Setting up Pi-hole

[james.miller]

wouldnt pointing the kids at something like OpenDNS be a neater solution than blocking half the internet?

Need to sort mine out actually. My pi-hole is doing great with the standard stuff but i do need to sort out additional filter for the eldest now that he's more active online.

 

[Steveocee]

wouldnt pointing the kids at something like OpenDNS be a neater solution than blocking half the internet?

I'm fine blocking half the internet, to be honest I'd rather build them a walled garden of certified OK sites to go on but simply don't have the time or the router horsepower (yet).

Some stats:
OpenDNS is about a 14ms RTT from my main router.
My ISP DNS is 1-2ms RTT from my main router.
My colo is a 1-2ms RTT from my main router.
Colo-ISP DNS is <1ms so it makes sense to run pihole as a virtual with lan speed connection to an upstream and then filter from that.

OpenDNS would be great and I had considered using them as an upstream for Pihole but it's that additional lookup time that grinds me down. Maybe I'm being finnicky applying my own standards to their connection but I certainly can "feel" the difference when I am testing it out.

 

[bledd]

I use quad9 as my upstream DNS.

https://quad9.net/

9.9.9.9

 

[Steveocee]

I use quad9 as my upstream DNS.

https://quad9.net/

9.9.9.9

Have never heard of them before (least the IP is easy to remember). Slightly better with response times 10-11ms responses although by their admission nothing to do with cencorship;

Will Quad9 filter content?
No. Quad9 will not provide a censoring component and will limit its actions solely to the blocking of malicious domains around phishing, malware, and exploit kit domains.

I kind of want to provide an adult censored, non-malicious and ad-free experience, just doesn't seem to be one out there that does it.

 

[BigBoy]

Just installed Pihole on my server (Windows 10 running Debian on Hyper-v) because of this thread and now I want more things to have it doing, any ideas what else it could run for me? I already run Plex, SABNZB, Deluge Sonarr and Radarr via Windows.

 

[Clav]

Have never heard of them before (least the IP is easy to remember). Slightly better with response times 10-11ms responses although by their admission nothing to do with cencorship;

Will Quad9 filter content?
No. Quad9 will not provide a censoring component and will limit its actions solely to the blocking of malicious domains around phishing, malware, and exploit kit domains.

I kind of want to provide an adult censored, non-malicious and ad-free experience, just doesn't seem to be one out there that does it.

By default one of pi-holes block lists is StevenBlacks master list from here:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts

StevenBlack also produces a much more locked down list here:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/S...lternates/fakenews-gambling-porn-social/hosts

Also has various combinations of the different categories, check it out on the github page - https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Source:
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/wiki/Customising-sources-for-ad-lists

 

[Feek]

3.3.1 is out which fixes the whitelist problem.

 

[JoeF1]

3.3.1 is out which fixes the whitelist problem.

Are we able to update pihole whilst its online or is it a full reinstall jobby?

 

[Feek]

Are we able to update pihole whilst its online or is it a full reinstall jobby?

Do it while it’s running - just login and run pihole -up.

 

[JoeF1]

Thanks Feek!

 

[BigBoy]

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[bledd]

Updated and switched to Cloudflare DNS 1.1.1.1

 

[Jony27]

Got Pihole running again on my Pi3 after a couple of months down time...
Only have it running on my main PC at the minute as using PiHole's DHCP seems to disable half the devices on the network...

 

[bledd]

I leave the DHCP off, I trust my router more than a Pi for DHCP.

On my router, I set the primary WAN DNS as the IP of the Pi. Secondary DNS as 1.1.1.1. This means that any device connecting to the router will have it's external DNS from the Pi, all internal DNS goes through the router. I leave the DHCP DNS as the IP of the router.

This way the devices on the network don't need any configuration, besides the router.


-----


However if you wanted to use the Pi as a DHCP server, disable DHCP on your router, turn off all network devices, enable DHCP on the Pi, (then refresh your own IP) and turn on all devices.

 

[Feek]

I thought I'd try moving DHCP over to my Pi-hole a couple of months ago and I also rebuilt a pair of new Pi-holes using Raspbian Stretch.

It works really well - It's also nice to have all my clients listed within the Pi-hole query log and dashboard rather than just the generic IP of the router. I've set the lease time to a week so that if I have any issues, everything will keep working for a week. So far, so good.

 

[Jony27]

I have it setup on a per device basis and it's working great. I have a SuperHub3 so don't have the option to set a DNS and the last time I let Pihole do it, I disabled half the devices on our network
It's working perfectly on the devices I need and I also got PiVPN working and redirected to Pihole

 

[maj]

So I've finally got pi-hole set up on my zero w rather than my Pi 3. I followed a guide to connect the pi via wifi using a config file which worked. However because of the role pi-hole does, I want it to be done via ethernet instead. How do I check which connection it is using? If I have both connected, I can't browse the internet so I'm wondering if there's a setting in a file I need to change or could it be my micro usb ethernet is not compatible?

Also I accidentally left IP6 enabled when setting pi-hole up. Will this cause problems? Is it possible to turn IP6 off?

I'm wondering if that is why I can't connect to the admin page via hostname.local/admin instead of just ip address.local/admin. Or is that something else?

 

[bledd]

^It's important that you know what a DHCP server is and a DNS server. (and why you should only have one DHCP server)

A pi-hole can do the following..

Become a new DHCP server (if enabled)
Become a primary DNS server
Become a secondary DNS server
Become an external only DNS server (this is what I use)
Become an optional DNS server (client defined)

 

[Armageus]

Had a quick go setting up pi-hole on my original pi b - seemed straight forward enough

Browsing generally seemed better, however at times seemed like there was a noticeable "latency" for want of a better term - not sure if this is a limitation of the original pi performance (note: I haven't overclocked it or anything yet)

Has anyone noticed any improvement switching to a newer pi (e.g. 2 or 3) or any real difference in speed between say a zero and a 3?

 

[the-evaluator]

I'd be surprised if using a newer Pi made any difference. The web interface may be a bit quicker but a DNS resolver for a home network is unlikely to put any noticable load on a Pi.