General MoBlock thread

[nymaar]

Dear friends,

I am starting to be really desperate about the installation. My distro is 11.10 Ocellot. I follow simple installation procedure:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jre-phoenix/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install moblock blockcontrol mobloquer

I constantly get back errors that "E: Package 'moblock' has no installation candidate" and the same for "blockcontrol" and "mobloquer". (I dont copy / paste from Terminal because I have in my native language - Czech).

I am a total newbie in Linux so do not use "heavy guns" on me, I wouldn't understand. BUT I am not stupid so please help me with it or I will get mad (I really am trying to google it for some time now ...

Thanx

[Gavin77]

Moblock is the old version, you should try installing pgl-gui (and it's dependencies). The Oneiric version has been broken ever since it was released but the Natty version works fine.

[nymaar]

Hi! Thanx for a quick answer.

Just an adequate question following .. I tried install pgl-gui (dependancies including) from the Software Center some time ago but the result was in getting some error messages etc when launching it. I also tried this IPLIST by Uljanow with the same result and I hope I didn't spoile something with it.

So as You say the Oneric ver. is broken, You mean the pgl for Oneric OR the Oneric distro of Ubuntu is broken?

Also if there is some chance You could send me a link to Natty working version I would appreciate it (i don't know how to compile .deb packages though but I will try if there is no direct install link for terminal

The "underground" question is pointed to the pgl creators (with all respect and thanks for their hard work of course) why it is SO difficult to get some info about that. I mean if I simply want to and love to use this great app, why is it so hard to get it alive on a most recent Ubuntu system... this may be rhetoricall question and I mean it with a respect!

Thank You,

o_.

[Gavin77]

When you add the repository for moblock/pgl just change the source from Oneiric to Natty.

In Muon Software Centre, goto Settings - Configure Software Sources
Under Other Software, find the jre-phoenix entry and click edit and change Oneiric to Natty.

Do this before installing pgl. If it's already installed just remove it, reload the package list and install again.

[nymaar]

Oh Gavin77,

thank You much! Now it is as it is supposed to be and all working (up to now) like a charm Strange is that You really do not get this info so easy and especially from the official sources But never mind.

Anyway I thank You again!

Regards, O_.

[jre]

Hi,

first off, thanks Gavin77, it's great to see that there is some community that does support.

Beginning with oneiric I only offer pgl packages. Today I already strongly recommend to use pgl on all distros, and will probably force the older distros to upgrade to pgl, too. So never install moblock.

Please tell me about the problem with the oneiric version (describe what happens when, post logfiles and the output of "pglcmd status" and "pglcmd test", ...).
The package builds fine, so I thought it was working. This is the first time I heard about that (unless I forgot it).

Generally about support: I still have to work more on replacing "moblock" with "pgl". You may help by spreading the word. E.g. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MoBlock is freely editable, and creating a nearly identical page for pgl is not too hard. These are just little steps for you, but they will help the whole project.
You may also tell me, where you were directed to using moblock, and where you hoped to find information about pgl, but didn't find it. (Best option is always to directly update outdated information, otherwise comment on that site or contact the site owner to update the information).

Another problem is, that the old peerguardian project is dead and we basically lost our home phoenixlabs.org half a year ago. So you'll find us (or me) at peerguardian.sourceforge.net (peerguardian development).
Other ressources are moblock-deb.sourceforge.net (for Debian packages, similar to my Ubuntu ppa) and the above mentioned wiki. I strongly welcome any help with placing information on these places (preferrably by maintaining peerguardian.sourceforge.net and adding a wiki there, and redirecting there from all other places).

Did I mention I lack time?

[nymaar]

Hi jre,

for the start: I don't know if which You posted is directed to me but if so I am sorry for my late answer. I was more interested in a snb freerides lately and I was quite satisfied with the answer Gavin77 gave to me but now I will try to come back to it and kindly respond.

I will try to answer Your questions from the newbie point of view if You are interested and describe the way I took. I will presume You'll understand I am an Ubuntu (Linux) beginner and You can catch my drift.

First of all: As a Win user and a torrent lover I knew a Peerguardian. I was looking for a Linux substitution and I found this site https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MoBlock . I tried Iplist by Uljanov and found out it doesn't work as i expected or I was just not enough skilled to get it running properly on Oneric.

The site also provide some info about moblock and related packages so I tried to install it via PPA and also via Synaptics. The results were the same as I described in my first post here few posts back. The same it was with the links available throughout the "best things to do after installing Oneric" related articles ( e.g. http://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/installing-moblock-deb-moblock-nfblock-blockcontrol-and-mobloquer-in-ubuntu-11-04-natty-narwhal/ ). After that I didn't give up but started to be a little desperate (I admit it might have been just some kind of "blindness" or incapability of finding something useful) and after while I found the site http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/index.html (THIS is the place where I really expected to find the information .. which You asked me). Even this site didn't give me much hope because I really don't find it very useful ( I know, now "linux users" will sigh and close the page but ... ) ... but Linux is fortunately starting to be more "user friendly" with all the Ubuntu distros and I think people like You have been trying to follow the stream and do things adequately "user friendly".

