packages/net/adblock/files

DNS based ad/abuse domain blocking

Description

A lot of people already use adblocker plugins within their desktop browsers, but what if you are using your (smart) phone, tablet, watch or any other (wlan) gadget!? Getting rid of annoying ads, trackers and other abuse sites (like facebook) is simple: block them with your router. When the DNS server on your router receives DNS requests, you will sort out queries that ask for the resource records of ad servers and return a simple 'NXDOMAIN'. This is nothing but Non-eXistent Internet or Intranet domain name, if domain name is unable to resolved using the DNS server, a condition called the 'NXDOMAIN' occurred.

Main Features

• Support of the following fully pre-configured domain blocklist feeds (free for private usage, for commercial use please check their individual licenses)

Feed	Enabled	Size	Focus	Information
1Hosts		VAR	compilation	Link
adaway		S	mobile	Link
adguard	x	L	general	Link
adguard_tracking	x	L	tracking	Link
android_tracking		S	tracking	Link
andryou		L	compilation	Link
anti_ad		L	compilation	Link
anudeep		M	compilation	Link
bitcoin		S	mining	Link
certpl	x	L	phishing	Link
cpbl		XL	compilation	Link
disconnect		S	general	Link
doh_blocklist		S	doh_server	Link
easylist		M	compilation	Link
easyprivacy		M	tracking	Link
energized_blu		XL	compilation	Link
energized_spark		L	compilation	Link
energized_ultimate		XXL	compilation	Link
firetv_tracking		S	tracking	Link
games_tracking		S	tracking	Link
hagezi		VAR	compilation	Link
hblock		XL	compilation	Link
lightswitch05		XL	compilation	Link
notracking		XL	tracking	Link
oisd_big		XXL	general	Link
oisd_nsfw		XXL	porn	Link
oisd_nsfw_small		M	porn	Link
oisd_small		L	general	Link
openphish		S	phishing	Link
phishing_army		S	phishing	Link
reg_cn		S	reg_china	Link
reg_cz		S	reg_czech+slovak	Link
reg_de		S	reg_germany	Link
reg_es		S	reg_espania	Link
reg_fi		S	reg_finland	Link
reg_fr		M	reg_france	Link
reg_id		S	reg_indonesia	Link
reg_it		S	reg_italy	Link
reg_jp		S	reg_japan	Link
reg_kr		S	reg_korea	Link
reg_lt		S	reg_lithuania	Link
reg_nl		S	reg_netherlands	Link
reg_pl		M	reg_poland	Link
reg_ro		S	reg_romania	Link
reg_ru		S	reg_russia	Link
reg_se		S	reg_sweden	Link
reg_vn		S	reg_vietnam	Link
smarttv_tracking		S	tracking	Link
spam404		S	general	Link
stevenblack		VAR	compilation	Link
stopforumspam		S	spam	Link
utcapitole		VAR	general	Link
wally3k		S	compilation	Link
whocares		M	general	Link
winhelp		S	general	Link
winspy		S	win_telemetry	Link
yoyo		S	general	Link

