Will large hosts file impact performance?

General system Newbie
8

For any one interested in this, as in, locally blocking ad/marlware etc using DNS:

  • I said my system choked up and couldn’t handle large hosts files but I used a program called tblock. Maybe your latest computer can totally handle it. I will bet on it.

  • If you are going the blocking by hosts route, remember the hosts file will point the browser to 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1. In some cases there will be a wait/delay when loading while the browsing waits to see if it gets a reply from 127.0.0.1. In order to quicky end the request you need to use an app like pixelserv-tls.

  • Something that worked on my computer is using rpz files. You use, a DNS resolver, knot-resolver and point it to an rpz file that contains the urls you want to block.

  • Read this blog on how to do it. If you install from AUR the systemd service files are already there, you just need to edit them. Also read my comment.

  • You can get rpz files from people who provide “ad/malware block lists”. Energized is a good example. Look for the rpz heading in the table.

  • Performance with knot-resolver while blocking ads with an rpz file is pretty good. I try and query a blocked url in the file (drill <url>) which is 20 MB and it takes about a 1ms to get a response which is pretty good.