Setting up Pi-hole

[DragonQ]

uBlock Origin is the most effective way to block YouTube ads on desktop. Third party apps are the best way on Android or Kodi devices. No idea about Twitter or Facebook.

 

[PAULRYAN52]

In short no.

Unfortunately the same as youtube inbeded ads they are on the same stream as the actual content.

that is what I thought but thought ask just in case

 

[uvarvu]

Has anyone suspected whether their Adguard Home instance hasn't been updating its blocklists but has been telling you it has? I refreshed the OISD.nl blocklist manually today and noticed the rules count went up by over 100k. That can't be right can it?

 

[Rainmaker]

Has anyone suspected whether their Adguard Home instance hasn't been updating its blocklists but has been telling you it has? I refreshed the OISD.nl blocklist manually today and noticed the rules count went up by over 100k. That can't be right can it?

That happens with OISD sometimes - it can lose or gain >100k easily. It's an amalgamation of a *huge* number of lists, with all the dead links and known FPs scrubbed out. Sometimes the lists grow, sometimes they shrink. It's been more stable lately (until now?) but it does happen, so don't assume AGH isn't working if it says the lists were updated. Just keep an eye on it.

 

[Deep]

I had a PiHole set up on my Virgin Media and it worked brilliantly for years, however, I've now moved over to BT and cannot get it working properly.
I have the PiHole set up via a Docker on my Synology, once I've disabled DCHP on my Smart Hub 2 the devices will connect via the PiHole BUT after 24 hours when the refresh occurs I lose all internet access.

I can't work out why this is happening even though setting up the Docker the "Server IP Address" has been set to my NAS.

Any ideas why upon refresh it all goes wrong?

 

[Feek]

Has anyone suspected whether their Adguard Home instance hasn't been updating its blocklists but has been telling you it has? I refreshed the OISD.nl blocklist manually today and noticed the rules count went up by over 100k. That can't be right can it?

I can't remember what I use for my adlists because I set them up so long ago. Both Pis update automatically overnight and I'm sure the figure used to be around 400,000-500,000 but I've just checked and they're both showing 1,935,898 domains

/edit, I have these configured:

https://v.firebog.net/hosts/static/SamsungSmart.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_tracking.txt
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_ad.txt
https://dbl.oisd.nl

I don't even need the first one, that's from when I had a Samsung telly, the next three are the default Pi-hole block lists and then there's the oisd full list

/edit2 - A quick read of the oisd site suggests I really should disable the default pihole lists.

 

[the-evaluator]

I had a PiHole set up on my Virgin Media and it worked brilliantly for years, however, I've now moved over to BT and cannot get it working properly.
I have the PiHole set up via a Docker on my Synology, once I've disabled DCHP on my Smart Hub 2 the devices will connect via the PiHole BUT after 24 hours when the refresh occurs I lose all internet access.

I can't work out why this is happening even though setting up the Docker the "Server IP Address" has been set to my NAS.

Any ideas why upon refresh it all goes wrong?

When it's all gone belly up, can you ping the Pi-Hole instance? Can you ping something on the internet by IP address? Try to ping 8.8.8.8.

 

[Deep]

When it's all gone belly up, can you ping the Pi-Hole instance? Can you ping something on the internet by IP address? Try to ping 8.8.8.8.

I'm expecting it to go **** up tomorrow morning, but I'll try the 8.8.8.8. I was definitely unable to access the BT hub settings page 192.168.1.249 or my servers IP address. I had to reset the BT Smart Hub to factory settings to turn DHCP back on

 

[the-evaluator]

I'm expecting it to go **** up tomorrow morning, but I'll try the 8.8.8.8. I was definitely unable to access the BT hub settings page 192.168.1.249 or my servers IP address. I had to reset the BT Smart Hub to factory settings to turn DHCP back on

What's the IP address of your Pi-Hole?

 

[Deep]

What's the IP address of your Pi-Hole?

The same as my server 192.168.1.148:8000

 

[the-evaluator]

When DHCP renews and it's all gone to pot, do an 'ipconfig /all' from a command prompt and post that too.

 

[BigBoy]

I'm expecting it to go **** up tomorrow morning, but I'll try the 8.8.8.8. I was definitely unable to access the BT hub settings page 192.168.1.249 or my servers IP address. I had to reset the BT Smart Hub to factory settings to turn DHCP back on

This sounds like the router part of the Hub is being overloaded. I had an issue with this when running too many upload ports on my docker Deluge torrent client causing the router to crash/hang.

 

[Deep]

When it's all gone belly up, can you ping the Pi-Hole instance? Can you ping something on the internet by IP address? Try to ping 8.8.8.8.

Just got home from work and as expected the 24 thing happened again.

Spoiler: 8.8.8.8

When DHCP renews and it's all gone to pot, do an 'ipconfig /all' from a command prompt and post that too.

Spoiler: Ipconfig

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : lan
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (10) I219-V
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-2B-67-73-66-BF
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection* 1:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : E4-5E-37-83-AE-0B
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection* 2:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter #2
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : E6-5E-37-83-AE-0A
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Wireless LAN adapter WiFi:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : E4-5E-37-83-AE-0A
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2a00:23c8:ca4:2501:f850:51d2:acdd:1fe0(Preferred)
Temporary IPv6 Address. . . . . . : 2a00:23c8:ca4:2501:659c:670d:2adf:d643(Preferred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::f850:51d2:acdd:1fe0%3(Preferred)
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.31.224(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : fe80::c6e5:32ff:fe46:4d0f%3
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 65297975
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-26-5F-93-A1-00-2B-67-73-66-BF
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : fe80::c6e5:32ff:fe46:4d0f%3
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
Connection-specific DNS Suffix Search List :
home

That was using ipconfig /all off my laptop

 

[the-evaluator]

@Deep I said to ping 8.8.8.8, not try to visit it in your web browser

Are you using wifi on the PC that you took the ipconfig output from? Indeed that shows no valid IP address so could indicate a DHCP problem. Disable the enable the wireless interface, does that sort it?

