[Privoxy-users] Installation on Windows 11

[Lee]

On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 5:55 AM Fabian Keil wrote:
>
> Lee wrote on 2025-04-25 at 10:11:27:
>
> > On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 5:41 AM Fabian Keil wrote:
> > >
> > > PARISSE Michel via Privoxy-users <privoxy-users at lists.privoxy.org> wrote on 2025-04-23 at 12:26:32:
>
> > > > I suspect that running the installation of privoxy has to be run in
> > > > administrator mode. If that is the case, could this be explicitly
> > > > documented in the section on windows installation?
> >
> > Do you have a Privoxy icon on the taskbar?  that right clicking gets
> > you a menu showing
> >   Exit Privoxy
> >   Edit
> >   Enable
> >   Show Privoxy Window
> >
> > I have a vague memory of installing privoxy as a service and that
> > disabling or removing the privoxy taskbar icon.
> >
> > Was this the bit you followed?
> >
> >   After invoking Privoxy with --install
> >
> > if so, don't do that.  You can end up with something that works, but
> > that's about all I can say for it.
> >
> > If you just double click on the installer it should ask where to install it
> >   the default being  c:\program files (x86)\privoxy
> > and it will create a shortcut for you in
> >   C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
> > that will automatically start privoxy when you log in.
>
> Does this then run Privoxy as the same user as the one that's logged in?

Yes.
The advantage to running Privoxy under the same user being that it can
have the taskbar icon - so it's easier to stop or look at the log.
The disadvantages are mainly that you have to remember to tell privoxy
to quit before logging out and someone else logging in; if you forget
the new user gets an error popup about not being able to bind to
127.0.0.1:8118.  The other disadvantage being that there's no
priviledge separation .. privoxy is allowed to do whatever the logged
in user is allowed to do.

> If I remember correctly the advantage of using the "--install" option
> is that Privoxy can be executed by a dedicated user (with the downside
> of not having the taskbar icon like you mentioned).

Yes, that and not having the log browser window.  One could always
install perl but I don't know of a dos equivalent to 'tail -f'
I've had some version of cygwin installed since .. windows 95 maybe
even earlier, so perl, tail, etc. are all available if you've got
cygwin installed.  But that's a bit overkill if all one wants is to
look at the privoxy log.

> > > Lee, do you know what the oldest supported Windows version is?
> >
> > Windows 10 support ends Oct 2025, so I suppose Windows 10 is the
> > oldest supported version of Windows for another 6 months.
> >
> > > I'm wondering if we still support versions that have no administrator
> > > mode. The documentation (doc/source/supported.sgml) claims we do but
> > > I suspect that it may be out of date.
> >
> > The only windows machine I have is running windows 10.
> >
> > https://cygwin.com/ has this bit:
> >   The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially
> > released x86_64 versions of Windows, starting with Windows 8.1.
> >
> > note the "released x86_64" .. 32 bit CPUs are not supported any more.
> > And a bit further down
> >   Cygwin 3.4.10 was the last Cygwin version supporting Windows 7,
> > Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
> >
> > So you can't use the currently supported cygwin to build privoxy for
> > Windows 7, etc.  Which means using old software with known vulns :(
>
> I wonder if there are still users building Privoxy on earlier
> Windows releases.

I kind of hope no, since everything earlier that windows 10 is
unsupported?  I'm not clear on what "pay for windows patches" gets you
these days.  My understanding was that companies could buy support for
windows 7 after the official end of support date.  But I don't know
how long that lasted.

> In doc/source/supported.sgml, we don't explicitly list the supported
> versions of other operating systems except for Mac OS X so maybe
> we shouldn't do it for Windows either.

I'm OK with it either way.

Lee