Raspberry Pi to run pihole
- Thread starter RobTi
- Start date
Hi Mate,
I did this recently, Its a really fun little project and the gains are pretty big.
As the Daily Fail is always a good web benchmark, i've seen some tests that report that the Homepage is 50mb without Pihole, and like 2mb with....
That saves time, makes the internet feel quicker and comes at no loss to you. Also frees up the internet for other stuff etc.
Anyway to answer your question.
I have a 330Mb connection and was quite anal about speed and generally impacting that so rather than worry about it I just went for the Raspberry Pi3B+ (fastest one, for me the slower ones aren't cheap enough to be worth it)
There is a well known kit available from rainforest called "Ucreate" ,you want the "Official" power adaptor and this one comes with it, also all the basics you need including a OS on an SD already for you to use.
I'd recommend that.
Then after that I would follow this guide:
https://pi-hole.net/
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-install
It's pretty easy, the whole thing should take about 1hr from booting the Pi to installing PiHole
Other things to consider:
Make sure you either reserve the DHCP address the Pi gets from the router or ideally set a static IP for it outside of your DHCP range.
Change the DNS address of the DHCP pool so all devices are protected from the ad's and tracking features. Other wise you will need to change manually
Ideally, wire the PI into the router rather than use WiFi to reduce latency
Finally, if you want the Pi to auto boot and run Pihole when there's a powercut etc then you need to do some further work, I haven't done this yet but am told this is easy.
I did this recently, Its a really fun little project and the gains are pretty big.
As the Daily Fail is always a good web benchmark, i've seen some tests that report that the Homepage is 50mb without Pihole, and like 2mb with....
That saves time, makes the internet feel quicker and comes at no loss to you. Also frees up the internet for other stuff etc.
Anyway to answer your question.
I have a 330Mb connection and was quite anal about speed and generally impacting that so rather than worry about it I just went for the Raspberry Pi3B+ (fastest one, for me the slower ones aren't cheap enough to be worth it)
There is a well known kit available from rainforest called "Ucreate" ,you want the "Official" power adaptor and this one comes with it, also all the basics you need including a OS on an SD already for you to use.
I'd recommend that.
Then after that I would follow this guide:
https://pi-hole.net/
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-install
It's pretty easy, the whole thing should take about 1hr from booting the Pi to installing PiHole
Other things to consider:
Make sure you either reserve the DHCP address the Pi gets from the router or ideally set a static IP for it outside of your DHCP range.
Change the DNS address of the DHCP pool so all devices are protected from the ad's and tracking features. Other wise you will need to change manually
Ideally, wire the PI into the router rather than use WiFi to reduce latency
Finally, if you want the Pi to auto boot and run Pihole when there's a powercut etc then you need to do some further work, I haven't done this yet but am told this is easy.
Soldato
I've the DNS set up per device as there's 2 devices in the house that the user wants adverts 
Associate
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- 9 Jan 2019
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Dont even need a pi to run it on, my old one was on an odroid single board computer and is now on a esxi VM on my Microserver.
Quite, you can run its on a synology NAS as well
Permabanned
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You can run pihole on a linux virtual machine if you just want to try it out before buying a pi. I have it running to play about with in ubuntu server 19.04
EDIT: Head over to this thread in the Linux stuff for more pi-hole info.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/setting-up-pi-hole.18756115/page-23#post-32815080
EDIT: Head over to this thread in the Linux stuff for more pi-hole info.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/setting-up-pi-hole.18756115/page-23#post-32815080
Last edited:
I had Pihole for ages and thought it was great, even gave a small donation to the project as it was going through a lot of active development at the time.
I updated my setup and built a PfSense firewall and used an add on called pfblocker-ng which offers the same sort of thing. I am going to deploy pihole back onto a linux VM as it really is a great tool and the UI is excellent.
I updated my setup and built a PfSense firewall and used an add on called pfblocker-ng which offers the same sort of thing. I am going to deploy pihole back onto a linux VM as it really is a great tool and the UI is excellent.
Man of Honour
This is a super delayed quote, but any particular guide you recommend? I have plenty running in docker on my synology, but pi-hole running on a VM on my mac (which is always on). I've seen a few guides but they aren't the clearest. I'll keep looking (was hoping crosstalk solutions would do one, he's great) otherwise.
Be keen to get it off VM and into something a bit more reliable in case I need to shut down my mac.
Cheers.
Super delayed response, lol,
This one looks like it covers everything https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-install-pi-hole-on-a-synology-nas/289/9
Yeah good shout, If you dont have a Pi, i'd recommend getting one, so many uses, I currently have three.
Pihole (1) Raspberry Pi 3B+
PiHole (2) Raspberry Pi 2 (this points at google whereas number 1 points at cloudflare and will be number two DNS server when I can be bothered to check it all over)
Plex/NAS (3) Raspberry Pi 4B 4gb, Plex Server + basic NAS with 4tb USB 3 Harddrive attached
I've just deployed PiHole onto my Pi 2.
Plenty quick enough and hardly stresses it at all. I deployed a new Pi4 as my media server so this was waiting to be done.
Very impressed with it. Have been using uBlock origin wherever I can but it's not available universally through apps etc. Ever since losing root on my mobile I've lost device wide ad blocking. This solves that.
I've got a Synology NAS but I would rather let that sleep/idle when not in use and just have the low powered Pi running.
Plenty quick enough and hardly stresses it at all. I deployed a new Pi4 as my media server so this was waiting to be done.
Very impressed with it. Have been using uBlock origin wherever I can but it's not available universally through apps etc. Ever since losing root on my mobile I've lost device wide ad blocking. This solves that.
I've got a Synology NAS but I would rather let that sleep/idle when not in use and just have the low powered Pi running.
Permabanned
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If you want to play with pi-hole try it in a virtual machine first to see if it's worth it for you. I think I will be buying 2x pi4s!
Caporegime
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is one a backup pihole? running off the second DNS?