]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms    <1 ms     1 ms  [192.168.1.1]
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.1
  3    42 ms     8 ms    39 ms  70.252.93.254
  4    15 ms    41 ms    22 ms  dist1-vlan52.ltrkar.sbcglobal.net [76.253.179.33]
  5     9 ms     8 ms     8 ms  bb1-10g3-0-0.ltrkar.sbcglobal.net [151.164.99.216]
  6   205 ms   123 ms    86 ms  151.164.99.141
  7    26 ms    73 ms    29 ms  xe-11-2-0.edge4.Chicago3.Level3.net [4.68.62.41]
  8    79 ms    26 ms    26 ms  vlan52.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.138.190]
  9    85 ms    71 ms    89 ms  ae-5-5.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.140.193]
 10    27 ms    25 ms    89 ms  ae-21-54.car1.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.68.101.98]
 11    39 ms    26 ms    71 ms  vnsc-bak-dsl.genuity.net [4.2.2.5]

Trace complete.

On the router it shows the same thing, except of course the 1st hop isn't there.