Section 0 - Why doesn't this FAQ answer my question?
Section 1 - What does WWWOFFLE do (and what it doesn't)
Q 1.1 Does WWWOFFLE support http, ftp, finger, https, gopher, ...?
Q 1.2 Does WWWOFFLE run on systems other than UNIX?
Q 1.3 Can you change WWWOFFLE so that in the pages that it generates ...?
Section 2 - How to use WWWOFFLE to serve an intranet
Q 2.1 Can the WWWOFFLE proxy be accessed by clients other than localhost?
Q 2.2 Why can't remote clients access the WWWOFFLE proxy?
Q 2.3 Why can't remote clients follow all of the links?
Q 2.4 What are the security issues with WWWOFFLE in a multi-user environment?
Q 2.5 How can I have different configurations for different groups of users?
Section 3 - What to look for when WWWOFFLE fails
Q 3.1 Why does my browser return an empty page with WWWOFFLE but not without?
Q 3.2 Why can't WWWOFFLE find a host when the browser without it can?
Q 3.3 Why does my browser say "Connection reset by peer" when browsing?
Q 3.4 Why does following a link on an FTP site go to the wrong server?
Q 3.5 Why does WWWOFFLE not handle Cookies correctly?
Q 3.6 Why does WWWOFFLE re-request all pages that are viewed offline?
Q 3.7 Why does WWWOFFLE not allow access to certain password protected pages?
Q 3.8 Why does WWWOFFLE ignore some entries in the configuration file?
Q 3.9 Why are connections refused now that I have upgraded WWWOFFLE?
Q 3.10 What do the error messages mean when WWWOFFLE starts?
Q 4.1 Why doesn't my Browser start applet XYZ?
Q 4.2 Are unicoded applet names supported?
Q 4.3 Why does my Netcape Browser throw the trustProxy security exception?
Section 5 - How to make most use of WWWOFFLE features
Q 5.1 How can I see what monitored pages were downloaded last time online?
Q 5.2 How can I do a recursive fetch on a regular interval?
Q 5.3 How can I stop users from accessing the index?
Q 5.4 How can I use JunkBuster or Privoxy with WWWOFFLE?
Q 5.5 How can I improve the performance of WWWOFFLE.
Section 6 - More information about WWWOFFLE
Q 6.1 Who wrote WWWOFFLE, When and Why?
Q 6.2 What WWWOFFLE mailing lists are available?
Q 6.3 How do I report bugs in WWWOFFLE?
Some of these are supported and some are not.
http : Yes
The original version of WWWOFFLE only supported http.
ftp : Yes
Since version 2.0 there has been support for ftp URLs.
finger : Yes
Since version 2.1 there has been support for finger. Although this is
not a standard protocol for proxying there is no reason that it cannot
usefully be performed.
https : Yes
Since version 2.4 there has been support for transparent proxying of
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections. This includes the https
protocol.
gopher : No
This is a protocol that is less popular now that the WWW has really
taken off. From looking at browsers that support it, it would seem to
be not impossible, but the market for it seems to be limited.
For example DOS / Win3 / Win95 / WinNT / OS/2.
UNIX = Yes
This is the system that the program way designed and initially written
for, it should work on many versions of UNIX.
I know that it works on Linux, SunOS 4.1.x, Solaris 2.x, *BSD.
DOS/Win3 = No
The program was not designed for DOS, the filenames used and the
multi-process nature of the program do not allow this.
Win95/Win98/WinNT = Yes (Partly)
A Windows 32-bit version of the program is now available thanks to the
Cygwin development kit that provides a UNIX system call library
available on MS Windows.
OS/2 = Maybe
There is a toolkit called 'EMX' for OS/2 which does what Cygwin does for
Windows. So an OS/2 port shouldn't be a problem.
This is a question that gets asked a lot. People want to see Javascript, images, different colours ... on the web pages that WWWOFFLE generates. From version 2.2 this is no longer an issue since it is possible to customise all of the web-pages that WWWOFFLE itself generates. This means that the background colour and the font size can all be changed to suit your preferences. To find out how to do this look in the /var/spool/wwwoffle/html/*/messages directory (replace /var/spool/wwwoffle with the cache directory that you configured if it is different) and read the README file.
