Is there suggested way to refresh lists by cron?
The command to force-redownload the lists is /etc/init.d/adblock-fast dl and this is what I use:
echo '21 4 */3 * * /etc/init.d/adblock-fast dl' >> /etc/crontabs/root
I'll add this to the README soon.
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Ever wanted to know which of the remote block-lists contain a specific domain in them?
adblock-fast 1.0.1-3 supports the check_lists (CLI) option which searches enabled block-lists for the specified domain.
The output can certainly be improved, so I'd welcome some feedback before this is merged into the OpenWrt packages.
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Yay, writing feature request for that. 
So please WebUI for the feature.
on my list:
- some lists block unexpected things: this one block facebook.com
- AdblockFast is not starting (unknown state) on reboot. Should I cache blocklist on FS?
- Lists (maybe borrowed from Adblock) with nicely selectable sorted items.
I thought there was no longer need for it, so it was removed before, but I've re-introduced the procd_boot_delay option in adblock-fast 1.0.1-4 (available from my repo). It's only configureable thru UCI and defaults to 0. You can try setting it to 10/30/60 to control the start delay, hopefully it will fix an issue.
Do you want to elaborate on that? I have no idea what you mean.
I don't want to be in the business of curating and naming block-lists, I'd rather simplify/ease the process for users to add their own.
How do I collect statistics about which websites are the most-blocked by "adblock-fast"? IIRC, the OpenWrt "adblock" package has this feature where it is able to list websites that it managed to block, along with a counter of how many times it has blocked each website.
The adblock-fast doesn't collect statistics about blocked domains.
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I would love for lots more information explaining this
If you want a more robust AdBlocking, supporting free memory detection and complex block-lists, supporting IDN, check out net/adblock on GitHub/jsDelivr.
What is a "complex block-list"? I would like to use adguard and adguard_tracking, are they "complex"? What is IDN? Why is Adblock non-fast more "robust"?
It's really hard to figure out if I want adguardhome, adblock, or adblock-fast.
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How about reuse Adblock's categorized list?
It's the one that adblock-fast cannot parse, which requires slower and more complex parsing implemented in adblock.
You're welcome to try those lists and to contribute to the documentation. Both software and documentation are open source and you can contribute to them on github.
Internationalized domain names. The filters in adblock-fast get rid of them if encountered in remote block-lists.
It can parse a wider variety of remote block-lists and it has some stats and I believe WebUI for adblock allows access to all the same features/commands available for CLI. With adblock-fast, WebUI doesn't allow access to pause, check and check-lists.
I'm leaning towards no, but I'll sleep on it.
I came here to ask about this, thanks. I feel it is still needed as in my case I am using Starlink as my WAN. Upon cold booting the network, it can take several minutes for a link to be established. Without the boot delay I have to remember to go back and restart the service each time.
So have you tried that version? What's the boot delay for your Starlink connection?
It's very hard for me to make sense out of this with a Cartesian definition,
Use adblock-fast if you don't need a complex block-list. A complex block-list is a block list adblock-fast can not parse.
As a user, what kind of complex block list functionality would I need or want that would require me to upgrade? What is an example of functionality that is complex that adblock-fast can not parse?
Why won't you research the subject and contribute to documentation?
I am a contributor to numerous projects for OpenWRT. However, I don't write docs for projects that I haven't adopted because I'm confused at the value they add. I've used to adblock. I saw now there is an adblock-fast package. Someone who understands it should speak technically about it and tell me what it does to be faster and what technical compromises it's making to be less robust and less capable with "complex" rule sets. You have to at least be willing to sell prospective users on making the jump. "Come learn this thing you don't understand for reasons that aren't clear on so you can contribute to it" is not a great pitch.
Someone did, in the README and the open source code. If parts of the README/code are unclear, you're welcome to ask.
There's always a learning curve with a new technology, I don't really understand what you want me to do about it.
I'm not pitching you, if you're happy with the adblock and don't want to learn, keep using the adblock, it's a great package!
It's not about functionality, but the lists of domains included in the block-lists. Both the supported formats and default block-lists you can select are listed/linked in the README of adblock-fast. In addition, you can easily add other lists from both CLI and WebUI. I don't have the capacity to compare domain-by-domain the lists supported by adblock vs lists supported by adblock-fast. The optimized (many third-level domains removed if second-level domain exists) dnsmasq block-file on my router contains ~370k entries. I find it sufficient for blocking ads.
There used to be some block-lists which contained not only the domain, but the regex of the path/filename of the ads it served. I believe adblock used to be able to parse those (and probably still can), while adblock-fast can't.
Hello, Would Adblock-fast be configured to run with SMARTdns dns resolver instead of unbound? https://pymumu.github.io/smartdns/en/