Anyone running a pi-hole?

Ubbquittious

I set one up today in a VPS, though I intend to move it to an actual raspberry pi soon for security reasons. So far its running ok and I haven't had any problems with "ad-blocker-blockers" picking up on it. Is this something I can expect to run in to?

https://pi-hole.net/ if you haven't heard of Pi-hole already

ItHurtsWhenIP

I have one and no, no real problems with ad-blocker-blockers.

You may come across an occasional site that won't work/load correctly (it may not necessarily flag that it's an ad-blocker causing the problems), if you go into the admin panel and look at the recently blocked queries for a website on the affected client, you can "Whitelist" that domain and it may allow the site to work again.

icantfindaname11

i have been using adguard home on raspberry pi, I also tried pi-hole before. they are very similar.

they both work great.

RainInSummer

Running one for about 18 months now, get the occasional breakage in a website, sometimes annoyingly at the checkout stage. You can decide to subscribe to certain block lists though so you can make it as aggressive as you like.

To make it easy to disable, and therefore a bit more non tech friendly just bookmark:

<ip_of_pi_hole>/admin/api.php?disable=<time_in_seconds>&auth=<long_ass_random_string>

Where:

ip_of_pi_hole is unsurprisingly the IP of the box you have installed pi hole.

time_in_seconds is how long you want to disable DNS blackholing for.

long_ass_random_string is the value of WEBPASSWORD from /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf

That way you or anyone else in the house can just disable it if you think it's causing issues.

I've also set up a Home Assistant switch to do the same, beyond the scope of this question though.

Tec Diver

Just getting to the install stage here. I'm using a Sky supplier router, which won't allow me to edit the DNS settings, although I can disable DHCP.

I'm thinking of replacing the router with a more basic model that will allow me to run DNS & DHCP from the Pi-Hole. Any router suggestions?

TIA,

Eoin

Shpongler

The pi-hole can also act as a DHCP server, which will also pass on the pi-hole DNS to connected devices. So it should work fine.

Tec Diver

I ended up using a FritzBox instead, I can configure the settings as I like and a pretty good interface and reporting.

_ptashek_

I'm running pi-hole as a docker container on my network, with cloudflared alongside it as the resolver. All internal network DNS is forced to go through it via DHCP settings + ports 53/853 tcp/udp are locked down at the network edge for everyone, bar the cloudflared container. Only DoH can sneak through still. From cloudflared it's DNS over TLS all the way, so ensures my ISP keeps their paws of my resolver traffic.

It works like a charm. An (almost) ad and tracker free internet is so much faster!

Here's a screenshot of stats for the past 24h... Gives you an idea of how much crap is being filtered out.

Shoog

I have been successfully running pi-hole on my server for years. Great product.

The only issue I encountered is when I tried to move over to Vodafone NBI fibre broadband. Their gigabit router doesn't allow changing DNS and it also captures all DNS traffic and reroutes it to Vodafone's servers. It also doesn't allow bridge mode and so not allowing me to use my mikrotik router. This caused three gigabit routers to lock up and stop working due to the conflict with the pi-hole. Totally unacceptable service so cancelled the Vodafone account in the cooling off period.

_ptashek_

Is it just standard DNS they're intercepting, while also blocking DNS-over-TLS? Have you tried using DNS-over-HTTPS for your network clients, and just let the router use Vodafone DNS for itself?

Can they even do that, legally...

Could be a thing for ComReg.

P.S. I'm with Vodafone, but on copper and an ancient router, haven't observed them trying to mess with DNS traffic like this.

10-10-20

I installed Technitium DNS Server in a container as I was having problems with DNS on my pfSense router. It has ad-blocking (DNSBL) available as a feature and it's working well for me.

It also supports DNS over HTTPS so you should be able to avoid the ISP's DNS limitations/entrapment.