So "what happens when" is not my case... I couldn't simply find any working SIMPLE (please don't kill me for that) solution or a link to install properly MoBlock or PGL either via PPL or Synaptics until Gavin77 had directed me to this https://launchpad.net/~jre-phoenix/+archive/ppa/+build/2790886 link which now works perfectly but is for Natty distro (I don't actually care but the thing is I was lucky to get a proper answer.). But anyway ... MoBlock is probably the thing I have installed now (or maybe not, I just followed Gavin77's advice and I can't recognize what is the version now I just know I have Mobloquer graph. interface installed which tells me "MoBlock is up and running".

I can't even give You logfiles because when I installled via PPA I got the terminal mesaages in Czech language which is my system language but it was as I wrote before: something about "Oneric has no installation candidate"...

So, sorry for my bad English and I hope I gave You some feedback. Finally I must say I admire Your work (free) very much and I hope I didn't offend You with something. Please let me know if there is something I could explain or do more.

Regards, Ondrej

Did I mention I lack the time either? Never mind. You do great job. I am just an user

[uncleBez]

Not really sure how to go about this, or what information beyond what I supply here would be useful, feel free to tell me.

I'm not at the offending machine right now, so can get more info later if necessary.

However while running peerguardian on ubuntu 11.10 and while a couple of torrents are connected. After about 10 mins of having peerguardian running, browsing of websites becomes impossibly slow, if not stopped.

I have read snippets on how to determine what block file blocks what ip address etc, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here, since I was able to browse fine for around 10 mins and then not browse anything.

After stopping peerguardian usually a few seconds to a minute after stopping it browsing becomes possible again (it may be the torrents, but I stop those before stopping peerguardian).

Any tips on how one might diagnose such an issue?

[Gavin77]

Assuming you have pgl-gui installed, click on the configure tab then on the right under whitelist click the green plus sign. Fill out the box like my attachment picture and you should be OK to go.

Since you're using 11.10 you might find it useful to read the previous few pages here as to why I'm using the 11.04 (Natty) version on 11.10. On Oneiric if you reload the lists it disables itself so if you have pgl running when it updates daily you'll find it istn't running afterwards.

Saying that, nobody else has confirmed or denied my problem but I've tried it on a newly installed system with the same results.

[SirLafsalot]

Gavin77 said:

nobody else has confirmed or denied my problem

I can confirm your problem. I run two systems, one with Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) and one with Linux Mint 12, which is based upon Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric). Both do exactly as you describe.

Plus, whenever I open pgl-gui, I get the warning shown in the attached image.


I checked the two log files, as directed, and found the following:

From pglcmd.log:

2012-02-29 07:19:38 EST Begin: pglcmd update
Updating blocklists ...
Updating bluetack_dshield... . No update available.
Extracting bluetack_dshield, detected 7z...
7-Zip (A) [64] 9.20  Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov  2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=C,Utf16=off,HugeFiles=on,2 CPUs)

Processing archive: /var/spool/pgl/bluetack_dshield/downloaded/bluetack_dshield

Extracting  bt_dshield.txt

Everything is Ok

Size:       6927
Compressed: 1728
done.
Blocklists updated.
Building blocklist ...
WARN: Invalid ASCII line:
INFO: ASCII: 120 entries loaded from "STDIN"
INFO: Merged 10 of 120 entries.
INFO: Blocking 110 IP ranges (5220 IPs).
Blocklist built.
Reloading pgld   ...done.
2012-02-29 07:19:44 EST End: pglcmd update
pglcmd.wd: pgld is not running!
The watchdog detected that the daemon is not running.
To disable the watchdog set WATCHDOG="0" in /etc/pgl/pglcmd.conf.
Now doing a restart:
 * Restarting only PeerGuardian Linux pgld

From pgld.log:

Feb 29 07:19:44 INFO: Closing logfile: /var/log/pgl/pgld.log
Feb 29 07:19:44 INFO: Reopened logfile: /var/log/pgl/pgld.log
Feb 29 07:19:44 WARN: pgld dbus is already initialized.

Feb 29 07:19:44 ERROR: Cannot initialize D-Bus
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: Connected to dbus system bus.
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: Started.
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: ASCII: 110 entries loaded from "/var/lib/pgl/master_blocklist.p2p"
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: Blocking 110 IP ranges (5220 IPs).
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: NFQUEUE: binding to queue 92
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: ACCEPT mark: 20
Feb 29 07:23:54 INFO: REJECT mark: 10

This occurred after I deleted all downloaded blocklists and set pgl-gui to only load the bluetack_dshield list as a test. I originally got the warning in the attached image when I first installed pgl with the default list selection, so I went through three tests, loading only one list (as shown), two lists and three. Every time, I got the same warning in the attached image, the same "WARN: Invalid ASCII line:" error, and the log files looked very similar to what I have shown here.