Yes it can, that facility has been present from the beginning. The other clients can be any type of computer that is connected to the server that is running the wwwoffled program. The only requirement is that they are networked to the server and that they have browsers on them configured to access the WWWOFFLE proxy.
The default situation in the wwwoffle.conf file is to not allow any clients to
access the proxy other than localhost. To allow them to access the proxy the
wwwoffle.conf file needs to be edited as described below and the new
configuration loaded.
The AllowedConnect section of the configuration file contains a list of hosts
that are allowed to connect to the WWWOFFLE proxy. These names are matched
against the name that WWWOFFLE gets when the connection is made and access is
allowed or denied. A form of wildcard matching is applied to the entries in
this list but no extra name lookups are performed.
For example you are using the private IP address space 192.168.*.* for your
intranet then your AllowedConnect section in the configuration file should look
like this.
AllowedConnect
{
192.168.*
}
This will allow all hosts that come from this set of IP addresses to connect to
the WWWOFFLE proxy.
Some of the links that are generated in the web pages that come out of the
WWWOFFLE proxy need to point to other pages on the proxy. To be able to do this
the name of the host running the proxy needs to be specified in the LocalHost
section of the configuration file.
For example if the computer running the WWWOFFLE proxy is called www-proxy then
the LocalHost section of the configuration file would look like this.
LocalHost
{
www-proxy
localhost
127.0.0.1
}
The first of the names is what is used by WWWOFFLE to generate these links. The
others are used for servers that do not get cached by the proxy.
Security is a feature that I have considered to some extent when writing WWWOFFLE although it has not been one of my biggest concerns. The issues are listed below. For the Win32 version it should be noted that on Win95/98 there is not the user level security that is provided by UNIX. It is not possible therefore to create files that are readable by WWWOFFLE and not by other users. The security features that are present in WWWOFFLE are therefore inapplicable to these systems. Configuration file password This file can have a password specified in it in the StartUp section that is used to limit access to the control features of WWWOFFLE. If set this password must be used to put WWWOFFLE online, put it offline, purge the cache, stop the server, edit the configuration file etc. If you have set a password then you should also make the file readable only by authorised users. The password is sent as plain text when using the wwwoffle program to control the wwwoffled server. The encryption used for the web page authentication is trivial. Proxy Authentication With the ability to be able to control access to WWWOFFLE using the HTTP/1.1 Proxy Authentication method, there is the added security risks of this. It is basically the same as for the configuration file password, the usernames and passwords are in plaintext in the configuration file and the password is send to the server using the same trivial encryption method. WWWOFFLE server uid/gid The uid and gid of the wwwoffled server process can be controlled by the run-uid and run-gid options in the StartUp section of the configuration file. This uid/gid needs to be able to read the configuration file (write is not required unless the interactive edit page is used) and have read/write access to the spool directory. If this option is used then the server must be started by root. Deleting requested URLs Only the user that makes a request for a page can delete that request, and then only when the deletion is done immediately. This is because a password is made by hashing the contents of the file in the outgoing directory. This means that read access to this directory must be denied for this to be secure. The built in web server This is a very simple server and will follow symbolic links, as a security feature only files that are world readable can be accessed. They must also be in a directory that the wwwoffled server can read. A check is not made for each directory component so world readable files in a directory readable only by the uid that runs wwwoffled are not safe. The use of CGIs in the local web server is configurable in the configuration file and will refuse to run files that are not world readable and world executable or if WWWOFFLE is running as root (see WWWOFFLE server uid/gid item above). Accessing the cache There is in general no problem with allowing users access to the cache provided it is read only (but see URLs with password below). The only concern is that if purging is done using the access time of the files then running grep on the cache will spoil this. URLs with Passwords The URLs that use usernames and passwords need to be stored in the cache. For simplicity they are not hidden in any way. This means that any URL that uses a username/password in it can show up in the log file (with Debug or ExtraDebug levels only). The files in the cache also contain the username/ password information and should be made inaccesible to users for that reason. Accessing The Server Access to the WWWOFFLE server on the proxy port 8080 is limited to the IP addresses and hostnames that are listed in the AllowedConnectHosts section of the configuration file. By default this is set only to allow localhost access. Any host that is not listed will not be able to access the proxy, but connections from them will be accepted and checked for validity before being rejected. This can lead to a denial of service attack where unauthorised hosts can keep WWWOFFLE busy and deny valid accesses. If you are using Linux kernel v2.2 (v2.4 is different) then the ipchains utility can be used to deny access to the proxy ports (see the ipchains HOWTO for kernel compilation details). The following two commands will prevent access from anywhere other than localhost, use them with care! /sbin/ipchains -A input -i lo --dport 8080:8081 -p tcp -j ACCEPT /sbin/ipchains -A input --dport 8080:8081 -p tcp -j DENY -l
When there are two groups of users that will access the same WWWOFFLE cache but
where each group has different WWWOFFLE configurations it is possible to run two
instances of WWWOFFLE.
