Setting up Pi-hole

Feek · 2 May 2017 at 08:17

Rightho chaps, Pi-hole 3 is out with the FTL engine. The web interface loads instantaneously on my Pi2 and reports are that it's really fast now on the Zero as well.

Just run

Code:

pihole -up

to upgrade.

bledd · 2 May 2017 at 10:47

Updated.

The GUI seems sluggish on my Nexus 5X.

Kol · 2 May 2017 at 12:21

ssh'd in and updated. Looking good here on my Pi2.

bledd · 3 May 2017 at 20:18

After doing this, it's super fast on my phone..

Pihole web interface, settings, 'Flush Logs' in top right.

ScoobyDoo · 4 May 2017 at 09:06

Just upgraded to the FTL engine.
Remember to clear your browser cache, after upgrading my pi I found the interface to be slower and sluggish, a clearing of the browser cache sorted this out and pi hole interface loads instantly now

Feek · 4 May 2017 at 18:58

I didn't need to clear the cache on Safari but I've read reports from people saying that they had to do it with Chrome.

bledd · 4 May 2017 at 21:12

pihole -up

3.0.1

bledd · 5 May 2017 at 14:48

pihole -up

FTL updated

AHarvey · 5 May 2017 at 21:29

Updated and running a pihole at each of our call centres now to block all internet access and allow the managers there to white list or black list sites as they see fit.

Works like a charm and no chance they can break anything on the routers!

Dr Delphi · 8 May 2017 at 22:00

That is the first update ive run on my rpi pihole that hasn't required a full rebuild of pihole to make the dns work again, i'm pleased! Plus the increase in speed is noticeable on my small network.

AHarvey · 25 May 2017 at 10:53

Ok, how would you go about blocking all traffic, but then allowing a white list of sites?

Would you also need to whitelist access for webservices such as windows update?

the-evaluator · 25 May 2017 at 11:02

Honest answer, I don't think you would. If you blocked everything and only allowed certain domains then you'd run into problems because it's very likely that the whitelisted sites will reference other sites for images and so on and you'd end up with a site that doesn't load properly.

Pi-hole doesn't work on services, so there's no Windows update object. You'd need to manually whitelist each and every domain that Windows update uses.

What are you trying to achieve? If you're wanting to block internet access to only certain sites then DNS isn't the way to do it.

Steveocee · 25 May 2017 at 11:36

AHarvey said:
Ok, how would you go about blocking all traffic, but then allowing a white list of sites?

With a router.

AHarvey · 25 May 2017 at 13:24

Steveocee said:
With a router.

Can't be done with the systems we have in place and they refuse to invest, hence using a pi

the-evaluator said:
Honest answer, I don't think you would. If you blocked everything and only allowed certain domains then you'd run into problems because it's very likely that the whitelisted sites will reference other sites for images and so on and you'd end up with a site that doesn't load properly.

Pi-hole doesn't work on services, so there's no Windows update object. You'd need to manually whitelist each and every domain that Windows update uses.

What are you trying to achieve? If you're wanting to block internet access to only certain sites then DNS isn't the way to do it.

tbh, they only need access to 4 sites so not overly concerned about links to other sites as 2 are internal.

I know it's not, but as I said above, we can't do it the proper way and everything here has to be hacked around to get it working.

the-evaluator · 25 May 2017 at 14:14

AHarvey said:
tbh, they only need access to 4 sites so not overly concerned about links to other sites as 2 are internal.

I know it's not, but as I said above, we can't do it the proper way and everything here has to be hacked around to get it working.

It's not links I'm refrring to, it's when a site is reliant on other sites to load properly. For example if you visit www.site.com then they may load images from a CDN so you'd need to whitelist the CDN to get the site to load properly.

It's extremely likely that you'll spend ages getting this working and then one of the external sites will be changed slightly and you'll need to put all that time into it again. No way would I consider doing it this way. This isn't what Pi-Hole is designed for. Good luck, you're going to need it.

Steveocee · 25 May 2017 at 15:44

AHarvey said:
Can't be done with the systems we have in place and they refuse to invest, hence using a pi

So you are going to try and stop them from using the internet with a system that is easy to work around? They only need to change the DNS locally and they are around it.

If you wanted to do that properly then you'd still put rules into the router dropping any outbound DNS requests not from the Pi.

bloodiedathame · 6 Jun 2017 at 13:09

I noticed recently that my pi hole blocks all Spotify ads

Steveocee · 8 Jun 2017 at 12:57

bloodiedathame said:
I noticed recently that my pi hole blocks all Spotify ads

Thats a nice find. Do you get a long silence where there should be an ad or are the gaps just negated?

Steveocee · 26 Jun 2017 at 14:03

Anybody having problems with FTL? I have 3 instances of Pi-Hole. My "main" one on Ubuntu 16.04 is working great. My "second" on Ubuntu 14.04 FTL keeps borking and stopping working and my "remote" in the cloud for my VPN is giving me huge wait times on lookups.

the-evaluator · 26 Jun 2017 at 15:06

No such problems here, it's all working very well.