You must log in or register to comment.
66.6% of all traffic is blocked with no functional impact on anything that I do
Okay. I’m convinced.
Don’t fall for the trap that they recommend an expensive Pi 5: I am running Pi-hole on a Pi 2 but you can basically run this on obsolete hardware, whether that’s a Pi or a PC/laptop
I run mine on a PI 0. Also use it as a samba disk partition for transferring files.
I use adguard home in conjunction with NextDNS.
I find adguard a little better in the UI department. Have it in a docker container so it’s a set and forget.
Getting an error trying to access this:
https://den.dev/blog/pihole has a security policy called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that Firefox can only connect to it securely. You can’t add an exception to visit this site.
Works for me
Raspberry Pi 1b > DietPi > Pi-hole > Unbound <3
I recommend having two. Otherwise your home internet goes down everytime you update or reboot or it crashes.
Huh? Typically you have a secondary DNS entry on your router
And what do you set that secondary DNS entry to? Operating systems may use both, so you need the secondary to point to a pi hole or else you’re letting ads through randomly.
I have two piholes - they serve different DHCP ranges (e.g. 1-100 and 101-250), and option 6 references each other.
Interesting… And this is not a criticism, simply an observation…
I’ve a single Pihole instance running on a RPi 4 and have experienced not a single instance of any of the 3 probs you mention. Except, of course, the very few minutes it takes for a reboot which I can schedule and am aware when it’s happening…
🤷♂️
Literally just had my pihole hard crash this weekend due to a bad update to FTL. Apparently they had a major version upgrade and didn’t bother to read the notes so I had to do a full OS reinstall.
Back up your configs people. Had to dig through documentation to find the sqlite file and then parse through it like some sort of animal.
I’d say part of it comes down to what your log level is set at. My pi-hole ran on the pi for like 3-4 years before it destroyed the sd card and crashed. I know some people make immutable filesystems for them etc. If you’re writing to the sd card it’s just a matter of when, not if it will fail.
I didn’t have a problem on my Pi-hole for a very long time too. OP has that probably because s/he’s using it as a DHCP server as well.
Certainly possible though not so versed in Pihole capabilities that I can imagine how that happens…
My DHCP is handled by an EdgerouterX…
My Pihole is limited to DNS only.
I’ve a single Pihole instance running on a RPi 4 and have experienced not a single instance of any of the 3 probs you mention. Except, of course, the very few minutes it takes for a reboot which I can schedule and am aware when it’s happening…
Yeah, I believe it can vary depending on how you host it.
In my experience whenever I brought down the PiHole instance (Docker Compose) I would lose all internet access, which is expected since I’m essentially taking away my devices one and only library, so to mitigate this I spun up PiHole on another device and set that as my secondary (backup) DNS resolver.
This way I can take a container down, update it and all without losing resolution to the internet.
Right, I didn’t have any issues running it on a pi for years too. The problems came when I started messing with things. So, really my advice is to help save people from ideas like mine.
I decided one day to take a bunch of old laptops and create a proxmox cluster out of them. It worked great, but I didn’t have a use for them, I was just playing. So, I decided to retire the pi and put the pihole on the cluster. HA for the win!
I did that and came woke up a few days later to my family complaining that they had no internet. I found the pihole container on a different node and it wouldn’t start. Turns out with proxmox you need separate storage for HA to work. I had assumed that it would be similar to jboss clustering which I’m familiar with, and the container would be on all the nodes and only one actice at a time, with some syncing between nodes. Nope.
What’s worse is the container refused to move back to the origional node AND wouldn’t start. The pi was stored away at this point so I figured it would be easier to just create a new container, but duh, no internet. Turn off dns settings on the router, bam have internet.
Eventually set up the old pi again, and it took me a while to figure out what I had done wrong with proxmox. But while I was figuring it out it was nice to have the backup.
Now I always have two running on different hardware, just in case.
The problems came when I started messing with things
🤷♂️
Mine never crashed until the latest major update, now it’s down every time I come home. Am mad
Yep, if you have somewhere to put a docker container or VM you can have redundancy.
honestly don’t find it necessary. raspberry OS basically never needs to be rebooted and if you really need planned maintenance you can just use a normal DNS server til you’re done.
Right, I never said two raspberry pis, I meant two instances. Like one pi and a container run elsewhere.
Adguard Home has been absolutely rock solid for me, and it offers DoT and DoH servers so you can easily connect devices over those protocols if you want to.
I just use their free public option. It’s basically as good as pihole. With pihole I still got some ads. I still get some like this.
Great, I recommend having two Adguard Home instances.