For example in a school it may be required that the students can access the
cache but they cannot request new pages. The teachers must be able to access
the same cache and to be able to use WWWOFFLE online and request pages while
offline.
The two WWWOFFLE configuration files will be the same in most respects, but
there will be differences as shown below.
-- wwwoffle.student.conf -- -- wwwoffle.teacher.conf --
StartUp | StartUp
{ | {
http-port = 8080 | http-port = 9080
wwwoffle-port = 8081 | wwwoffle-port = 9081
password = secret | password = teacher
} | }
|
OfflineOptions | OfflineOptions
{ | {
<*://*/*> dont-request = yes |
} | }
|
AllowedConnectUsers | AllowedConnectUsers
{ | {
| teacher1:password1
| teacher2:password2
} | }
|
AllowedConnectHosts | AllowedConnectHosts
{ | {
| teacher1pc
| teacher2pc
} | }
The two copies of WWWOFFLE must use different port numbers. They use the same
spool directory and therefore the same web-pages are available to both sets of
users. You will need to have a password on the students version of WWWOFFLE to
stop them editing the configuration file, but for the teachers it may not be
required. To keep the students from accessing the teachers version of WWWOFFLE
you must use either the AllowedConnectHosts or the AllowedConnectUsers sections
in the configuration file. These will restrict access to either the set of
machines that the teachers have access to or will require a username/password to
be entered before browsing starts.
In the example above the students are not allowed to request any pages when
offline. This version of WWWOFFLE is never used in online mode so there is
never any way that the students can browse while online. Only the teachers
version of WWWOFFLE is ever used in online mode.
When using a browser to visit a web-page nothing is returned when WWWOFFLE is used as a proxy but when the site is accessed directly without WWWOFFLE the page is visible. This can have a number of causes (all reported to me or tested myself): a) The web server that you are accessing requires the User-Agent header. If it is not present or set to an uncommon value (not Netscape or IE) then it returns an empty page In this case if you have the CensorHeader configuration file section set to remove the User-Agent header then you should either not censor this header line or set a replacement string that is acceptable. b) As above, but it does not matter what the value is for it to return a non-empty page. The solution is the same except that any User-Agent string can be used. c) The web server uses cookies to maintain state. This is common on sites that are more concerned with form than content, often without warning. d) The browser and server are trying to use HTTP/1.1 extensions that WWWOFFLE is ignoring.
The most likely reason is that the DNS server that was configured when WWWOFFLE was started is no longer valid. This would happen for example if the file /etc/resolv.conf was changed after wwwoffled was run. This is not a WWWOFFLE only problem, but will affect any (most) programs when the DNS configuration is changed while they are running. When WWWOFFLE looks up a hostname it uses the standard UNIX library (libc) function call gethostbyname(). The name lookup part of libc (called the resolver library) is initialised when the program first uses a function from it. When a resolver library function is performed later it will use the configuration that was in place when the first function was used. The DNS configuration change may happen without you being aware of. Some of the user friendly PPP setup programs will change the /etc/resolv.conf file depending on which ISP you are connecting to. One example of a program that does this is kppp. Large browser projects (Netscape in particular) may use other methods of performing name lookups than the standard library. This mean that they may work even if the DNS configuration has changed since it was started. A working Netscape and a non-working WWWOFFLE may mean that your name server configuration has changed and is not a WWWOFFLE bug. It has often been suggested that WWWOFFLE be changed so that it calls the res_init() function each time that it goes online. This is the function that is called in all programs the first time that a DNS lookup is performed. It initialises the DNS resolver library. My objections to this are the following. There is nothing to say that calling res_init() more than once is safe on all systems, that calling res_init() more than once works on all systems or that calling res_init() more than once will work in future versions of the resolver library. The res_init() function is a very low-level function in the resolver library, it is not intended for this use. It is intended to initialise the resolver library, nowhere that I have seen does it say that it is safe to call it more than once or that it can be used to change the DNS lookup method. One solution is to run a local nameserver. The bind package contains the standard nameserver, but there are simpler alternatives for end-user systems. One option is pdnsd (http://home.t-online.de/home/Moestl/) which is a caching DNS-server. Whichever option you choose you will need to make localhost be the nameserver and the nameserver configuration needs to be changed when you go online.
