Setting up Pi-hole

the-evaluator · 18 Nov 2019 at 08:06

Why are you doing it that way rather then getting your DHCP server to dish out your Pi-Hole as the DNS server? No need to change settings on each and every device then.

I can't help with the Pixel question, I'm know pretty much sweet FA about Android.

Psycho Sonny · 18 Nov 2019 at 14:39

jrwagh333 said:
I've set up PiHole and in using it on a device by device basis. Got it successfully set up on my Linux machine but trying to get my Pixel 3 to run it is a nightmare.

Whenever I enter the DNS manually on my Pixel it gives me "Connected, no internet"

I've read IPv6 can be a problem but I've had that disabled since forever.

Any advice?

why not just use it on all devices as default?

setting it up per device must be a PITA.

jrwagh333 · 18 Nov 2019 at 15:10

Doesn't fit my use case.

Armageus · 18 Nov 2019 at 15:16

jrwagh333 said:
Doesn't fit my use case.

Probably easier to do it the other way through? Include everything via DHCP as default, and manually set the devices you don't want to use pihole with static IP/dns

Steveocee · 19 Nov 2019 at 11:08

Just set mine up again. Imported a "few" lists and am blocking about 3M domains now. Have set it up to take DNS from my main router so any DHCP devices can have pihole'd (read filtered) DNS and stuff I set up static I can either go through the router or the pihole.

Rensin · 19 Nov 2019 at 16:58

I setup pi hole a while ago and just left it, have'nt run any updates for about 3 months (I know lazy git) and have noticed pi hole is no longer blocking any ads (have tried multiple devices)

Today I have ran an update on both pi hole & Raspbian but still getting ads.

Is it easier to just start from fresh and clean install or an easy way of fixing this?

BigBoy · 19 Nov 2019 at 17:53

Rensin said:
I setup pi hole a while ago and just left it, have'nt run any updates for about 3 months (I know lazy git) and have noticed pi hole is no longer blocking any ads (have tried multiple devices)

Today I have ran an update on both pi hole & Raspbian but still getting ads.

Is it easier to just start from fresh and clean install or an easy way of fixing this?

Check your router, secondary DNS is probably pointing beyond your pihole

Rensin · 20 Nov 2019 at 03:30

BigBoy said:
Check your router, secondary DNS is probably pointing beyond your pihole

Cheers this worked.

I've always set 1st DNS as pi hole 2nd, 3rd as cloudflare which worked in the past.

BigBoy · 20 Nov 2019 at 14:20

Rensin said:
Cheers this worked.

I've always set 1st DNS as pi hole 2nd, 3rd as cloudflare which worked in the past.

Yeah this will work but dns1 ,2,3,4 share the load so ads will come through.

jellybeard999 · 21 Nov 2019 at 00:22

Does anyone else have occasional DNS issues?

Restarting the DNS resolver in the pihole admin menu seems to sort it, but I shouldn't have to do this.

I'm running pihole on it's own Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Hyper-V server.

Apart from this issue, it's rock solid.

Steveocee · 21 Nov 2019 at 15:00

jellybeard999 said:
Does anyone else have occasional DNS issues?
Restarting the DNS resolver in the pihole admin menu seems to sort it, but I shouldn't have to do this.
I'm running pihole on it's own Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Hyper-V server.
Apart from this issue, it's rock solid.

That's definitely not normal. Would suggest just binning the entire VM off and starting a fresh one.

BigBoy · 21 Nov 2019 at 16:44

jellybeard999 said:
Does anyone else have occasional DNS issues?

Restarting the DNS resolver in the pihole admin menu seems to sort it, but I shouldn't have to do this.

I'm running pihole on it's own Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Hyper-V server.

Apart from this issue, it's rock solid.

Thats a massive VM load just to run pihole, would be better off running a raspbian image on the VM if you really want to do it that way, or even go docker (I use docker after playing around with VM's)

jellybeard999 · 21 Nov 2019 at 17:41

BigBoy said:
Thats a massive VM load just to run pihole, would be better off running a raspbian image on the VM if you really want to do it that way, or even go docker (I use docker after playing around with VM's)

It's a headless setup with no gui etc. I was led to believe that was pretty lightweight. I tried docker, but couldn't get my head round it.

Happy to set it up again if a different setup is better?

Armageus · 21 Nov 2019 at 17:44

BigBoy said:
Thats a massive VM load just to run pihole, would be better off running a raspbian image on the VM if you really want to do it that way, or even go docker (I use docker after playing around with VM's)

I run pihole in an Ubuntu server VM as well. Its fine with 512mb ram, a single vcpu and doesn't use much disk space.
Hardly a heavyweight, and better supported than raspbian x86

DragonQ · 22 Dec 2019 at 15:16

BigBoy said:
Thats a massive VM load just to run pihole, would be better off running a raspbian image on the VM if you really want to do it that way, or even go docker (I use docker after playing around with VM's)

I tried running Pihole in docker on my main server and it borked my network config so badly that after 10 hours trying to fix it I gave up and restored a backup.