Next time it happens, give the wireless interface a static IP address and see if that helps. Is the IP address of your router 192.168.1.249? Can you post the DHCP settings from Pi-Hole.

 

[Feek]

Had to set up a bypass for my Hue Bridge because it was flashing the internet light at me and has been for a few days. Set the bypass in /etc/dnsmasq.d/05-bypass.conf, waited for it to refresh the lease and job's a good 'un.

 

[Feek]

That happens with OISD sometimes - it can lose or gain >100k easily. It's an amalgamation of a *huge* number of lists, with all the dead links and known FPs scrubbed out. Sometimes the lists grow, sometimes they shrink. It's been more stable lately (until now?) but it does happen, so don't assume AGH isn't working if it says the lists were updated. Just keep an eye on it.

Just had a look today and it's dropped by several hundred thousand entries compared to when I last looked a week or so ago. I have no doubt it'll go back up again.

Interestingly, following my comments in here a while back, I've been tidying up my whitelist and blacklists. I removed all the default Pihole lists and left just the oisd.nl list then went through my whitelist checking what was in the master list and what wasn't. I've gone down from well over three hundred entries in my whitelist down to just sixty five with a load of them disabled, just in case I need to enable them again.

My VPN Pi is still running Pi-hole V3 with the default block lists because it was such a pain to set up originally that I'm not touching it again, ever

 

[Rainmaker]

Just had a look today and it's dropped by several hundred thousand entries compared to when I last looked a week or so ago. I have no doubt it'll go back up again.

Interestingly, following my comments in here a while back, I've been tidying up my whitelist and blacklists. I removed all the default Pihole lists and left just the oisd.nl list then went through my whitelist checking what was in the master list and what wasn't. I've gone down from well over three hundred entries in my whitelist down to just sixty five with a load of them disabled, just in case I need to enable them again.

My VPN Pi is still running Pi-hole V3 with the default block lists because it was such a pain to set up originally that I'm not touching it again, ever

Everyone is different, but running OISD I have less than 15 items on my whitelist. In fact, 10 of those are simply because of my own extra rules. Before I moved to OISD I set up my own blocklist, which catches by far the majority of nasties on the network. OISD was just cream on the top. For example, I block *metrics* and *track*, so sometimes I have to except something like royalmail.com/track-trace (which clearly isn't that kind of tracker) or metrics.torproject.org (which is a different kind of 'metrics'). Here's my original blocklist:

||adj.st^
||*adsdk*^
||*adservices*^
||*adsystem*^
||*adtrade*^
||*analytics*^
||*beacons*gvt*^
||clearbit.*^
||*crosspromo*^
||*doubleclick*^
||*firebase*^
||*googlesyndication*^
||*googletagmanager*^
||grpc-marketplace.mobility.here.com^$important
||*metrics*^
||*metrix*^
||*onelink*^
||*scorecardresearch*^
||sentry.*^
||services.gfe.nvidia.com^
||*smoot-feedback*^
||static.scroll.com^
||stats.paypal.com^
||*telemetry*^
||track*.synology.com^
||tracking.*^
### ITV Hub / BritBox fixes
||toots-a.akamaihd.net^$important
@@||tom.itv.com^$important
### General UK IPTV/VoD/Catchup fixes
||g3v.prd.ads.aws.fwmrm.net^$important
||gslb-op-eu-west-01.v.fwmrm.net^$important
||endpoint.prod.eu-west-1.forester.a2z.com^$important
@@||a1.api.bbc.co.uk^$important
@@||ais.channel4.com^$important
@@||api.channel4.com^$important
@@||cpt.itv.com^$important
@@||dpm.demdex.net^$important
@@||hobbes.blueoxtech.com^$important
@@||ieonline.microsoft.com^$important
@@||monitor.channel4.com^$important
@@||push.api.bbci.co.uk^$important
@@||slb-barb-pool17.2cnt.net^$important
@@||slb-barb-poolb05.2cnt.net^$important
@@||ssl-c5appletv.2cnt.net^$important
@@||ssl-itvappletv.2cnt.net^$important
## Allow 4oD to work
@@||webstats.channel4.com^$important
@@||fwmrm.net^$important
## Allow My5 to work
@@||skymedia.co.uk^$important

 

[MarcLister]

I bought a RPi 4 2GB a few weeks ago with the intention of using it as a Pi-Hole. Set this up last night and am loving it. Went on a newspaper website to test and the page looked much cleaner. Firefox often just gives up trying to load this site and puts a bar at the top of the site saying the site is making Firefox slow down. No such problem now. I rarely use that site but it was a good test for me. Just added in a few lists from https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/setting-up-pi-hole.18756115/post-35511400 and my block list went from 139k to 903k!!

I was using the IP address of the Pi-Hole in the DNS settings on my main PC and phone manually but the phone wasn't blocking ads on https://fuzzthepiguy.tech/adtest/, even though the Pi-Hole could see the phone. I just turned the DHCP function on my VM hub off and switched the Pi-Hole's on. Going to be much better doing it that way.

Does anyone run two Pi-Holes at the same time with one as a backup?

 

[DragonQ]

Does anyone run two Pi-Holes at the same time with one as a backup?

Yes. Use gravity-sync.

 

[MarcLister]

Yes. Use gravity-sync.

Thanks. Will look at that when I get ready to set a second Pi up.

What are the best lists to use? I'm using what Feek has in post 887. Is there more to add or is that enough for now?