Diversion Alternate blacklist editing & possible wildcards?

[bibikalka]

I am trying to configure the alternate blacklist. Of most interest to me is to block a few additional specific sites for a few specific clients using blacklist.

In /opt/share/diversion/ I see a couple of lists:

# ls -lta denylist*
-rw-rw-rw-    1 admin    root           256 Aug 10 12:55 denylist.fs_conf
-rw-rw-rw-    1 admin    root           256 Aug 10 12:45 denylist.conf

But these appear to be exact in terms of what they block? No wildcards?

Do I just manually add more entries to denylist.fs_conf for the alternate blocking? What's the recommended approach?

 

[Twiglets]

To understand what can and cannot be in the blocklists ...

See https://diversion.ch/diversion/use/blocking-file-hosts-files.html

 

[SomeWhereOverTheRainBow]

To understand what can and cannot be in the blocklists ...

See https://diversion.ch/diversion/use/blocking-file-hosts-files.html

Be it wildcard, or host format.... all will be revealed at - https://diversion.ch/diversion/use/blocking-file-hosts-files.html - where all your blocking-dreams come true...

 

[bibikalka]

Be it wildcard, or host format.... all will be revealed at - https://diversion.ch/diversion/use/blocking-file-hosts-files.html - where all your blocking-dreams come true...

That page is actually quite confusing in how it's written. It has 1 example of what to do, and then appear to be another example of what NOT to do.

Also, looks like wildcards are no longer in use? I don't see that the script picks up anything like wc-blocklist.

Is denylist used in blocking defines wild cards, or exact sites?

 

[EmeraldDeer]

I have not used it, but one offs to denylist are added via the diversion command line interface options "el" and "2".

 Your denylist has these 0 entries:

____________________________________________________

 1. Add domain
 2. Delete domain
 3. Process denylist
 4. Sort and verify denylist
 5. Restore denylist from backup
 6. Use hosted denylist

I would guess you add domain first, sort and verify denylist second and process denylist third.
I don't know what the wildcard rules are.

 

[thelonelycoder]

But these appear to be exact in terms of what they block? No wildcards?

They‘re all wildcards, ever since Diversion 5.0.

 

[aru]

Do I just manually add more entries to denylist.fs_conf for the alternate blocking? What's the recommended approach?

Considering the limited resources of my router, I have been consistently using the default standard blocklist while periodically reviewing the Diversion Statistics Report.

Whenever I notice domains with tens of thousands of hits related to ads or tracking, I add them to my blocklist.

Over time, I observed that Diversion’s blocking effectiveness is quite impressive, reaching a block rate as high as 49.5%.

Additionally, I use NextDNS as my upstream DNS, but their reports show a 0% block rate.

Compared to that, Diversion’s performance is truly outstanding; it is a practical and powerful tool.

 

[bibikalka]

Considering the limited resources of my router, I have been consistently using the default standard blocklist while periodically reviewing the Diversion Statistics Report.

Whenever I notice domains with tens of thousands of hits related to ads or tracking, I add them to my blocklist.

Over time, I observed that Diversion’s blocking effectiveness is quite impressive, reaching a block rate as high as 49.5%.


Additionally, I use NextDNS as my upstream DNS, but their reports show a 0% block rate.

Compared to that, Diversion’s performance is truly outstanding; it is a practical and powerful tool.

Yep, I have had Diversion for a while - like it a lot! But recently I created a virtual PiHole for a few rarely used clients. It is very nice, but requires separate hardware to be running.

So if I can do the 2nd block list via Diversion, I'd be saving something on the order of 10w of electricity (90 kWh per year) that's been used for this additional PiHole hardware.

I'll manually update the 2nd blacklist, and will give it a go.

 

[bibikalka]

@thelonelycoder

I tried to create different denylists for the main Diversion and the alternate instance, and I have not found a way to do it.

It seems that when I update the main one, it'll copy that same denylist to the alternate instance as well.

@ugandy - Have you managed to change the denylists on the fly via cron as you discussed a while ago?

Anyway, my aspiration is to run both the main diversion and alternate. Then I'd have a separate denylist for alternate, and would change that via cron to imitate the parental time controls. Asus parental controls are so clunky - and cause never ending micro-crashes.

Is this doable?