Setting up Pi-hole

jonneymendoza · 11 May 2026 at 11:56

Feek said:
Heads up if you use Pi-hole with DNS-over-HTTPS via cloudflared.

Cloudflare have removed the old cloudflared proxy-dns feature from newer versions of cloudflared. If your Pi-hole is configured to forward DNS to 127.0.0.1#5053, and cloudflared updates to a new version, DNS can partially break.

The awkward bit is that Pi-hole may still look healthy. The dashboard can still show queries, blocked domains, active clients, and normal-looking graphs, because Pi-hole is still receiving requests and can still block domains locally. But normal allowed lookups may fail or time out because Pi-hole is forwarding them to cloudflared on port 5053, and cloudflared is no longer running that service.

Quick checks:

On the Pi-hole, run:

grep -n "^PIHOLE_DNS" /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf

If you see:

127.0.0.1#5053

then check whether anything is listening there:

sudo ss -lntup | grep ':5053'

If nothing is listening, DNS-over-HTTPS is broken and Pi-hole’s upstream resolver is dead.

Also check:

systemctl status cloudflared --no-pager

If the log says DNS Proxy is no longer supported since version 2026.2.0, that’s the problem.

The simplest fix is to stop using cloudflared for Pi-hole DNS and set Pi-hole back to normal upstream DNS servers such as Google, Quad9, Cloudflare, OpenDNS, etc. In the Pi-hole web interface, go to Settings → DNS, remove 127.0.0.1#5053, choose normal upstream DNS servers, save, then disable cloudflared:

sudo systemctl disable --now cloudflared

Then test:

dig @PIHOLE_IP google.com

If that returns an answer instead of timing out, it’s fixed.

Thanks to chatgpt for helping me find this (and writing that summary above).

I run pihole on a docker container, how do i do the above?

Feek · 11 May 2026 at 12:15

jonneymendoza said:
I run pihole on a docker container, how do i do the above?

You'd know if you've set up cloudflared, but to be sure, using the web interface for Pi-hole, just go to settings/DNS and make sure you don't have a custom server set as an upstream DNS server.

Ad_Augendae · 12 May 2026 at 18:13

jonneymendoza said:
I run pihole on a docker container, how do i do the above?

I thought you had an RB5009. ie containers, Technitium is in the menu. Not sure if it is built with QUIC but you can pull the latest that includes it anyway.
h3://dns.adguard-dns.com/dns-query (94.140.14.14)
h3://dns.adguard-dns.com/dns-query (94.140.15.15)
h3://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query (1.1.1.1)
h3://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query (1.0.0.1)
I have Technitium on RPI 4 which works well with h3 and Quic 853. I still prefer to hide it in with 443 h3 traffic though not all providers support it. If you do go Technitium on an RPi4 minimum you will need the Libraries As already said cloudflared is not supported anymore!

Cromulent · 18 May 2026 at 16:29

I've had PiHole running for about 6 months now. It is just the basic install running on Raspian OS and I'm curious if there are any other things I can do with the Raspberry Pi at the same time as running Pi Hole? I haven't been through the thread as it is quite long

.

aaronyuri · 18 May 2026 at 16:48

Cromulent said:
I've had PiHole running for about 6 months now. It is just the basic install running on Raspian OS and I'm curious if there are any other things I can do with the Raspberry Pi at the same time as running Pi Hole? I haven't been through the thread as it is quite long .

The better question is what can't you do with an RPi. They can do just about anything you can imagine, besides compute intensive tasks like transcoding and AI.

Do some Googling and see if anything tickles your fancy. There is another RPi thread on here somewhere along the lines of what are you doing with your Pi. That would also be a useful resource.

Cromulent · 18 May 2026 at 16:53

aaronyuri said:
The better question is what can't you do with an RPi. They can do just about anything you can imagine, besides compute intensive tasks like transcoding and AI.

Do some Googling and see if anything tickles your fancy. There is another RPi thread on here somewhere along the lines of what are you doing with your Pi. That would also be a useful resource.

Thank you. I'll have a hunt around.

VeNT · 7 Jun 2026 at 22:44

oh look, a rabbit hole.
mini nas then google photos replacement?

craptakular · 28 Jul 2026 at 19:57

Does a pihole effectively remove youtube adds?

Feek · 28 Jul 2026 at 20:15

craptakular said:
Does a pihole effectively remove youtube adds?

No.

Buffalo2102 · 28 Jul 2026 at 21:02

I use adguard and ublock origin browser extension and I haven't seen a Youtube ad for years.

Rainmaker · 28 Jul 2026 at 22:43

Buffalo2102 said:
I use adguard and ublock origin browser extension and I haven't seen a Youtube ad for years.