This happens when using Netscape to access some web-pages. The cause is not known, but the problem is only seen when WWWOFFLE is used and not when a direct connection is made.
If there is a directory called '/dir' on an ftp server and you load the page 'ftp://server/' you get a directory listing that includes a link to '/dir'. Following this link should take the browser to 'ftp://server/dir/', but on some browsers it goes to 'ftp://dir/' instead. I think that this behaviour is due to the browser and not WWWOFFLE. If you went to 'http://server/' and followed the link to '/dir/' then you would expect to go to 'http://server/dir/' and not to 'http://dir/'. This is just common sense. Why the browser is different for ftp than http I am not sure. [This should be fixed in version 2.1 of WWWOFFLE, so is not really applicable to this version of the FAQ]
Normal proxies cannot cache the result of URLs that are requested with Cookies because the result is different for each user. WWWOFFLE will cache pages that have cookies in them because it is intended to reduce the network traffic. If you want to use cookies when you are browsing then any pages that you see should not be considered as valid when you see them offline. The best way of handling this if there is a particular site that you visit is to put it into the DontCache section of the configuration file. It is not possible for WWWOFFLE to cache pages that use cookies to control the content in the same way that it handles pages that do not use cookies. Any implementation of cookie handling would need to give different replies to users depending on the cookie that is in the request. This would mean caching different pages for the same URL. But there is a problem that going to page A might set a cookie and then going to page B will give a different page. So, for example, if you have a cookie and you have page B cached when you are offline, following the link from B to A may give you a new cookie from A (when you go online and fetch A). This means that you cannot now go back to B when offline because the cookie is different (and so is the page, but you don't have it cached). An even worse problem is that reloading page C with the same cookie gives you a different page each time. This is because the cookie is used to count the number of times that you have visited the page. There is no way to know this and therefore you would keep getting the same page C (the cached one) even if you should be getting different ones.
When offline and browsing pages through WWWOFFLE it sometimes happens that pages are requested again although they are already in the WWWOFFLE cache. There are two possible causes of this that are known. 1) When choosing bookmarks from Netscape (and possibly other browsers) a new request is made for the bookmarked page. 2) Some users have reported that when using Netscape all pages that are viewed are requested again. (Not all users see this behaviour and no particular reason has been found why some people see is and other do not.) In both of these cases the browser is sending a request that tells WWWOFFLE that a new version of the page is required. This is the same as the forced refresh option that most browsers offer. A header is sent with the request that tells all proxies between the browser and the server that a new version of the page is required and that cached versions should be ignored. To disable this action in WWWOFFLE there is an option called 'pragma-no-cache' that defaults to 'yes'. When this option is set the requests for a refreshed version of the page will force a new version to be requested. Setting this option to 'no' will stop the two types of behaviour that is described above.
