pyntel / maza-ad-blocking

Local ad blocker. Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system.

🥇 Maza was Top 1 in Hacker News

Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22717650

Maza ad blocking - Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

Simple, native and efficient local advertising blocker. Compatible with macOS and Linux.

You don't have to install any browser extensions or applications, you just use the tools of your operating system. You update the list of DNS to be blocked with a single command. Opensource. Just bash.

🏃‍Run

📡 Update database

maza update 

🔨 Start

sudo maza start 

🛠 Stop

sudo maza stop 

⚖️ Status

maza status 

⚙️ Install

👀 Requirements

• bash 4.0 or higher
• curl
• Only macOS users, gsed: brew install gnu-sed

Then you do this.

curl -o maza https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tanrax/maza-ad-blocking/master/maza && chmod +x maza && sudo mv maza /usr/local/bin

Optional but recommended, make a backup of your hosts file.

sudo cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.backup

🔪 Uninstall

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/maza && sudo rm -r ~/.maza

DNSMASQ

Unfortunately the hosts file does not support sub-domains (wildcards), which is necessary to correctly filter all DNS. You will need to install locally a server for that purpose, Maza supports the Dnsmasq format. Here's an example for macOS.

1 Install

brew install dnsmasq

2 Configure

Edit the file.

/usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf

Add the following lines.

conf-file=(your user path)/.maza/dnsmasq.conf

Start DNSMASQ.

sudo brew services stop dnsmasq
sudo brew services start dnsmasq

3 Tell your OS to use your DNS server

Delete the list of macOS DNS servers and add the 3 addresses. The first one will be your local server, and the other 2 belong to OpenDNS, which you can use any other.

127.0.0.1
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Refresh your DNS cache

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Bonus: dnsmasq is in charge of solving all DNS

Add in configure file: /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf

no-resolv
server=208.67.222.222
server=208.67.220.220

Bonus: dnsmasq have test domains

If you want all your .localhost domains, for example, point to localhost add in configure file: /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf

address=/.localhost/127.0.0.1

⚠️ CAUTION

• Only compatible with Linux and macOS operating systems.
• Remember to make a backup copy of /etc/hosts in case of unforeseen circumstances, neither the project nor its author will be responsible for any possible repercussions derived from not carrying out this action.

🧑‍🎨 Credits

Andros Fenollosa