Setting up Pi-hole

Armageus · 27 May 2019 at 19:35

Just upgraded my home install to 4.3, however the logo for the expand/contract sidebar now doesn't load, making it difficult to login from my mobile.

Anyone else had this issue?

Stephanie Peterson · 27 May 2019 at 19:36

I had a bit of faffing around when i transferred my old Odroid pihole over to a virtualized one on the HP microserver the other day but i think i have got it licked now.
This was on the latest ubuntu server, did some updates and it all seems happy now.

Armageus · 27 May 2019 at 20:01

Armageus said:
Just upgraded my home install to 4.3, however the logo for the expand/contract sidebar now doesn't load, making it difficult to login from my mobile.

Anyone else had this issue?

Ran "pihole -r" to repair the installation, and then force refreshed the admin page (CTRL+F5 or incognito tab on mobile), and all now ok

jellybeard999 · 27 May 2019 at 20:48

Finally got pihole set up as a ubuntu 18.4.2 LTS VM on my windows server after much trial and error.

I used followed this guide https://www.linuxincluded.com/install-pi-hole-on-ubuntu/

I used default options for everything, but have used quad9 as the DNS and added the below regex to my blacklist, which will apparantly stop youtube ads.

^(r[0-9]+(-{3}|.).+.googlevideo.com)$
r4---sn-vgqs7nez.googlevideo.com

Looking forward to testing over the next few days

Edit - first regex seems to block the youtube video you're trying to watch. Just the second regex seems to still let ads through (pixel 3 ads mainly so far).

Jony27 · 5 Jun 2019 at 09:29

Pihole is really something you setup once and never look back on. Have had mine up and running for nearly a year without much interaction apart from a couple of updates.
Need to setup VPN again that can utilise the ad-blocker on the go for mobile devices.

labcoattech · 17 Jun 2019 at 14:24

jellybeard999 said:
Finally got pihole set up as a ubuntu 18.4.2 LTS VM on my windows server after much trial and error.

I used followed this guide https://www.linuxincluded.com/install-pi-hole-on-ubuntu/

I used default options for everything, but have used quad9 as the DNS and added the below regex to my blacklist, which will apparantly stop youtube ads.

^(r[0-9]+(-{3}|.).+.googlevideo.com)$
r4---sn-vgqs7nez.googlevideo.com

Looking forward to testing over the next few days

Edit - first regex seems to block the youtube video you're trying to watch. Just the second regex seems to still let ads through (pixel 3 ads mainly so far).

Thanks for the link, installed Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 LTS on a N40L Microserver, setup pihole and added block lists from https://blocklist.site/

Is it possible to block specific url using pihole? e.g. reddit.com/adult or can you only block domains as a whole?

the-evaluator · 17 Jun 2019 at 14:54

It's a DNS level blocker so it'll only be able to block the entire domain.

labcoattech · 18 Jun 2019 at 12:12

What would be the next step up if I wanted to block specific url?

Armageus · 18 Jun 2019 at 12:19

labcoattech said:
What would be the next step up if I wanted to block specific url?

Don't think you can easily, especially with regards to https connections (E.g. most of them these days)

labcoattech · 19 Jun 2019 at 13:40

Just a thought but what DNS should the Ubuntu server that is hosting Pi Hole be configured to use?

the-evaluator · 19 Jun 2019 at 14:40

I'm using the Pi-Hole instance on the server so I've got 127.0.0.1 set as the DNS resolver.

labcoattech · 19 Jun 2019 at 14:49

I've configured the router so that all devices on the 192.168.1 subnet are given the IP of the Ubuntu server to use for DNS, but as the Ubuntu server sits with in this range it is also given it's own IP address to use as DNS.

jellybeard999 · 23 Jun 2019 at 22:06

I've tried to get Pihole running reliably a few times now, and each time i seem to have DNS trouble after a day or so :s

Any advice?

I've had a Hyper-V pihole ubuntu server running for a week stably now, and can connect to the admin panel fine, so I'm eliminating the setup/server stability as an issue and can only presume it's some sort of network issue.

Before I make the jump and change my router (talktalk huawei hg635) dns to the pihole ip address, has anyone got any advice or any extra steps I should take?

the-evaluator · 24 Jun 2019 at 07:44

Can you describe the issue you're having?

labcoattech · 24 Jun 2019 at 09:20

jellybeard999 said:
I've tried to get Pihole running reliably a few times now, and each time i seem to have DNS trouble after a day or so :s

Any advice?

I've had a Hyper-V pihole ubuntu server running for a week stably now, and can connect to the admin panel fine, so I'm eliminating the setup/server stability as an issue and can only presume it's some sort of network issue.

