Steve Lambert released an interesting application called SelfControl. If falls into the vein of a productivity boost if you need a matron to spank you for visiting bad sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Email. Here is how to defeat it’s relatively simplistic blocking techniques.
SelfControl uses two techniques in tandem to thwart your attempts at fun and leisure. First (and most obvious) is a rule in the your /etc/hosts file. Looks something like this:
# BEGIN SELFCONTROL BLOCK
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
# END SELFCONTROL BLOCK
Working up some simple sed magic we use
sed "/# BEGIN SELF/,/# END SELF/d"
to cut out that block. Poof gone, should work right?
Nope. One more thing. It turns on ipfw and adds a few rules. Find your specific ones by running ipfw list. Remove those and you’re golden.
Finalized “SelfControl Killer”:
#!/bin/bash
echo "Removing IPFW rules 01500 - 01506";
ipfw delete 01500;
ipfw delete 01501;
ipfw delete 01502;
ipfw delete 01503;
ipfw delete 01504;
ipfw delete 01505;
ipfw delete 01506;
echo "Reversing /etc/hosts";
HOSTS=/etc/hosts;
TMP=tmpsedscrp;
sed "/# BEGIN SELF/,/# END SELF/d" $HOSTS > $TMP;
mv $TMP $HOSTS;
I saved it as “ipfwrm” for “ipfw remove” before I noticed the regenerating host file manipulations.
Remember that you have to do a sudo -s prior to sticking this into a loop. After you do, run while true; do ./ipfwrm && sleep 10; done to set this up to continually remove the block. The program is smart enough to recreate it if removed.
Overall it is tricky but simple. There really isn’t much you can’t do as root. At least it’s not a paid application. You could probably duplicate this exact functionality without the GUI in a dozen or so lines.