• List of supported and fully pre-configured adblock sources, already active sources are pre-selected.
  To avoid OOM errors, please do not select too many lists!
  List size information with the respective domain ranges as follows:
  • S (-10k), M (10k-30k) and L (30k-80k) should work for 128 MByte devices
  • XL (80k-200k) should work for 256-512 MByte devices
  • XXL (200k-) needs more RAM and Multicore support, e.g. x86 or raspberry devices
  • VAR (50k-900k) variable size depending on the selection
• Zero-conf like automatic installation & setup, usually no manual changes needed
• Simple but yet powerful adblock engine: adblock does not use error prone external iptables rulesets, http pixel server instances and things like that
• Supports six different DNS backend formats: dnsmasq, unbound, named (bind), kresd, smartdns or raw (e.g. used by dnscrypt-proxy)
• Supports three different SSL-enabled download utilities: uclient-fetch, full wget or curl
• Supports SafeSearch for google, bing, brave, duckduckgo, yandex, youtube and pixabay
• Supports RPZ-trigger 'RPZ-CLIENT-IP' to always allow/deny certain DNS clients based on their IP address (currently only supported by bind dns backend)
• Fast downloads & list processing as they are handled in parallel running background jobs with multicore support
• The download engine supports ETAG headers to download only updated feeds
• Supports a wide range of router modes, even AP modes are supported
• Full IPv4 and IPv6 support
• Provides top level domain compression ('tld compression'), this feature removes thousands of needless host entries from the blocklist and lowers the memory footprint for the DNS backend
• Provides a 'DNS Blocklist Shift', where the generated final DNS blocklist is moved to the backup directory and only a soft link to this file is set in memory. As long as your backup directory is located on an external drive, you should activate this option to save valuable RAM.
• Source parsing by fast & flexible regex rulesets, all rules and feed information are placed in an external JSON file ('/etc/adblock/adblock.feeds')
• Overall duplicate removal in generated blocklist file 'adb_list.overall'
• Additional local allowlist for manual overrides, located in '/etc/adblock/adblock.allowlist' (only exact matches).
• Additional local blocklist for manual overrides, located in '/etc/adblock/adblock.blocklist'
• Quality checks during blocklist update to ensure a reliable DNS backend service
• Minimal status & error logging to syslog, enable debug logging to receive more output
• Procd based init system support ('start', 'stop', 'restart', 'reload', 'enable', 'disable', 'running', 'status', 'suspend', 'resume', 'query', 'report')
• Auto-Startup via procd network interface trigger or via classic time based startup
• Suspend & Resume adblock temporarily without blocklist re-processing
• Provides comprehensive runtime information
• Provides a detailed DNS Query Report with DNS related information about client requests, top (blocked) domains and more
• Provides a powerful query function to quickly find blocked (sub-)domains, e.g. to allow certain domains
• Includes an option to generate an additional, restrictive 'adb_list.jail' to block access to all domains except those listed in the allowlist file. You can use this restrictive blocklist manually e.g. for guest wifi or kidsafe configurations
• Includes an option to force DNS requests to the local resolver
• Automatic blocklist backup & restore, these backups will be used in case of download errors and during startup
• Send notification E-Mails, see example configuration below
• Add new adblock feeds on your own with the 'Custom Feed Editor' in LuCI or via CLI, see example below
• Strong LuCI support, all relevant options are exposed to the web frontend

Prerequisites

• OpenWrt, latest stable release 24.x or a development snapshot
• A usual setup with a working DNS backend
• A download utility with SSL support: 'wget', 'uclient-fetch' with one of the 'libustream-*' ssl libraries or 'curl' is required
• A certificate store such as 'ca-bundle' or 'ca-certificates', as adblock checks the validity of the SSL certificates of all download sites by default
• For E-Mail notifications you need to install and setup the additional 'msmtp' package
• For DNS reporting you need to install the additional package 'tcpdump-mini' or 'tcpdump'

Please note:

• Devices with less than 128MB of RAM are not supported
• For performance reasons, adblock depends on gnu sort and gawk
• Before update from former adblock releases please make a backup of your local allow- and blocklists. In the latest adblock 4.4.x these lists have been renamed to '/etc/adblock/adblock.allowlist' and '/etc/adblock/adblock.blocklist'. There is no automatic content transition to the new files.
• The uci configuration of adblock is automatically migrated during package installation via the uci-defaults mechanism using a housekeeping script

Installation & Usage

• Make a backup and update your local opkg/apk repository
• Install the LuCI companion package 'luci-app-adblock' which also installs the main 'adblock' package as a dependency
• It's strongly recommended to use the LuCI frontend to easily configure all aspects of adblock, the application is located in LuCI under the 'Services' menu
• It is also strongly recommended to configure a ‘Startup Trigger Interface’ to ensure automatic adblock startup on WAN-ifup events during boot or reboot of your router

Adblock CLI interface

• The most important adblock functions are accessible via CLI as well.

~# /etc/init.d/adblock 
Syntax: /etc/init.d/adblock [command]

Available commands:
	start           Start the service
	stop            Stop the service
	restart         Restart the service
	reload          Reload configuration files (or restart if service does not implement reload)
	enable          Enable service autostart
	disable         Disable service autostart
	enabled         Check if service is started on boot
	suspend         Suspend adblock processing
	resume          Resume adblock processing
	query           <domain> Query active blocklists and backups for a specific domain
	report          [<cli>|<mail>|<gen>|<json>] Print DNS statistics
	running         Check if service is running
	status          Service status
	trace           Start with syscall trace
	info            Dump procd service info

Adblock Config Options

• Usually the auto pre-configured adblock setup works quite well and no manual overrides are needed

