adblock via /etc/hosts on XA2/AlienDalvik v8

Thanks, this worked for me on my Xperia XA2 Ultra with SFOS 3.3.0.16

This won't work on AlienDalvik 8, as the android environment is completely separated from the host within its LXC container. I think previous AlienDalvik releases used the DNS server listening on 127.0.0.1 provided by connman (hence /etc/hosts worked for android). Since from within the LXC container AlienDalvik has no access to that server, it probably uses the DNS server IP retrieved from DHCP, thus /etc/hosts no longer works (the container has its own namespace and loopback interface, so 127.0.0.1 are not connected on the host & android system).

just checked a few websites full of ads and they look very similar (only few or no ads) on native and Android browsers.

So it seems that Android apps are influenced by native /etc/hosts

I was hoping to get rid of ads within Android apps but it seems they're directly fed by google.

My results of (admittedly very limited) testing on my XA2 were:

• editing /etc/hosts did nothing for android apps
• replacing /system/etc/hosts by repacking system.img worked both for blocking browser as well as in-app ads (served by google)
• editing the LXC config as described above worked just as well

Well @lethe,

Can you please check with Defender.

That's what I used, however I do not see why that would matter...

Defender doesn't do any black magic, all it does is gather blocklists from multiple source, merge them and write them to /etc/hosts, /system/etc/hosts & /opt/alien/system/etc/hosts.

The last path will be skipped on AlienDalvik 8, since it does not exist and the second one doesn't matter (at least in my test).