Before I make the jump and change my router (talktalk huawei hg635) dns to the pihole ip address, has anyone got any advice or any extra steps I should take?

What hardware are you running Pi-hole on?

BigBoy · 24 Jun 2019 at 10:49

jellybeard999 said:
I've tried to get Pihole running reliably a few times now, and each time i seem to have DNS trouble after a day or so :s

Any advice?

I've had a Hyper-V pihole ubuntu server running for a week stably now, and can connect to the admin panel fine, so I'm eliminating the setup/server stability as an issue and can only presume it's some sort of network issue.

Before I make the jump and change my router (talktalk huawei hg635) dns to the pihole ip address, has anyone got any advice or any extra steps I should take?

Unless you are running other services on the hyper-v it's vastly over powered, have a look at docker for pihole far lighter on resources than a full blown VM.
I run a docker pihole as a back up to my RPI1 with zero issues. Previously I ran a Ubuntu VM and pihole that would fall over quite often for no apparent reason. Headless with no GUI. Is the way forward for a host.

jellybeard999 · 24 Jun 2019 at 11:55

the-evaluator said:
Can you describe the issue you're having?

It seems to run fine initially, but i hit internet connection issues and the chrome errors point to a DNS issue.

labcoattech said:
What hardware are you running Pi-hole on?

I've upgraded my server, so now running on a Coffee Lake i3 9100F with 16gb RAM and Win 10.

BigBoy said:
Unless you are running other services on the hyper-v it's vastly over powered, have a look at docker for pihole far lighter on resources than a full blown VM.
I run a docker pihole as a back up to my RPI1 with zero issues. Previously I ran a Ubuntu VM and pihole that would fall over quite often for no apparent reason. Headless with no GUI. Is the way forward for a host.

I have Win 10 and went the Hyper-V route as I couldn't manage to get my head around dockers on the windows application and just gave up. It's a headless server and running 24/7 anyway, but I'm open to dockers if it's the way to go. Not sure if it's the best way to do it, but my plan is to run a few hyper-v hosts; pihole, plex, CCTV etc.

Win 10 is running drivepool.

I'm not sure if things runs better with a VM or just on the OS itself (as most can just be a windows app), but thought i'd give it a go to separate things out and as a bit of an experiment. AFAIK what i'm trying to do should work.

BigBoy · 24 Jun 2019 at 13:16

jellybeard999 said:
I have Win 10 and went the Hyper-V route as I couldn't manage to get my head around dockers on the windows application and just gave up. It's a headless server and running 24/7 anyway, but I'm open to dockers if it's the way to go. Not sure if it's the best way to do it, but my plan is to run a few hyper-v hosts; pihole, plex, CCTV etc.

Win 10 is running drivepool.

I'm not sure if things runs better with a VM or just on the OS itself (as most can just be a windows app), but thought i'd give it a go to separate things out and as a bit of an experiment. AFAIK what i'm trying to do should work.

Give docker a go it's a steep learning curve but will do everything you want with much lower overheads, and to be honest once you have looked at it it's not that hard.

Currently running in my server native I have Plex, Lidarr, Radarr (Lidarr and Radarr don't like docker for some reason). In docker containers I have audio sonic, book sonic, lazy librarian, pihole, sonarr, portainer (for managing docker containers remotely) and watchtower (auto updates containers on the fly). And Heimdall (web interface for all container front ends).

Current hardware is Xeon E3 1260L 24gb or ram and 20TB storage with 128gb SSD for Windows and docker.

I prefer Plex native rather than containered as the CPU/GPU requirements are highest of any application I run because its shared with 8 people.

Armageus · 24 Jun 2019 at 13:17

jellybeard999 said:
It seems to run fine initially, but i hit internet connection issues and the chrome errors point to a DNS issue.

How are your clients configured? Via DHCP or manually? Your pihole should be the primary dns, and the secondary left blank.

jellybeard999 said:
I'm not sure if things runs better with a VM or just on the OS itself (as most can just be a windows app), but thought i'd give it a go to separate things out and as a bit of an experiment. AFAIK what i'm trying to do should work.

PiHole runs fine in a VM - I run it under ESXi at home, and under Hyper-V at work.

jellybeard999 · 24 Jun 2019 at 13:48

Armageus said:
How are your clients configured? Via DHCP or manually? Your pihole should be the primary dns, and the secondary left blank.

I changed the DNS to the pihole IP address with a blank secondary.

DHCP, controlled by the router. Is this better manage by pihole?