Option	Default	Description/Valid Values
adb_enabled	1, enabled	set to 0 to disable the adblock service
adb_feedfile	/etc/adblock/adblock.feeds	full path to the used adblock feed file
adb_dns	-, auto-detected	'dnsmasq', 'unbound', 'named', 'kresd', 'smartdns' or 'raw'
adb_fetchcmd	-, auto-detected	'uclient-fetch', 'wget' or 'curl'
adb_fetchparm	-, auto-detected	manually override the config options for the selected download utility
adb_fetchinsecure	0, disabled	don't check SSL server certificates during download
adb_trigger	-, not set	trigger network interface or 'not set' to use a time-based startup
adb_triggerdelay	5	additional trigger delay in seconds before adblock processing begins
adb_debug	0, disabled	set to 1 to enable the debug output
adb_nice	0, standard prio.	valid nice level range 0-19 of the adblock processes
adb_dnsshift	0, disabled	shift the blocklist to the backup directory and only set a soft link to this file in memory
adb_dnsforce	0, disabled	set to 1 to force DNS requests to the local resolver
adb_dnsdir	-, auto-detected	path for the generated blocklist file 'adb_list.overall'
adb_dnstimeout	20	timeout in seconds to wait for a successful DNS backend restart
adb_dnsinstance	0, first instance	set to the relevant dns backend instance used by adblock (dnsmasq only)
adb_dnsflush	0, disabled	set to 1 to flush the DNS Cache before & after adblock processing
adb_lookupdomain	localhost	domain to check for a successful DNS backend restart
adb_portlist	53 853 5353	space separated list of firewall ports which should be redirected locally
adb_report	0, disabled	set to 1 to enable the background tcpdump gathering process for reporting
adb_reportdir	/tmp/adblock-report	path for DNS related report files
adb_repiface	-, auto-detected	name of the reporting interface or 'any' used by tcpdump
adb_replisten	53	space separated list of reporting port(s) used by tcpdump
adb_repchunkcnt	5	report chunk count used by tcpdump
adb_repchunksize	1	report chunk size used by tcpdump in MB
adb_represolve	0, disabled	resolve reporting IP addresses using reverse DNS (PTR) lookups
adb_tld	1, enabled	set to 0 to disable the top level domain compression (tld) function
adb_backupdir	/tmp/adblock-backup	path for adblock backups
adb_tmpbase	/tmp	path for all adblock related runtime operations, e.g. downloading, sorting, merging etc.
adb_safesearch	0, disabled	enforce SafeSearch for google, bing, brave, duckduckgo, yandex, youtube and pixabay
adb_safesearchlist	-, not set	Limit SafeSearch to certain provider (see above)
adb_mail	0, disabled	set to 1 to enable notification E-Mails in case of a processing errors
adb_mailreceiver	-, not set	receiver address for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailsender	no-reply@adblock	sender address for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailtopic	adblock notification	topic for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_mailprofile	adb_notify	mail profile used in 'msmtp' for adblock notification E-Mails
adb_jail	0	create the additional restrictive 'adb_list.jail'
adb_jaildir	/tmp	path for the generated jail list

Examples

Change the DNS backend to 'unbound': No further configuration is needed, adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/var/lib/unbound' by default. To preserve the DNS cache after adblock processing please install the additional package 'unbound-control'.

Change the DNS backend to 'bind': Adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/var/lib/bind' by default. To preserve the DNS cache after adblock processing please install the additional package 'bind-rdnc'. To use the blocklist please modify '/etc/bind/named.conf':

in the 'options' namespace add:
  response-policy { zone "rpz"; };

and at the end of the file add:
  zone "rpz" {
    type master;
    file "/var/lib/bind/adb_list.overall";
    allow-query { none; };
    allow-transfer { none; };
  };

Change the DNS backend to 'kresd': Adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/tmp/kresd', no further configuration needed.

Change the DNS backend to 'smartdns': No further configuration is needed, adblock deposits the final blocklist 'adb_list.overall' in '/tmp/smartdns' by default.

Use the jail mode, a restrictive DNS blocklist: You can enable a restrictive 'adb_list.jail' to block access to all domains except those listed in the allowlist file. Usually this list will be generated as an additional list for guest or kidsafe configurations (for a separate dns server instance). If the jail directory points to your primary dns directory, the jail blocklist replaces your default blocklist.

