How to block a domain with umatrix ?? [SOLVED]

[Flemur]

Edit: Answer:
Enter

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* hostname * block

in "My rules" tab, right side.
Entering "downloadhelper" doesn't block "downloadhelper.net", so, AFAIK, no wild-cards like "*.downloadhelper.*"
"hostname" = hostname.com, hostname.net ... dunno about leading www vs ww2 prefixes.
/Edit

The umatrix "dashboard" has a "Hosts files" tab with an empty textbox labeled

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"One URL per line. Lines prefixed with ‘#’ will be ignored. Invalid URLs will be silently ignored."  

I enter a valid URL ... and then what?

Sometimes the "Update now" button is not greyed-out; if I hit it, it seems to update the lists, and it erases the URL(s) I've entered and the site is not blocked.

?? TIA!

umatrix.jpg

Trying to block " http://www.downloadhelper.net" because they don't provide an option to not check for updates.

[Flemur]

A hack solution: block the "1st party" components.
If anyone knows how to operate the "Hosts files" tab, I'm still up for a better answer!

umatrix2.jpg

[chrisuk]

I think you've misunderstood the purpose of that tab - it's for hosts files not addresses. So you'd enter say: file://home/user/my-hosts-file.txt... at least that's what I thought it was for.

There's a great (and very long and detailed) tutorial on uMatrix... I'll post a link if I can find it again later

[Flemur]

I think you've misunderstood the purpose of that tab - it's for hosts files not addresses.
So you'd enter say: file://home/user/my-hosts-file.txt... at least that's what I thought it was for.

If so, they mislabelled it: "One URL per line." Not "one hosts file name per line". (And a nice "file not found" error message. Not!)

I looked up one one of the hosts files, (sort-of - it's some goofy "moz-extension", not a real file like it should be):
moz-extension://21a53e88-6776-4f8f-b8cf-1cab92122dfe/asset-viewer.html?url=dpollock-0
It's as primitive as adding values to /etc/hosts, namely no wild cards: it has all these entries:

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127.0.0.1 2girls1cup.cc 
127.0.0.1 2girls1cup.com 
127.0.0.1 2girls1cup.nl 
127.0.0.1 2girls1cup.ws
...
127.0.0.1 www.2girls1cup.cc 
127.0.0.1 www.2girls1cup.nl 
127.0.0.1 www.2girls1cup.ws

(they missed "www.2girls1cup.com"; the lack of wild-cards makes this method unreliable) instead of just

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.2girls1cup.

like privoxy would use, which I'm very tempted to go back to!

[gribevo]

If so, they mislabelled it: "One URL per line." Not "one hosts file name per line". (And a nice "file not found" error message. Not!)

Nothing is "mislabelled", you are just misunderstanding what "URL" means:

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) [...] is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.

The web resource in the current case is the hosts file.

What you entered as described in your opening comment ("www.downloadhelper.net") is not a URL, it's a hostname, the one you want to block.

the lack of wild-cards makes this method unreliable

Again, you are failing to read the doc. You want to create a rule, and for this you go to "My rules", and enter:

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* downloadhelper.net * block

There is no need for wildcards, subdomains always inherit the rule of broader domains.

The rule created is temporary, commit if you want it to be permanent.

[Flemur]

If so, they mislabelled it: "One URL per line." Not "one hosts file name per line". (And a nice "file not found" error message. Not!)

Nothing is "mislabelled", you are just misunderstanding what "URL" means:

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) [...] is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.

The web resource in the current case is the hosts file.

Then it should say it's the URL of a hosts file. And besides not being labeled correctly it should have an error message when there's an error.

What you entered as described in your opening comment ("www.downloadhelper.net") is not a URL, it's a hostname, the one you want to block.

Well, yes, "downloadhelper.net" is a URL - even according to the page you got your definition from.

the lack of wild-cards makes this method unreliable

Again, you are failing to read the doc. You want to create a rule, and for this you go to "My rules", and enter:

I said the lack of wild-cards make the hosts file method unreliable. And it does. The hosts files umatrix is using don't use wildcards. Edit: although now I see that it claims to convert the hosts files into it's own rules.

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* downloadhelper.net * block

There is no need for wildcards, subdomains always inherit the rule of broader domains.
The rule created is temporary, commit if you want it to be permanent.

Thanks! It worked. That's the method I was looking for.

And thanks for the link to the guy's documentation; the addon's mozilla site
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/
has links to to "Homepage" and "Support", but they don't point to any useful documentation.