sfos/hosts

hostsblock

I reworked my hosts-based adblock script based on these insights:

The developer of this tool also made this one . Not sure what the difference is, but it gives far less flattering results.

Using firebog.net ’s meta list + Steven Black's largest list combined into one big hosts file I get ~80% with both tools.

A slightly stricter µBlock configuration gives me 100% though, and µBlock gets a lot of its lists in AdBlock format. I will try to figure out how to best convert these to hosts format.

If I use a combination of different hosts-based domain lists (as above) I get 87% and 65% resp. with those two test tools.

If I convert and add domains from ublock's lists to that I get 91% and 87% resp., even though this adds "only" a few thousand unique entries.

Therefore the script has grown quite complex:

• it converts uBO's uAssets as far as possible to be used by /etc/hosts
• it downloads everything from firebog.net's meta list plus Steven Black's largest hosts file
• it combines and unique-sorts everything, adds a header and finally overwrites the old /etc/hosts

Ultimately it comes down to get a timely combination of as many sources as possible. I'm already re-inventing the wheel here; various more configurable solutions exist. But then, the whole thing is simple enough.

Keep in mind that uBO does more than domain blocking, and many adblock-specific rules can never be part of hosts-based blocking.
OTOH hosts-based blocking is always system-wide and very light on resources.

Anyhow, get the script with systemd service/timer here:
Notabug.org or
Framagit.org

Adjust to your liking.
Copy the shell script to /usr/local/bin/hostsupdate and the systemd files to /etc/systemd/system.
Start & enable the timer: systemctl start --now hosts.timer && systemctl enable hosts.timer

Android App Support

It is possible to use the same hosts file under AAS. Create /usr/libexec/appsupport/alien-generate-extra-config.sh with the following content, and make it executable:

#!/bin/sh

echo ">>> $0" >&2
echo ">>> \$1 $1" >&2
echo ">>> \$2 $2" >&2

[ "$#" -gt 1 ] && shift

echo "lxc.mount.entry = /etc/hosts system/etc/hosts none bind,create=file 0 0" > "$1/29-hosts_config"

You should now also add the alias Android uses for ipv6 to /etc/hosts.head:

127.0.0.1		localhost.localdomain localhost
::1		localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6 ip6-localhost