When a browser requests a page that has a username and a password associated with it there is defined to be a dialog between the browser and server to provide the correct page. 1) When a browser first requests a page that is password protected a normal request is sent without a password in it. This is obvious since there is no way to decide in advance which pages have passwords. 2) When a server receives a request for page that requires authentication, but for which there is none in the request, it sends back a '401 Unauthorized' response. This contains a "realm" which defines the range of pages over which this username/password pair is valid. A realm is not a well defined range, it can be any set of pages on the same server, there is no requirement for them to be related, although they normally are. 3) When a browser receives a '401' reply it will prompt the user for a username and password if it does not already have one for the specified realm. If one is already known then there is no need to prompt the user again. 4) The request that the browser sends back this time includes in the header the username and password pair, but otherwise the same request as in (1). 5) The server now sends back the requested page. WWWOFFLE has features in it that make this easier for the user. Many browsers for example will jump straight to step 4 in the list above if they know that there is a password set for one of the pages on the server. This means that if a user tries to browse password protected pages when offline then there is nothing in the WWWOFFLE cache that will tell the browser that a username and password is needed. Only by storing the result that comes back in step 2 can WWWOFFLE store enough information to force the browser to prompt the user. When a page is requested and there is a username and password in the request then WWWOFFLE will first request the page without a username and password. This is so that step 1 abocve is not missed out even if the browser wanted to. If the page does not require a password then the version of the page without the password is sent to the browser. If a password is required then WWWOFFLE will make a second request with the username and password and send this result to the browser. Some servers have taken this further, and they expect users to send a password for each page. If a request is sent without a password then the browser is re-directed to the login page. The special behaviour of WWWOFFLE described above does not work in these situations. To disable this feature in WWWOFFLE there is an option 'try-without-password' that defaults to 'yes'. When this option is set the requests for a page with a password will force WWWOFFLE to make a request without a password. Setting this option to 'no' will stop the WWWOFFLE behaviour that is described above.
When entries in the configuration file contain a URL-SPECIFICATION then only one
of them can be used for the URL that is being processed. The one that is used
is the first one found in the order that they exist in the configuration file
that matches.
For example, consider the following section of a configuration file:
Section
{
<http://www.foo/*> option = 1
<http://*.foo/*> option = 2
<http://*/*> option = 3
}
When the URL that is being processed is http://www.bar.com/foo.html then it will
match only the third of the entries and the value of the option that is used is
3. When the URL being processed is http://www.foo/bar.html then it will match
all three of the entries, but it is the first one that is used.
The example given above is the correct ordering for these entries, the most
specific one is first and the least specific (more general ones) are listed
later.
If the above entries were re-written so that they looked like the following the
it would not work since the first entry matches all HTTP URLs and the later
entries in the configuration file will not be checked.
Section
{
<http://*/*> option = 3
<http://*.foo/*> option = 2
<http://www.foo/*> option = 1
}
The most likely answer to this question is that the new version of WWWOFFLE that you are using has got the IPv6 options enabled and the previous version did not. Since version 2.6d of WWWOFFLE it has supported the newest version of the Internet Protocol which is version 6. This is often abbreviated to IPv6, the previous version of the protocol was version 4 and is often refered to as IPv4. This is a fundamental change to the networking functions in WWWOFFLE at the lowest level and requires that you are using WWWOFFLE on an operating system that supports IPv6. Nearly all of the changes in WWWOFFLE are hidden from the user, but there are some configuration file options that will have changed. With IPv4 the IP address for the current computer is always '127.0.0.1' which is known by the name of 'localhost'. With IPv6 there is a new localhost address called 'ip6-localhost' and using the address '::1'. (With IPv4 the IP addresses are formed from 4 bytes which are written in decimal with a '.' between them. With IPv6 the IP addresses are composed of 16 bytes which are written in hexadecimal in groups of 16 bits with a ':' between them. A single consecutive set of groups of 16 bits that are all zeroes can be omitted and a '::' used in its place, so that '::1' is the same as '0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1'). When an IPv4 client program (a browser) connects to an IPv6 server program (WWWOFFLE) on the same computer the IPv6 address that the server sees the connection to come from is '::ffff:127.0.0.1'. This is a special case of the IPv6 address naming that allows for including existing IPv4 addresses into the IPv6 address space. The most common cause of not being able to connect to WWWOFFLE when using an IPv6 enabled version is that the entry for '::ff:127.0.0.1' is not listed in the configuration file as one of the LocalHost entries. It is also possible that the entries in LocalNet or AllowedConnectHosts will need to be updated if you are running a local network of clients that connect to the same WWWOFFLE server.
When WWWOFFLE starts it does a number of things during the startup process that
can cause error messages or warnings to be generated. These messages will be
contained in the WWWOFFLE log file (if you started wwwoffled with the '-d'
option) or in syslog (if enabled).
If there is an error then normally the program will stop and the error message
will explain what the problem is. These error messages should be self
explanatory.
