Roll your own hosts file

Amalgam

I'm new to this, so, be gentle with me, there is probably a much easier way to do this..

I stumbled across a post on the mathdotrandom blog, with a tidy little script to merge and prune any excess from multiple hosts sources.

http://mathdotrandom.blogspot.com/2010/12/block-ads-on-pc-android-with-uber-hosts.html

As stated on the site:

How it works:

Collect an up-to-date set of hosts files from your favourite providers, extract the individual hosts files into one folder (e.g.: c:\temp\hosts\), and rename each file to "hosts.?", e.g.: hosts.1, hosts.2, hosts.3, etc.

Then run the MergeHosts application, supplying the location of the folder containing all your hosts files:

java -cp "c:\temp\MergeHosts.jar" com.ri.hosts.MergeHosts "c:\temp\hosts"


Output looks like this:

MergeHosts - looking for "hosts.*" files in: c:\temp\hosts

Found hosts files:
hosts.1
hosts.2
hosts.3
hosts.4
hosts.5

Processing: hosts.1
14896 domains successfully extracted, with 0 collisions

Processing: hosts.2
20809 domains successfully extracted, with 13478 collisions

Processing: hosts.3
1302 domains successfully extracted, with 571 collisions

Processing: hosts.4
2748 domains successfully extracted, with 2555 collisions

Processing: hosts.5
3 domains successfully extracted, with 3 collisions

DONE!
Final hosts file: c:\temp\hosts\hosts.final
Size: 667KB


You can now locate the new uber hosts file: hosts.final, which you can use on your Android device or on your PC!

Very quick and easy.

There might be negatives to having a very very large hosts files on an Android device though. I have read that the hosts file is searched sequentially, which might slow down browsing, I have no idea if this is the case or not.

If you have a rooted phone, but have not purchased Root Explorer, instructions are given on pushing your freshly rolled hosts file to the right location using a terminal emulator.

Naikon

Can you not just modify the /etc/hosts file directly? This does not seem very standards complient.

Amalgam

Can you not just modify the /etc/hosts file directly?

That's what you are doing.

Compliant..?

Below is the hosts file taken from /etc on a just-out-of-the-box Samsung Europa. Anything you put after the first line is entirely up to you.

127.0.0.1 localhost

Have you visited the link? it is pretty clear, you're just merging hosts files, removing duplicates, then dumping the hosts file back on the phone.

I merged extra phone specific lists with the hosts file AdFree Android had created on my phone.

The_B_Man

Its a bit overkill. I havent seen an ad since installing AdFree.

Naikon

Amalgam wrote: »

That's what you are doing.

Compliant..?

Below is the hosts file taken from /etc on a just-out-of-the-box Samsung Europa. Anything you put after the first line is entirely up to you.



Have you visited the link? it is pretty clear, you're just merging hosts files, removing duplicates, then dumping the hosts file back on the phone.

I merged extra phone specific lists with the hosts file AdFree Android had created on my phone.

Sorry, I should have made myself a bit clearer. I just think this tool could have been replaced by a few lines of perl. Not that it's bad, it's a decent implementation if it works, just a unusual to see special third party tools for day to day text processing.

* Edit - Is it possible to get source access, just of out pure curiosity? I can't find anything. *

Amalgam

The source is linked below the binary, at the site.

http://mathdotrandom.blogspot.com/2010/12/block-ads-on-pc-android-with-uber-hosts.html

Attached to this post also.

MergeHosts.zip - 4.1 kb