That's because uBO uses scriptlets and cosmetic filtering on the page itself. It's impossible to block same-domain ads without also blocking the desired content also hosted on that domain (i.e. videos!). DNS blocking is for third party trackers, analytics, beacons, and those first-party ads that are identifiable (eg by subdomain). A browser extension is for the rest, and they're complementary. uBO in at least Medium Mode with good network blocking rules is a real time, memory and bandwidth saver. Set up properly, you'll save a lot of requests even leaving the browser (and thus prevent them hitting the DNS server at all), which is faster than waiting for a null response from upstream.

uvarvu · 4 Aug 2026 at 13:25

Heads up from Hagezi to stick with his Pro list only, he considers the others to be obsolete.

Reddit

www.reddit.com

Cromulent · 4 Aug 2026 at 13:49

My pihole is running Debian Bookworm but I'm curious if I can easily upgrade to Trixie? I've never really used Debian before so I'm out of the loop.

Rainmaker · 4 Aug 2026 at 13:51

uvarvu said:
Heads up from Hagezi to stick with his Pro list only, he considers the others to be obsolete.

Reddit

www.reddit.com

That's... not at all what Gerd said. He told a user with a Flint 2 router and limited RAM that they didn't also need to add in AdGuard DNS Popup Hosts filter, uBlock0 filters - Badware risks, and AdAway Default Blocklist on top of Pro. They are obsolete because Pro already contains them.

uvarvu · 4 Aug 2026 at 13:54

Rainmaker said:
That's... not at all what Gerd said. He told a user with a Flint 2 router and limited RAM that they didn't also need to add in AdGuard DNS Popup Hosts filter, uBlock0 filters - Badware risks, and AdAway Default Blocklist on top of Pro. They are obsolete because Pro already contains them.

Oh yeah, now it makes sense after reading through that again!

Rainmaker · 4 Aug 2026 at 13:55

Cromulent said:
My pihole is running Debian Bookworm but I'm curious if I can easily upgrade to Trixie? I've never really used Debian before so I'm out of the loop.

Yes, quite easy. RTFM (seriously, Debian's upgrade docs are very good) and you'll be fine. Essentially you want to update/upgrade the box fully on Bookworm, then switch the apt/sources file(s) to point to Trixie (disable any 3rd party repos during upgrade), do apt update && apt full-upgrade and reboot. Then re-enable any 3rd party repos and update again. Easy, but do read the docs cos I probably forgot a step.

Cromulent · 4 Aug 2026 at 13:58

Rainmaker said:
Yes, quite easy. RTFM (seriously, Debian's upgrade docs are very good) and you'll be fine. Essentially you want to update/upgrade the box fully on Bookworm, then switch the apt/sources file(s) to point to Trixie (disable any 3rd party repos during upgrade), do apt update && apt full-upgrade and reboot. Then re-enable any 3rd party repos and update again. Easy, but do read the docs cos I probably forgot a step.

Ah, thank you. I'll be sure to do that.

Sin_Chase · 5 Aug 2026 at 09:40

VeNT said:
oh look, a rabbit hole.
mini nas then google photos replacement?

He is on the path!

Will discover Docker next and then want a cheap SFF business PC with an intel quicksync CPU off ebay to run it on.

VaderDSL · 5 Aug 2026 at 12:02

Quick question, are some sites getting around adblockers now by serving ads from alternate sources? Apologies I'm not sure on teh exact terms, but for example (I know its a trash website) but on lancashire telegraph site ads have been blocked for ages, but recently they have started appearing. When looking at my query log it shows a lot of :

adshield-fallback-staging-yp6cs.b-cdn.net

entries followed by

fb.stg.content-loader.com
fb.stg.html-load.com

Blocking those domains then causes the site to put up one of those this site is run from ads, please disable your blocker page.

Presumably there's nothing I can do, at least on the family's iOs devices, on my PC I can run ublock which blocks them at least.

Edit : I am using Hagezi Pro & StevenBlack host lists.

Rainmaker · 5 Aug 2026 at 13:39

VaderDSL said:
Quick question, are some sites getting around adblockers now by serving ads from alternate sources? Apologies I'm not sure on teh exact terms, but for example (I know its a trash website) but on lancashire telegraph site ads have been blocked for ages, but recently they have started appearing. When looking at my query log it shows a lot of :

adshield-fallback-staging-yp6cs.b-cdn.net

entries followed by

fb.stg.content-loader.com
fb.stg.html-load.com

Blocking those domains then causes the site to put up one of those this site is run from ads, please disable your blocker page.

Presumably there's nothing I can do, at least on the family's iOs devices, on my PC I can run ublock which blocks them at least.

Edit : I am using Hagezi Pro & StevenBlack host lists.

Don't run Hagezi lists alongside others, it's pointless. Gerd already amalgamates many sources and takes out the broken and problematic bits (including StevenBlack). The type of behaviour you're describing is the job of a client-side adblocker (uBlock Origin, Brave Shields, AdGuard). They will likely have a scriptlet to neuter the anti-adblock.

Edit: For iOS you can run the AdGuard app which will run content blockers in the browser(s).