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Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
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BASH SCRIPTS: HOW TO USE THEM, HOW TO WRITE THEM, A ND HOW TO MAKE THEM EXECUTABLE. WHAT BASH CAN DO AND MORE.

Bash scripts are miniature programs that you can whip up in under 10 minutes, usually in Notepad. In Windows, you can easily access the system’s components underneath the desktop via batch files. This same concept is also alive in Linux. Linux is heavily built around the terminal, however, unlike it’s predecessor, Unix, great strides have been made to make each new distribution, “User-Friendly”. Bash is one of many programming languages which converts human-readable text into machine language, a way to talk to the system. Each key that you press has a reference to either a 1 or 0. Many keys might access both in a pattern. Binary is questionably the backbone behind even the universe itself, but that’s something else entirely. What I wanted to do here today is go over some of Bash’s usefulness and where you can get some setup scripts which will make it easier to learn the syntax and set up your systems while you’re at it. Bash scripts, like any other program, are loaded from the disk into memory, where they are read and processed by the CPU(Brain of computer). The CPU tells the other components to perform the functions requested by the scripts. When you restart the computer, the scripts and all programs are removed from their cache in memory until you use them again.


  1. WRITING THE SCRIPTS.
    Writing the scripts is rather easy, just open a simple text editor and add #! at the top. This is known as the Shbang! It is a symbol which tells the system to use bash to read the input from the user and interpret it in a way that the system can read it. It does this so fast it’s blinding. Sometimes when you run multiple things in a script, the system can’t keep up. In such cases you’d add a pause. A script can be written to perform system maintenance tasks as well as just to accept user input and print a friendly message on the screen. An example would be this, say you wanted to run updates for an ubuntu system, you would type this in a terminal every day by hand, or you would make a script to do it at a certain time every day. Sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade… That’s a handful, but a script makes it as easy as typing a single command such as this: sudo ./update.sh…

  2. MARK SCRIPTS EXECUTABLE
    To mark scripts executable is as simple as typing chmod +x NameOfScript.sh in terminal. However, you have many options with this command, to change the permissions of a file or folder, chmod can be used to change a permission set from 775 to 777 etc just by typing the number after chmod, but chmod +x will make any script executable, so it’s advisable to only use chmod +x.

  3. LAUNCHING SCRIPTS
    Launching scripts can be done in a terminal like this: ./NameOfScript.sh, or sudo ./NameOfScript.sh if the script changes system settings. Obviously, system admin scripts are more complicated than writing your name into a program and having it print it to the screen.

  4. GRADUATING ON TO OTHER LANGUAGES
    After having graduated in writing bash scripts, you’ll enjoy writing them so much that you will want to learn new programming languages. There are some much more difficult languages out there, from bash, I’d suggest learning python and basic C maybe fiddle with Html/CSS These are easy languages for beginners and they can easily be referenced on the internet. Learning a new language can be really rewarding, just stick with it, some suggest 30 minutes a day. Have fun!

If you’re looking for a place to start, I have prepared many scripts for the maintenance and setup of multiple distributions within the Linux world. Most of these commands and scripts can be replaced inside of Windows for writing Batch files. The link to the scripts below:



With these scripts, you can setup Arch(based)/Ubuntu(based) systems in under an hour. The others are for maintenancing or “tuning up” the distribution quickly so that you can get back to whatever it was that you were doing. There is also a hosts file updating script that tries to replace some basic functionality of the Hostsman program for Windows. It takes sources and pulls them down to your home folder then compiles them together while removing duplicated lines. Sysinfo.sh looks up system information. The “Jameshostslist” is just an extension for the hosts file and the hosts updater assumes it is in your home folder automatically. There may be more coming to these scripts and more soon. These scripts work as is, but I have not tested everything over multiple systems, however, to the best of my knowledge they should work for you. I will be continuing work on them at a later time.

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