Filter List at sysctl.org seems to be off line

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Expected Behaviour:

Having seen a new release was available, this morning I ran “sudo pihole -up” and expected to see a clean update of the application without errors or issues.

Actual Behaviour:

In the section near the end of the process that begins with:

Preparing new gravity database

Creating new gravity databases

I saw an unexpected error:

[i] Target: http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts
Status: Connection refused
List download failed: using previously cached list

When I try to “ping” the sysctl.org web site, I get an ICMP echo response, but any attempt to reach it via a browser fails. It looks as though the web server is down. As far as I can make out from a simple Google search, sysctl.org is a personal web site belonging to Philippe Bourcier. I’m not sure if this is because there are technical issues with this site, or if Philippe is no longer hosting a block list.

Just in case it is the second possibility, I thought I’d raise this for awareness so that the package maintainers can check.

Debug Token:

Replace this text with the debug token provided from running pihole -d

It has been gone for quite some time.

It was removed from Pihole in 2020. Remove Deprecated cameleon list by PromoFaux · Pull Request #3287 · pi-hole/pi-hole · GitHub

The last archived copy of the blocklist from archive.org says # Last updated : 2018-03-17

It might have be removed from Pi-hole in 2020, but untill today the gravity update worked fine. Since off today it shows the unreachable error in Pi-hole for http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts

Please note that Pi-hole does not control the availability of lists. That is handled by the list maintainer, and whoever is hosting the list. As long as that URL is accessible, you would be free to include it in your Pi-hole setup.

If you try to view the list by following it’s URL, you will find it is unavailable.

Except it hasn't updated since 2018. Every update it would have collected the file, seen that it was unchanged and continued on its way.

The site being down has at least brought some attention to people using the unmaintained list.

Thanks to Marc for emphasising that until today PiHole has not reported any issues with this list.

To be clear, the point behind my raising this was simply that the list in question is included in PiHole by default and thus I wanted to alert the maintainers to the loss of the list. If as we suspect, the list creator has simply stopped maintaining it, then the point of opening the ticket was so that the PiHole maintainers could remove the list from PiHole with the next update.

In the event that this isn’t something that the maintainers want or intend to do, it would be really nice if someone might like to put a “final reply” to this thread with:-

”If you read down to here and would like to remove this list from your PiHole setup, here’s how to do that manually…” and some simple instructions. Just to help anyone who performs a search and finds this thread.

I’m grateful to everyone who has responded for explaining the situation. I understand the distinction between list maintainers and PiHole maintainers, but in this case I believe/hope I was justified in opening the ticket given that this is a “default list” that the maintainers may wish to deprecate.

Thank you.

This topic was indeed helpful. First search engine result.

I think with the domain being down and the fact (did not verify but sounds consistent) the list was not up to date anyway, its is safe to disable/remove it now from the list.

Per @robgill's response:

Keep in mind, that even when we remove a default list it does not update your current configuration to remove it, and nor should we.

The (currently on 1) default blocklist we suggest is just that, a suggestion - users are free to add it/remove it/do what they like with it.

It is not. It was until 5 years ago.