Right now I run Pihole in Docker on an Ubuntu Server VM. I then run LanCache in its 3 Docker containers in a separate VM and have the Pihole's upstream DNS server set to the Lancache VM. I don't think it's possible to run all the docker containers (pihole, lancache, lancache-dns, lancache-sniproxy) on a single VM because Pihole doesn't let you choose different upstream IPs for ports 53, 80, and 443. I'm not actually sure if it's working correctly yet. Using LanCache by itself works fine but Pihole -> LanCache might be a bit dodgy: I had trouble logging into Steam and the Blizzard app couldn't download the preview videos.

I'm trying to also setup Cloudfared in a Docker container but its input is port 5053 and the upstream DNS server for lancache-dns doesn't allow non-standard ports. So basically Cloudfared would need to run in a Docker container that forwards the host's port 53 to its internal port 5053, and since both Pihole and LanCache already use port 53 on their hosts, the Cloudfared Docker container would need to be run in yet another VM. Sigh, 3 VMs just for this feels silly.

dirtychinchilla · 22 Jan 2020 at 10:33

After owning a Pi for about 2 years, I've finally bothered to get mine running. I just want to get Pi Hole and Plex on there, and maybe Pi VPN just so I can remote access it from outside in case it goes wrong and I'm not at home (i.e. wife rings me and is furious that I've "broken" the internet).

Just wondering if anyone has a Home Hub and can send me an image of their router settings that enable the Pi? Weirdly I had it running fine on Monday, and then brought it into work to fiddle with it yesterday, set up a load of stuff, and then at home it was absolutely useless!

Edit: so I re-imaged the Pi (for about the fourth time in as many days). got Pi Hole onto it and after some issues with the IP of my router not being set, it all seems to be working!

I found on the Home Hub that the actual settings for the DHCP server mostly don't matter, as long as you point it to the range of addresses that Pi Hole tells you. Disabling DHCP on the router made absolutely no difference, and then I had to run ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew (https://support.nexon.net/hc/en-us/articles/115000065463-Release-Renew-IP-and-Flush-DNS - didn't do the third step on this website as it worked before that).

So all is well!

Thanks for all the info in here @Feek

englishpremier · 27 Jan 2020 at 18:45

I recently re-setup Pi-hole on an unused Pi. Seems things have moved on over the past 6-12 months.

I'm bringing to wonder what the point is in DNS blockers. If it's to avoid ads, google and other organisations are serving ads from the main content domain now, so your google search or youtube videos will still be littered by ads.

MonkeyBasher · 27 Jan 2020 at 21:38

englishpremier said:
I recently re-setup Pi-hole on an unused Pi. Seems things have moved on over the past 6-12 months.

I'm bringing to wonder what the point is in DNS blockers. If it's to avoid ads, google and other organisations are serving ads from the main content domain now, so your google search or youtube videos will still be littered by ads.

Google is not the only search engine, there is no reason for you to use it as your window onto the internet if you do not want to.
DuckDuckGo is a good search engine that doesnt track or offer ads, it also does its best to stop other stuff as well.

DragonQ · 28 Jan 2020 at 08:57

Pi-hole is nice but it's not perfect and never will be. Getting cashback via tracking is nearly impossible unless you enable loads of tracking websites, which kinda defeats the purpose. Some websites refuse to work for me even when disabling the Pi-hole and clearing my local DNS cache. Then there's the fact that whitelisting sites sometimes just doesn't work. The URL ends up in the whitelist.txt file but then still gets blocked according to the log. :/

On my main desktop I use uBlock and uMatrix anyway to only let stuff through that's actually needed for each website to render correctly, so Pi-hole is minimally useful here. The biggest advantage of something like Pi-hole is it blocks tracking and telemetry from other devices, e.g. my smart TV, my air conditioner (wtf), my wife's Huawei mobile...

Eliot · 28 Jan 2020 at 12:24

englishpremier said:
I recently re-setup Pi-hole on an unused Pi. Seems things have moved on over the past 6-12 months.

I'm bringing to wonder what the point is in DNS blockers. If it's to avoid ads, google and other organisations are serving ads from the main content domain now, so your google search or youtube videos will still be littered by ads.

IM still using a Pi-Hole and am loving it. About 70% of my outbound requests are blocked, everything is working perfectly and all over DoH