For example:
Fatal: Error in configuration file '/etc/wwwoffle.conf'
There are also a number of warnings that can appear that while they are not
fatal may be important to try and fix or they may not.
An example of one that should be fixed is:
Warning: Running with root user or group privileges is not recommended.
This warning is telling you that any security related problems with WWWOFFLE
will have more serious effects. The WWWOFFLE programs can be run as any user,
but it is always a good idea to run programs with the least priviledges that
they require. In the case of WWWOFFLE there is no need for it to operate as the
root user. There are options in the wwwoffle.conf file to operate the program
as another user. It would be a good idea to use these options (run-uid and
run-gid) and start wwwoffled as root or change user before starting wwwoffled.
An example of a less serious warning (with long lines wrapped) is:
Warning: Failed to bind IPv4 server socket to '0.0.0.0' port '8080' [Address \
already in use].
Warning: Cannot create HTTP IPv4 server socket (but the IPv6 one might accept \
IPv4 connections).
Warning: Failed to bind IPv4 server socket to '0.0.0.0' port '8081' [Address \
already in use].
Warning: Cannot create WWWOFFLE IPv4 server socket (but the IPv6 one might \
accept IPv4 connections).
These messages will appear if WWWOFFLE is compiled with the IPv6 option and you
are running it on an operating system where IPv6 sockets will accept IPv4
connections. For example Linux users will see this message, but FreeBSD users
will not. If the IPv6 compilation option is used then WWWOFFLE will by default
try to open both an IPv4 socket and IPv6 socket to await connections. If the
IPv6 socket will accept IPv4 connections then the IPv4 socket can not be opened
because the IPv6 one is already open. This is not a problem, you can remove the
message by setting 'bind-ipv4 = none' in the configuration file. Some operating
systems consider that allowing IPv6 sockets to accept IPv4 connections is a
security risk and require that separate sockets are opened. These systems will
not show the error message.
[Walter Pfannenmueller <pfn@online.de> writes:] I suppose you have enabled java support. Your Browser says something like "Can't start Applet XYZ.class". Check if the file has been successfully downloaded by WWWOFFLE. If the file is accessible, open a java console (your browser should provide something like that) and get more details on the problem. Probably it's a security - violation. Every Browser has it's own SecurityManager class and you should consult the manual how you can lower these restrictions. If your applet however tries to get in contact with some server functionality (servlets, RMI, CORBA), we are at the end of the possibilities of an offline reader.
[Walter Pfannenmueller <pfn@online.de> writes:] I don't know. I transform those names to UTF8 encoding and the rest depends on what your filesystem or the host filesystem does with it. Java compilers do have problems with unicode, too, even though it should be supported. I'd appreciate any information that helps enlighten the dark. I'd like to know how to code Unicode to UTF8 transformation. The implementation in javaclass.c looks somehow awkward.
[Walter Pfannenmueller <pfn@online.de> writes:]
The error message should be
Could not resolve IP for host ... See the trustProxy property.
The Netscape Browser tries to verify the applets source host IP address.
While offline this is not possible. Therefore you have to persuade
the Browser to trust the proxy. To do this you have to find the preferences
file preferences.js on UNIX or prefs.js on Windows. Edit the file,
even though it says "don't edit" and insert the line
user_pref("security.lower_java_network_security_by_trusting_proxies", true);
somewhere. be sure to have closed all browser windows, because the
preferences file will be overwritten on closing. This should work for
all Netscape 4.0x and 4.5.
For more information have a look at
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/technote/security/sectn3.html
The easiest way to do this is to go the the monitored web pages index and sort the pages by "Access Time" (http://localhost:8080/index/monitor/?atime). Each page is accessed when it is monitored so the most recently monitored ones are the ones at the top of this listing.
This is a combination of the recursive fetch option and the monitor option. If you select the page that you want in the recursive fetch index (http://localhost:8080/refresh-options/) with the options that you want and press the button you will be presented with a page telling you that the request has been recorded. There is a link on here to allow you to monitor this request, which takes you to the normal monitor page (http://localhost:8080/monitor-options) but with the URL already filled in.
Access to the indexes can be denied to users by using the configuration file
DontGet section.
DontGet
{
http://localhost:8080/index*
}
You must make sure that the hostname that you give is the first one in the
LocalHost section since this is what will be checked.