Manually override the download options: By default adblock uses the following pre-configured download options:

• curl: --connect-timeout 20 --silent --show-error --location -o
• uclient-fetch: --timeout=20 -O
• wget: --no-cache --no-cookies --max-redirect=0 --timeout=20 -O

To override the default set 'adb_fetchparm' manually to your needs.

Enable E-Mail notification via 'msmtp': To use the email notification you have to install & configure the package 'msmtp'. Modify the file '/etc/msmtprc':

[...]
defaults
auth            on
tls             on
tls_certcheck   off
timeout         5
syslog          LOG_MAIL
[...]
account         adb_notify
host            smtp.gmail.com
port            587
from            dev.adblock@gmail.com
user            dev.adblock
password        xxx

Finally enable E-Mail support and add a valid E-Mail receiver address in LuCI.

Automatic feed updates and status reports via E-Mail
For a regular, automatic update of the used feeds or other regular adblock activities set up a cron job, e.g.:

# update the feeds every morning at 4 o'clock
00 04 * * * /etc/init.d/adblock reload

# send a report E-Mail every morning at 3 o'clock
00 03 * * * /etc/init.d/adblock report mail

# update the feeds every hour
0 */1 * * * /etc/init.d/adblock reload

Service status output: In LuCI you'll see the realtime status in the 'Runtime' section on the overview page. To get the status in the CLI, just call /etc/init.d/adblock status or /etc/init.d/adblock status_service:

~# /etc/init.d/adblock status
::: adblock runtime information
  + adblock_status  : enabled
  + adblock_version : 4.4.1-r2
  + blocked_domains : 881 753
  + active_feeds    : 1hosts, certpl, cpbl, doh_blocklist, hagezi, winspy
  + dns_backend     : dnsmasq (2.92_alpha5-r1), /mnt/data/adblock/backup, 73.12 MB
  + run_utils       : download: /usr/bin/curl, sort: /usr/libexec/sort-coreutils, awk: /usr/bin/gawk
  + run_ifaces      : trigger: trm_wwan , report: br-lan
  + run_directories : base: /mnt/data/adblock, backup: /mnt/data/adblock/backup, report: /mnt/data/adblock/report, jail: /tmp
  + run_flags       : shift: ✔, force: ✔, flush: ✘, tld: ✔, search: ✘, report: ✔, mail: ✘, jail: ✘
  + last_run        : mode: restart, 2025-05-03T11:43:03+02:00, duration: 0m 44s, 707.25 MB available
  + system_info     : OpenWrt One, mediatek/filogic, OpenWrt 24.10-SNAPSHOT r28628-cc1b909a6b 

Change/add adblock feeds
The adblock blocklist feeds are stored in an external JSON file '/etc/adblock/adblock.feeds'. All custom changes should be stored in an external JSON file '/etc/adblock/adblock.custom.feeds' (empty by default). It's recommended to use the LuCI based Custom Feed Editor to make changes to this file.
A valid JSON source object contains the following information, e.g.:

	[...]
	"adguard": {
		"url": "https://adguardteam.github.io/AdGuardSDNSFilter/Filters/filter.txt",
		"rule": "BEGIN{FS=\"[|^]\"}/^\\|\\|([[:alnum:]_-]{1,63}\\.)+[[:alpha:]]+\\^(\\$third-party)?$/{print tolower($3)}",
		"size": "L",
		"descr": "general"
	},
	[...]

Add an unique feed name (no spaces, no special chars) and make the required changes: adapt at least the URL, the regex rule, the size and the description for a new feed.

Support

Please join the adblock discussion in this forum thread or contact me by mail dev@brenken.org

Removal

Stop all adblock related services with /etc/init.d/adblock stop and remove the adblock package if necessary.

Donations

You like this project - is there a way to donate? Generally speaking "No" - I have a well-paying full-time job and my OpenWrt projects are just a hobby of mine in my spare time.

If you still insist to donate some bucks ...

• I would be happy if you put your money in kind into other, social projects in your area, e.g. a children's hospice
• Let's meet and invite me for a coffee if you are in my area, the “Markgräfler Land” in southern Germany or in Switzerland (Basel)
• Send your money to my PayPal account and I will collect your donations over the year to support various social projects in my area

No matter what you decide - thank you very much for your support!

Have fun! Dirk