{"id":3059,"date":"2016-11-21T16:55:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2016-11-21T16:55:23","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:55:23","slug":"results-from-running-pi-hole-for-several-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=3059","title":{"rendered":"results from running pi-hole for several weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across pi-hole<\/a> recently – an ad blocker<\/a> and {{DNS}} service that you can run on a {{Raspberry Pi}} in Raspian (or any {{Debian}} or {{Ubuntu}} (ie Debian-like)) system. Using pi-hole\u00a0should<\/em> obviate the need for running ad-blockers<\/a> in your browser (so long as you’re on a network that is running DNS queries through pi-hole).<\/p>\n

I’ve seen some people running it on {{CentOS}} – but I’ve had issues with that combination, so am keeping to the .deb-based distros (specifically, I’m running it on the smallest droplet size from Digital Ocean<\/a> with Ubuntu 16.04).<\/p>\n

First the good – it is truly stupidly-simple to get setup and running. A little\u00a0too<\/em> simple – not because tools should have to be hard to use<\/a>, but because there’s not much configuration that goes in the automated script. Also, updating the blacklist and whitelist\u00a0are easy – though they don’t always update via the web portal as you’d hope.<\/p>\n

Second, configuration is almost all manual: so, if you want to use more than 2 upstream DNS hosts (I personally want to hit both Google and Freenom upstream), for example, there is manual file editing. Or if you want to have basic auth<\/a> enabled for the web portal, you need to not only add it manually, but you need to\u00a0re-add<\/em><\/strong> it manually after any updates.<\/p>\n

Third, the bad. This is not a\u00a0pi-hole<\/em> issue,\u00a0per se<\/em>, but it is still relevant: most devices that you would configure to use DNS for your home (or maybe even enterprise<\/a>) want at least two entries (eg your {{cable modem}}, or home wifi router). You\u00a0can<\/em> set only one DNS provider with some devices, but not all. Which goes towards showing how pi-hole might not be best run\u00a0outside<\/em> your network – if you run piggy-back {{DHCP}} and DNS both off your RPi, and not off the {{wireless router}} you’re probably running, then you’re OK. But if your wireless router \/ cable modem demands multiple DNS entries, you either need to run multiple pi-hole servers somewhere, or you need to realize not everything will end up going through the hole.<\/p>\n

Pi-hole sets up {{lighttpd}} instance (which you don’t\u00a0have<\/em> to use) so you can see a pretty admin panel:<\/p>\n

\"pihole\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I added basic authentication to the admin subdirectory by adding the following lines to \/etc\/lighttpd\/lighttpd.conf<\/code> after following this tutorial<\/a>:<\/p>\n

#add http basic auth
\nauth.backend = \"htdigest\"
\nauth.backend.htdigest.userfile = \"\/etc\/lighttpd\/.htpasswd\/lighttpd-htdigest.user\"
\nauth.require = (\"\/admin\" =>
\n( \"method\" => \"digest\",
\n\"realm\" => \"rerss\",
\n\"require\" => \"valid-user\" )
\n)<\/code><\/p>\n

I also have 4 upstream DNS providers in \/etc\/dnsmasq.d\/01-pihole.conf<\/code>:<\/p>\n

server=80.80.80.80
\nserver=8.8.8.8
\nserver=8.8.4.4
\nserver=80.80.81.81<\/code><\/p>\n

I still need to SSLify<\/a> the page, but that’s coming.<\/p>\n

The 8.8.* addresses are Google’s<\/a> public DNS. The 80.80.* addresses are Freenom’s<\/a>. There are myriad more free DNS<\/a> providers out there – these are just the ones I use.<\/p>\n

So what’s my tl;dr on pi-hole? It’s pretty good. It needs a little work to get it more stable between updates – but it’s very close. And I bet if I understood a little more of the setup process, I could probably make a fix to the update script that wouldn’t clobber (or would restore) any custom settings I have in place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across pi-hole recently – an ad blocker and {{DNS}} service that you can run on a {{Raspberry Pi}} in Raspian (or any {{Debian}} or {{Ubuntu}} (ie Debian-like)) system. Using pi-hole\u00a0should obviate the need for running ad-blockers in your browser (so long as you’re on a network that is running DNS queries through pi-hole). …
Continue reading results from running pi-hole for several weeks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38,41],"tags":[73,229,390,450,565,617,633,643,797],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-3059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","category-technical","tag-advertising","tag-debian","tag-how-to","tag-linux","tag-pihole","tag-raspberrypi","tag-review","tag-rpi","tag-ubuntu"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}