I am going to remove pgl, try changing the repository to "Natty", as suggested, reinstall pgl, and see what happens. <<Time passes>> Okay, I did that and got the following from pglcmd.log (not including all of the download and extract messages):

done.
WARN: Invalid ASCII line:
INFO: ASCII: 791177 entries loaded from "STDIN"
INFO: Merged 573455 of 791177 entries.
INFO: Blocking 217722 IP ranges (2800039871 IPs).
Blocklist built.
Inserting iptables ...
..Setting up iptables for INPUT:
....Creating chain and inserting NFQUEUE rule                            [ OK ]
....Whitelisting IP ranges                                               [ OK ]
....Inserting block rule                                                 [ OK ]
..Setting up iptables for OUTPUT:
....Creating chain and inserting NFQUEUE rule                            [ OK ]
....Whitelisting IP ranges                                               [ OK ]
....Inserting block rule                                                 [ OK ]
..Setting up iptables for FORWARD:
....Creating chain and inserting NFQUEUE rule                            [ OK ]
....Inserting block rule                                                 [ OK ]
..Allowing loopback traffic: INPUT OUTPUT                                [ OK ]
..Allowing OUTPUT traffic to DNS server 192.168.1.1                      [ OK ]
..Allowing FORWARD traffic to DNS server 192.168.1.1                     [ OK ]
..Allowing LAN traffic ...
....INPUT from 192.168.1.0/24                                            [ OK ]
....OUTPUT to 192.168.1.0/24                                             [ OK ]
....FORWARD from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.1.0/24                        [ OK ]
..LAN traffic allowed.
..Activating chains:
....INPUT
....OUTPUT
....FORWARD
..Chains activated.
Iptables inserted.
Starting pgld                                                            [ OK ]
Starting pglcmd.wd                                                       [ OK ]
2012-02-29 13:12:39 EST End: pglcmd start

And this from pgld.log:

Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: Connected to dbus system bus.
Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: Started.
Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: ASCII: 217722 entries loaded from "/var/lib/pgl/master_blocklist.p2p"
Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: Blocking 217722 IP ranges (2800039871 IPs).
Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: NFQUEUE: binding to queue 92
Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: ACCEPT mark: 20
Feb 29 13:12:39 INFO: REJECT mark: 10

As you can see, I still got the "WARN: Invalid ASCII line:" in the log file during the installation. When I opened pgl-gui, I again got the warning in the attached image. So far, I have tried an Update, a Reload, and a Restart, all of which worked without disabling pgl. But, I did get the following log entry in pglcmd.log:

2012-02-29 13:20:20 EST Begin: pglcmd restart
Stopping pglcmd.wd   ...done.
Emailing stats   ...done.
Deleting iptables ...
Please install an MTA on this system if you want to use sendmail!
..Executing iptables remove script /var/lib/pgl/.pglcmd.iptables.remove.sh   ...done.
..Removing iptables remove script /var/lib/pgl/.pglcmd.iptables.remove.sh   ...done.
Iptables deleted.
Stopping pgld   ...done.
Inserting iptables ...
..Setting up iptables for INPUT:
....Creating chain and inserting NFQUEUE rule   ...done.
....Whitelisting IP ranges   ...done.
....Inserting block rule   ...done.
..Setting up iptables for OUTPUT:
....Creating chain and inserting NFQUEUE rule   ...done.
....Whitelisting ports   ...done.
....Whitelisting IP ranges   ...done.
....Inserting block rule   ...done.
..Setting up iptables for FORWARD:
....Creating chain and inserting NFQUEUE rule   ...done.
....Inserting block rule   ...done.
..Allowing loopback traffic: INPUT OUTPUT   ...done.
..Allowing OUTPUT traffic to DNS server 192.168.1.1   ...done.
..Allowing FORWARD traffic to DNS server 192.168.1.1   ...done.
..Allowing LAN traffic ...
....INPUT from 192.168.1.0/24   ...done.
....OUTPUT to 192.168.1.0/24   ...done.
....FORWARD from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.1.0/24   ...done.
..LAN traffic allowed.
..Activating chains:
....INPUT
....OUTPUT
....FORWARD
..Chains activated.
Iptables inserted.
Starting pgld   ...done.
Starting pglcmd.wd   ...done.
2012-02-29 13:20:21 EST End: pglcmd restart

No, I do not have an MTA installed (that I know of), which is new to the log entry here, but did show up during my original tests of loading one, two and three of the blocklists.

I apologize if anyone objects to this very long message. I cannot make heads or tails out of what is going on, but figured I would post all of this in case it might help someone else to figure it out. Cheers!