last update: August 9, 2009.

IPFilter µpdater

The IPFilter µpdater is a sophisticated, yet very straight-forward and simple batch script to automatically update your ipfilter (?) for the most bittorrent clients. The initial version was created for µTorrent (hence the symbolic 'µ'-pun). Nowadays, it also supports Halite, BitSpirit, BitTorrent & Vuze.
It uses a standalone version of Wget *, the UnRAR command line executable by Alexander Roshal *, a nice looking icon and is compiled within in a highly compressed self-extracting archive, to simplify the process of installing.

The standard 'out of the box' code, looks like this:

In more linguistic lines that's about the following:

If ipfilter.dat exists its possible 'read-only' attribute will be removed.
If ipfilter.dat exists, while ipfilter.rar doesn't exist, ipfilter.dat will be deleted (in first use, existing filter will be deleted)
If ipfilter.rar exists it will be copied to a test.rar file.
Wget will fetch the remote ipfilter.rar, but only if it's newer than an existing ipfilter.rar.
If test.rar exists, ipfilter.rar will be compared to it.
If they are different, ipfilter.dat will be removed.
If ipfilter.dat doesn't exist, while test.rar exists, test.rar will be copied to ipfilter.bak.rar
If ipfilter.dat doesn't exist, ipfilter.rar will be extracted.
If test.rar exists, it will be deleted.
The batch file will wait 5 seconds, so you can read the status of the operations.

Documentation

An ipfilter blocks traffic from and to bad IPs and bad ranges of IPs. The IPs which get blocked will not be able to upload files to you or to download files from you. These hosts are usually fake, created to collect private information about which files you download and will only upload fake parts of the real thing you're trying to download. All this will make your privacy on the web even more fragile and results in unnecessary use of your precious bandwidth. So, an ipfilter could make your p2p downloads safer, faster and more reliable, even if it's just a little bit.

The IPFilter µpdater uses a rarred version of the great and very popular Ozzy ipfilter *, which is about six times smaller than the original file and is updated the same day as Ozzy releases his filter. The rar takes less time to download and is also necessary to automate the process, because Ozzy isn't very consistent in the online-storing of his files.

There are five different versions of the µpdater, intended for five different applications:

µTorrent

The µpdater package for µTorrent will, by default, extract itself to the variable '%AppData%\uTorrent' folder and will create a shortcut on the desktop. Clicking the shortcut will launch the µpdater batch file. When the download is successful, (re)start µTorrent and you will see a new entry under the 'Logger' tab saying: 'Loaded ipfilter.dat'. If the ipfilter is disabled, go to Preferences -> Advanced -> scroll to 'ipfilter.enable' -> double click -> apply. From now on, all you have to do to update your filter is clicking the desktop shortcut.

Halite

The µpdater package for Halite will, by default, extract itself to the variable '%ProgramFiles%\Halite' folder and will create a shortcut on the desktop. Clicking the shortcut will launch the µpdater batch file. When the download is successful, (re)start Halite and go to Settings -> Security tab -> click 'Import ipfilter.dat' -> Browse to the Halite installation folder and select 'ipfilter.dat'. You will have to do this manually every time there's an update, because Halite uses it's own system for storing an ipfilter

BitSpirit

The µpdater package for BitSpirit will, by default, extract itself to the variable '%ProgramFiles%\BitSpirit\config' folder and will create a shortcut on the desktop. Clicking the shortcut will launch the µpdater batch file. When the download is successful, (re)start BitSpirit and you will see a new 'IPFilter.dat' entry in the General tab. From now on, all you have to do to update your filter is clicking the desktop shortcut.

Vuze

The µpdater package for Vuze will, by default, extract itself to the variable folder '%ProgramFiles%\Vuze' and will create a shortcut on the desktop. Clicking the shortcut will launch the µpdater batch file. When the download is successful, (re)start Vuze and seek the 'IP Filters' tab in Preferences. Now select the ipfilter.dat from the Vuze installation folder to autoload (e.g., 'C\ProgramFiles\Vuze\ipfilter.dat'). From now on, all you have to do to update your filter is clicking the desktop shortcut.

BitTorrent

The µpdater package for the official BitTorrent client will, by default, extract itself to the variable '%AppData%\BitTorrent' folder. Clicking the shortcut will launch the µpdater batch file. When the download is successful, restart BitTorrent and you will see a new entry under the 'Logger' tab saying: 'Loaded ipfilter.dat'. If the ipfilter is disabled, go to Preferences -> Advanced -> scroll to 'ipfilter.enable' -> double click -> apply. From now on, all you have to do to update your filter is clicking the desktop shortcut.

Other Clients

In theory the µpdater could work for any applications that supports an ipfilter in .dat format. But, it isn't always necessary. If you like to use the eDonkey network, for example, we recommend the eMule 0.49c MorphXT * mod, which has excellent ipfilter updating support embedded.

Known Issues

If after the installation the desktop shortcuts won't show up, this is probably not because of a faulty installation, but rather because of a messed-up icon-cache in vista or 7, read this * to 'bust' your cache.

Changelog

update August 9, 2009.

→ Slight page changes.


update July 30, 2009.

→ Added 'known issues'.


update July 29, 2009.

→ Desktop shortcuts now contain a suffix with the specific version which they link to, so you can use multiple µpdater's on your system. Thanks to Sharky of FileShareFreak * for pointing this out.
→ Removed redundant code.


update July 23, 2009.

→ Links to the packages.
→ Readme modifications.
→ Added 'Contributors'.
→ Added the 'creation package'.

Create

Feel more than free to make your own modifications and your own packages for other applications and if you tell us, we will feature it here.

If you see anything, of which you think it could be better, smaller or smarter - please say so, and feel the warm recognition rain down on you.

We've created a 'creation-package' * (6.1 MiB) containing some stuff to easily create your own modification. It contains:

→ The original batch file (see above), which you can easily edit with notepad.
→ The standalone Wget executable (version 1.11.4 - with OpenSSL support) to fetch files from the web.
→ The UnRAR command line executable (version 3.70), to extract rar-archives.
→ The original icon-file.
→ The command line version of 7zip * (version 9.04 beta), which extracts almost everything, but it's quite large.
→ A portable version of PeaZip * (version 2.6.3), to 7z your compilations and make it into a sfx.
→ The 7-ZIP SFX Maker * (version 2.0), if you rather make your self-extracting archives through an interface.

(files marked by the → are identical to the ones in the µpdater packages)

To read about working with batch files, go see the *, *, *, *, *.


moc.xobnirehto.esuoh@duareme

Contributors

emeraud & pepjjno

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