Have you ever used PeerGuardian for Windows? Well good news my friend, there’s a Linux alternative available.
PeerGuardian is a program that blocks companies such as the RIAA and their affiliates (such as Media Defender) from connecting to your computer when you are running P2P software. This is not foolproof by any means, but certainly a step in the right direction.
When I used Windows, one of the programs I used to protect my online privacy was PeerGuardian. Now that I’m using Ubuntu full-time, I’d like to find an alternative.
A quick google search found that PeerGuardian actually has a Linux client, but the installation is far more difficult than another program I found called MoBlock. Not only does it come pre-setup with most of the Bluetack blocking lists, the same ones that PeerGuardian uses, but it will also utilize the eMule ipfilter.dat file format, if you’re looking for that.
Ok, now I know we’re looking at the rest of this document and saying,
“Sh!t Wayne, this looks complicated.”
It’s actually really easy if you follow it step by step, and if you have any questions, feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to help you out.
Deep breath, here we go.
First, we edit sources.list to add a repository:
gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Paste these two lines at the end:
deb http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/debian feisty main
deb-src http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/debian feisty main
Save and Close the gedit program, just a few more commands:
gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv 9072870B
gpg --export --armor 9072870B | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install moblock-nfq
Now it’s installed! Congratulations. Now we need to configure the program so that HTTP (website) traffic is unfiltered. This program likes to be as paranoid as possible to start out with, which can be a good thing for some people.
gksu gedit /etc/moblock/moblock.conf
Look for the following section about half-way down:
WHITE_TCP_IN=""
WHITE_UDP_IN=""
WHITE_TCP_OUT=""
#WHITE_TCP_OUT="http https"
WHITE_UDP_OUT=""
WHITE_TCP_FORWARD=""
WHITE_UDP_FORWARD=""
Remove the hash (#), save and you’re done.
Run this command to test and make sure it’s working properly:
EDIT
Thanks to mbsjoblom on Digg, I missed a step.
sudo moblock-control reload
sudo moblock-control test
You should get a message something like this:
* MoBlock blocked the IP. Test succeded.
EDIT 2
Thanks to “Moblockin” there is a GUI available , which I haven’t tried out, but seems like a more user-friendly than the command line.
Now, you have no more big brother looking after you. MoBlock will automatically do it’s magic behind the scenes with no interaction from you – ever!