I’ve been thinking of setting one up for a while, if I have a home server would I be better off hosting it on that or as a separate device? What are the alternatives to a raspberry pi? They’ve shot up in price over the years.
I personally like it on a dedicated Pi simplly because I don’t want DNS to die if i’m doing other server maintenance. the Pi is pretty much set it and forget it.
But i guerss you might as well try it on your server first and you can always buy a Pi if you find it to be too much of a pain.
Definitely dont bother with buying a pi if you’ve got other hardware.
I have one physical (a 3b I had no use for anymore), and two running as containers. The containers do most of the heavy lifting, since they are so much faster than a pi they respond far faster, but the physical is nice for when I take down the clusters for maintenance (or when I lose power, the clusters shut down after about 3 minutes, the pi will keep going for a while on UPS).
If you have a server running, I wouldn’t buy more hardware. They have good example documentation for just such a configuration:
https://docs.pi-hole.net/docker/
If your server already has those ports bound (specifically the DNS port 53) you are going to have to get creative; otherwise it’ll work well!
Worst case, a cheapo pi 3 will do the job. At one point I had it running on a pi zero, so hardware requirements are pretty low.
If your using docker and the ports are bound you can just use the network mode host so the container gets it’s own ip. It’s how I have adguard running on my unraid server
Thanks, PoopMonster, that’s a good tip!
I put it onto my home server and it is working great. I can’t tell you about all the options, but it was so easy to start another VM for it that I didn’t look at other options too carefully.
if you’ve already got something running 24/7, you could just put it there. it doesn’t need much for resources.
pihole does not need it’s own box. it can run as a container (docker instructions in the official docs) or in a small vm.
i have two small vm running dietpi and used that to install pihole. i fully expected to run a few more things on them, that’s why i chose dietpi–just have never gotten that far (it’s only been like three years now).
I have it on my Pi, and it does the job just fine. But if you have a home server with a little more power, do it there instead.
The last thing you want is your DNS to bottleneck. Never had a problem with my Rasp5, but it all depends on how many other services you try to run.
I run my main pihole on a pi and the backup on a NUC mini pc. Le Potato is a cheap pi alternative.
I run mine on a Intel N100 based mini PC from Beelink running Proxmox. It’s just about the only thing it does at the moment so I’ve had no concerns about bottlenecking.
It’s much more powerful than a pi and costs a not too dissimilar amount to one after you factor in a case, storage, power supply.
Is it possible to do something like this with a newer router? My wireless-G router is finally dying after 20 years, and if I need to upgrade it’d be nice to wrap it all in one.
I haven’t installed it direct on my router. I used to have it running in a container on my little proxmox server (aka old PC repurposed). I really liked the interface.
Then I was practically gifted a really nice Asus router. I flashed merlin-wrt to it and read some guide on how to install a different ad blocker. It’s really good whatever it is. I haven’t had to touch it in months, and I never see an ad.
You can do it with any router by manually configuring devices, but one that lets you advertise the PiHole IP as the DHCP DNS option makes it a lot easier.
OpenWrt with AdGuard Home is one option. Big fan of the former, haven’t used the latter
I played with a pi-hole setup for a bit. It was nice. I got distracted and set up NextDNS. That’s where I am now.
I like I can easily turn it on/off when I just need to do something and no time to fuss with it.
I’ve got a home server, just not fully setup and going yet, but someday…
Any thoughts on why I might do pi-hole over something like NextDNS? I think the cost is roughly $1/mo.
If that’s what you’re happy with and works for you, continue.
Personally, I’m creating an environment in which I’m not dependent on any cloud provider on the front end.
I do have a cloud backup solution for all my data files on the off chance I lose every single on-site backup and closely-held remote backups (read: not in main building but still on property…).
Just trying to get away from reliance on the existence of someone else’s computer/datacenter…
🤷♂️
Anyone have recs for a site that I can pick up simple hardware for this purpose. Maybe not a pi but like a nuc? Or a refurbed.
Take an old PC or laptop out of the box-o-crap, install Ubuntu server, give it a fixed IP address, install pi hole with the one line command from their website, tell your regular PC that the laptop IP is your DNS server.
This is the easiest way to play around before rolling out to your whole network.
You can try refurb NUC or mini PC on Amazon with N100 that you can find easily between $150-$200 range.
deleted by creator
eBay for NUC. Le potato for a pi alternative.
Ive I’ve a pi hole running, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle. To me it feels like it breaks more things than it helps.
I took fell into the 7 million sites blocked trap!
If it’s websites that are breaking, maybe you are using some really aggressive blocklist. Also, you can use multiple blocklists and assign clients to them however you please.
What issues do you have?