The Internet JunkBuster is a program that can filter out many of the junk adverts and other features of web-pages. Privoxy is an alternative program based on the Internet JunkBuster but adding many more features. The most recent versions of WWWOFFLE add in many of the features of the JunkBuster and Privoxy programs but not all of them. If you look at the options that WWWOFFLE has you may decide that it can replace JunkBuster, but probably not Privoxy. If you decide that you do want to use WWWOFFLE with either of these programs then there are two options: 1) Browser <-> WWWOFFLE <-> JunkBuster/Privoxy <-> Internet Any pages that the user requests that JunkBuster/Privoxy blocks will have the JunkBuster/Privoxy error message stored in the WWWOFFLE cache. Any recursive fetching or images that WWWOFFLE gets in the background are passed through JunkBuster/Privoxy and the error messages are cached. In this case you need to set your WWWOFFLE proxy configuration to point to Junkbuster/Privoxy. 2) Browser <-> JunkBuster/Privoxy <-> WWWOFFLE <-> Internet Any pages that the user requests that JunkBuster/Privoxy blocks will not be stored in the WWWOFFLE cache. Any recursive fetching or images that WWWOFFLE gets in the background are not passed through JunkBuster/Privoxy and they will be stored in the WWWOFFLE cache but blocked when the browser tries to view them. If you decide that WWWOFFLE will be doing lots of fetching because you are using it to browse offline then the 1st method is best. If you decide that you will be only using it while online and not requesting pages when offline then the 2nd method is best. If reducing bandwidth is the most important feature of JunkBuster/Privoxy then the 1st option is the best since it will stop WWWOFFLE fetching the junk pages.
Depending on what you are trying to improve with WWWOFFLE there are a number of
changes that can be made that will improve the performance.
1) If you want WWWOFFLE to serve the cached web-pages faster.
The WWWOFFLE programs need to store the web-pages that are cached on disk. This
is the major point that can be exploited to improve the performance and make it
run faster.
The first thing to try is to increase the performance of the physical disk that
you are using for the cache. This could mean any one of a number of things: a
faster disk, using a partition on a separate disk from other heavily used
partitions or putting the disk on an IDE controller that is not shared with
other disks.
Next you can try improving the performance of the operating system hardware
interface. This can either be by selecting the correct driver for the hardware
or by tuning the disk driver parameters (e.g. by using hdparm on Linux).
Another thing to check is the filesystem that is used. Some operating systems
allow a choice of filesystems to use for any disk-partition. On Linux for
example using reiserfs instead of ext2fs should improve the performance of
WWWOFFLE due to the more efficient handling of large directories. There may
also be options that can be used when the disk is mounted that will improve the
performance.
In Linux for example it is possible to change the size of the kernel buffers
that are used for disk caching by performing the following:
echo 25 30 75 > /proc/sys/vm/buffermem
echo 10 10 65 > /proc/sys/vm/pagecache
This increases the amount of memory that is reserved for file caching and the
maximum that is allowed for file caching.
The other change that can be made is to optimise the configuration file. There
are lots of things that can be done here, all have disadvantages of one type or
another. Reduce the number of entries in the DontGet section, this will reduce
the amount of time that needs to be spent searching for the URL that was
requested, use wildcards where possible. Disable the modification of HTML and
animated GIFs (the ModifyHTML section). Reduce the maximum age in the Purge
section to give a smaller cache.
2) If you want WWWOFFLE to reduce network bandwidth.
One feature of WWWOFFLE that appeals to many users is the ability to reduce the
network bandwidth. This can be done in a number of ways, decreasing the
frequency at which 'static' pages are requested, keeping more pages in the
cache, blocking adverts or ignoring server requests to keep reloading the same
page.
The static pages that can usefully be cached for a long time are images. These
might be the icons that appear all over pages on the same server. These can be
preserved in the WWWOFFLE cache for a long time and only requested infrequently
since they change rarely. The following example shows the changes that could be
made to reduce the bandwidth to one particular set of static images (these URL
specific options need to go before the generic options in the section).
