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SelfControlApp / selfcontrol

:skull: Mac app to block your own access to distracting websites etc for a predetermined period of time. It can not be undone by the app or by a restart – you must wait for the timer to run out.
http://selfcontrolapp.com
GNU General Public License v3.0
4.05k stars 401 forks source link

Blocked sites not blocked anymore #119

Open ghost opened 11 years ago

ghost commented 11 years ago

Hello hello

First of all I'd like to thank you all for this marvelous, fabulous, splendid, wonderful, superb, magnificient, grandiose, extraordinary application.

Since some time (1.5 update?) I unfortunately can't have it work anymore: gmail, facebook and a few sites (not all HTTPS) don't get blocked anymore when I set an empty whitelist.

I rely very much on this app, precisely because, well, I don't have much self control myself :)

Any idea why it doesn't work? I did use the killer but no luck. I am on mountain lion.

Thanks a lot!!!!

fristalst commented 11 years ago

Hi, this may not be the exact same problem but it seems at least related so I'm posting it here: Whitelists do not work for me anymore in SelfControl 1.5.1 on both 10.8.2 and 10.8.3. That is, despite not having changed the list in respect to the prior working state, the app doesn't block any traffic anymore. Entering password, counting down etc all appears to be working as should.- When I use the same list as a blacklist, everything works fine (in the expected inverted way), and i can see the entries in the hosts file. I couldn't find any info on that, but it would be interesting to know how whitelists work - is the hosts-file involved in that process at all? When applying a whitelist currently the hosts file is not altered.

Thanks for any help and yes, thanks for the application as well!

cstigler commented 11 years ago

No, the hosts file is not involved in a whitelist block at all. Not sure on this issue but I'll take a look when I get a chance (probably not for a while).

On Apr 17, 2013, at 2:34 PM, fristalst notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi, this may not be the exact same problem but it seems at least related so I'm posting it here: Whitelists do not work for me anymore in SelfControl 1.5.1 on both 10.8.2 and 10.8.3. That is, despite not having changed the list in respect to the prior working state, the app doesn't block any traffic anymore. Entering password, counting down etc all appears to be working as should.- When I use the same list as a blacklist, everything works fine (in the expected inverted way), and i can see the entries in the hosts file. I couldn't find any info on that, but it would be interesting to know how whitelists work - is the hosts-file involved in that process at all? When applying a whitelist currently the hosts file is not altered.

Thanks for any help and yes, thanks for the application as well!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

fristalst commented 11 years ago

Hi Charlie, thanks a lot for your reply! Your application has been an extremly helpful companion for years, so your effort, even in a while, would be much appreciated.

For now, may i just ask two tiny questions which might really help me out in the meantime:

cstigler commented 11 years ago

Honestly I'm not following enough to know at all, but all indications are that it's still working for many or most users, because users like this one are having problems with the whitelist blocking too much in 1.5.1. And of course, it definitely worked for me when I pushed the update (running 10.8.x). I would imagine it's an issue specific to your system.

Best guesses on why it's not blocking: another program interfering with our firewall setup (placing ipfw rules in front of us), and/or you're behind a proxy now (SelfControl will not work if you are behind a proxy or VPN). Wildcard blocks don't work, but blocking :80 and :443 should block all web traffic. If those don't work either, indicates problems with the firewall setup.

fristalst commented 11 years ago

Wow, this solved my problem. It turns out that Apples built-in firewall was causing SelfControl whitelists to not work. More precisely, under System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall -> Firewall Options enabling "Stealth Mode" caused SelfControl to fail. Unchecked "Enable Stealth Mode" and everything is working as expected. Thanks a lot for pointing at the solution, Charlie! This leaves me with only one downside, as i can now turn running whitelists on and off as i like, which, well, renders this a bit senseless. Maybe this behavior could be changed some time in the future? Anyways, your support so far is much appreciated!

fristalst commented 11 years ago

Thanks also for the explanation on how to block ports, which works fine. Though i want to mention the firewall setting above seems to be effecting blacklists as well. Also, of course, i cannot rule out the possibility that this is only with the specific configuration on my computer.

ghost commented 11 years ago

I'm experiencing the same thing as fristalst.

By checking or unchecking Enable Stealth Mode I can turn on/off the interwebs, despite whatever black/whitelist is operating in SelfControl.

Make the application somewhat useless.

ghost commented 11 years ago

*Makes

ThaLee commented 8 years ago

When whitelist mode is set, it blocks the creative cloud (where almost all my work-tools is based on) and spotify too. I tried to list up their domains as "non-blocking" in the whitelist, but its not working! What to do then?

cartesy commented 8 years ago

I'm on OS 10.11.12 and the Whitelist doesn't work at all. For some reason it blocks Reddit (which isn't in my list) and doesn't block any other websites that I've visited, although some work more slowly.

cartesy commented 8 years ago

Oh, the blacklist doesn't work either... I guess the app is dead.

Edit : After a few minutes, the blacklist works.