Blocklists Reference External Public Blocklist File?

[ghta2021]

For blocklists, does the "blocked_names_file" field have to reference a local file?

Can we point it directly to an external URL for a public blocklist file?

For instance can we set it so that blocked_names_file = 'https://blocklist.com/malware.txt' ?

[jedisct1]

Hi,

No, blocked_names_file must point to a local file. dnscrypt-proxy doesn't download blocklists from URLs by itself.

This is intentional, and there's a tool for exactly this: generate-domains-blocklist.py. It:

• downloads any number of public blocklists from URLs,
• merges them with your own local lists,
• removes duplicates and redundant entries (e.g. if example.com is blocked, ads.example.com is dropped),
• produces a single optimized file that dnscrypt-proxy can load.

1. Grab the files from utils/generate-domains-blocklist.
2. Edit domains-blocklist.conf: uncomment the sources you want and add your own URLs (such as https://blocklist.com/malware.txt). Local files can be included with file: entries.
3. Optionally, add your own entries to domains-blocklist-local-additions.txt, and domains that should never be blocked to domains-allowlist.txt.
4. Run the script:

   python3 generate-domains-blocklist.py -o blocklist.txt

5. Point dnscrypt-proxy to the result:

   [blocked_names]
   blocked_names_file = '/path/to/blocklist.txt'

To keep the list up to date, just run the script periodically (cron, systemd timer, etc.).

[ghta2021]

Thanks