OnlineOptions
{
<http://images*.slashdot.org> request-changed = 4w
<http://*slashdot.org> request-changed-once = yes
}
Purge
{
<http://images*.slashdot.org> age = 6w
<http://*slashdot.org> age = 4w
}
More pages can be kept in the cache by increasing the 'age' options in the Purge
section of the configuration file. This can be applied to all pages or
selectively to those sites that are visited often.
The DontGet section of the configuration file has great advantages for reducing
the bandwidth on the network by blocking items that you don't want to see.
These can be banner adverts or web-hit counters for example.
Another feature that some web-servers find useful is to force the browser to
keep reloading the same page. This can be done in a number of ways and there
are many ways in WWWOFFLE to ignore these requests. Using the 'request-changed'
or 'request-changed-once' options in the OnlineOptions section will mean that
WWWOFFLE will not make another request for a cached page until it has reached a
certain age. The 'request-expired' and 'request-no-cache' options can be set to
'no' so that even pages that the server says have expired are not requested
again.
The WWWOFFLE program was written by Andrew M. Bishop (amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk) in 1996,97,98,99,2000,01,02. There is a WWWOFFLE home-page on the World Wide Web, available via the author's home-page at http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/ . This is kept updated with news about the program, as new versions become available. An earlier program by the same author written in perl had been used for a while but it was realised that the functionality of that version was insufficient except for a small amount of use. Work on the WWWOFFLE program itself started in the Christmas holiday in 1996, initially as a hack to improve the perl version. After the release of the Beta version 0.9 at the beginning of January 1997 there was a lot of interest generated which led to the release of version 1.0 later that same month. More versions followed until December that year when version 2.0 was released. This contained several large new features (like FTP) and included a re-write of a large proportion of the code to make it easier to maintain and build on, this included changing completely the cache format. Version 2.1 was released in March 1998 with some more new features, version 2.2 in June 1998 with more features and version 2.3 in August 1998 with even more features. Version 2.4 had more features when it was released in December 1998 and version 2.5 had more again in September 1999. Version 2.6 released in November 2000 contained the ability to have different configuration options for different URLs. Version 2.7 released in February 2002 includes the zlib compression and IPv6 options that were added in the version 2.6 development cycle. It also changes the source tree layout, adds a configure script for configuration and adds --help and --version options to the programs. The main new program features are the new configuration editing pages and the automatic selection of translated messages based on browser settings. The Win32 version of the program was made possible by version beta-20 of the Cygwin development kit at the end of October 1998 when version 2.3e of WWWOFFLE was released. Versions 2.4b and 2.5a of WWWOFFLE were also released for Win32 although none of them work totally on most platforms due to incompatibilities. With version 1.1.7 of the cygwin DLL version 2.6a of WWWOFFLE is much more successful. The WWWOFFLE program can be freely distributed according to the terms of the GNU General Public License (see the file `COPYING').
There are three mailing lists available for WWWOFFLE. They can be subscribed to
in two different ways - on the WWWOFFLE users web-page and via e-mail.
wwwoffle-announce For announcements of new versions of WWWOFFLE.
wwwoffle-users For discussion of WWWOFFLE features, excluding operating
system specific features.
wwwoffle-win32 For discussion of WWWOFFLE on the Win32 system.
The first one is only for announcements from the author of WWWOFFLE, there is no
discussion allowed on them. The latter two are open for posting from members of
the list and others who are not subscribed.
All the mailing lists are run from a computer with dial-up access only. This
will mean that there will be a delay for messages sent to them.
To subscribe by e-mail send a message to majordomo@gedanken.demon.co.uk with the
message 'subscribe <group-name>' in the body, e.g. 'subscribe wwwoffle-announce'.
By e-mail, send them to me at amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk and put WWWOFFLE somewhere in the subject line. You can also report bugs or provide comments via the feedback form on the WWWOFFLE home-page on the World Wide Web accessible via http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/ . Before doing this, you should check the FAQ and the WWWOFFLE web-page to see if the answer is there. If it is not and you want to report it to me then it helps if you can reproduce the error, in particular you probably need to start wwwoffled with debugging enabled. If you use sh/bash as your shell then run wwwoffled -d 5 -c wwwoffle.conf > wwwoffled.log 2>&1 If you use csh/tcsh as your shell then run wwwoffled -d 5 -c wwwoffle.conf >& wwwoffled.log If you want even more debugging information then use '-d 6' instead of '-d 5'.