I’ve been aware of pi-hole for a while now, but never bothered with it because I do most web browsing on a laptop where browser extensions like uBlock origin are good enough. However, with multiple streaming services starting to insert adds into my paid subscriptions, I’m looking to upgrade to a network blocker that will also cover the apps on my smart TV.
I run most of my self hosted services on a proxmox server, so I’d like something that’ll run as an LXC container or a VM. I’m also vaguely aware that various competing applications have come out since pi-hole first gained popularity. Is pi-hole still the best thing going, or are there better options?
If you are more into a full DNS solution that can also block Technitium DNS is a reasonable choice. It is fairly userfriendly, can be run in an LXC easily (I am doing exactly that), able to use multiple block lists in any combination you want, can be controlled by an API, is regularly updated,etc.
I couldn’t be happier with it, even though the learning curve is somewhat steep, when you are new to DNS. It is a fully fledged DNS server after all.
Pinhole is still a thing. If you want other options there is also adguard.
Yeah do it there is basically no downside. I agree with others that you may have trouble with the ads in streaming services. On my android TV, YouTube ads, for instance, aren’t blocked by pihole.
When the ads come from the same domain as the content, which is the case with youtube, you can’t block them with any DNS based ad blocker.
I use both. Pi-hole running in a docker container on one of my home servers which my gateway is configured to assign as the default DNS for all clients, and uBlock Origin on all my browsers to catch everything else.
Pihole is pretty good at catching ads on platforms that are not suited to browser based blockers (IoT devices, streaming boxes etc) but it isn’t perfect and is best used in conjunction with another solution.
You should definitely set up pihole but I don’t think it’ll block ads on streaming apps unless I’m wrong and someone can point me to something that explains how I can set that up.
Yeah it’s near impossible to block on streaming services because most of the ads are served up from the same DNS locations that the watchable media is hosted on.
Right. I mean, I looked into this a few years ago when I set it up and just accepted my fate
I set up pihole a few months ago. I added a few dozen of the highest recommended block lists, but I wasn’t impressed at all. It didn’t seem very effective at blocking ads in both real world tests and tests that I found online specifically for testing your adblocker.
The best test I have is my wife complaining, that ads in Google results cannot be opened. It seems to work flawlessly for me 😂
On a more serious note, what tests are these? The thing is, the ad domain is either in the blocklist or not. Ads inside apps are hard to block (I even have adaway on my android, and some slip through as eg Instagram reuses the backend domains/endpoints for ad delivery).
I have a pihole setup and did not get any ads when testing there. I think you might want to add more lists to your pihole.
What lists do you have? They pretty much all came up for me. I tried it again with ublock origin to compare, but none showed up with ublock origin.
Thank you! I’ll give this another try this weekend!
I got the wife complaining about the google results being blocked, but very little else. Most sites are still Frankenstein’s monsters full of atrocious ads.
I felt the same way about youtube, streaming, shopping and general browsing: too many ads. Ruins the content. I set up a pi-hole as an experiment to see if it would do what it said and what others said about it. Manage your expectations here. Pi-hole works well for blocking a lot of static information and ads in your browser and a lot of apps on iOS and Android. It does not block video ads on Youtube or Hulu, it does not block ads for Roku or Firestick or Smart TV apps for example, it just does not work because of the technical limitations of how the PiHole software is designed. Using a regular PC with adblock browser extension installed as well gets rid of 99% of ads including video ads from adcdns. PiHole is incredibly easy to setup and install, the pay off in quality of life is enormous. I cannot recommend it more to someone that has a little networking knowledge base. If you can figure out how to port forward and run a handful of command lines you can complete a pihole setup in an hour.
Why would you want to port forward your dns?
Sorry, you wouldnt and didnt mean to imply that. I was suggesting that port forwarding is a fairly easy task and if one is confident in their ability to do that, than they should be able to complete a PiHole install.
I ran Pi-hole for years. Switched to adguardhome running on 2 servers (primary and secondary) with AGH sync keeping the two instances identical. I like the UI better, dns rewrites, and the ability to simply block services entirely with a single click.
I did this as well, I still have 2 pihole instances running with gravitysync for now, but AGH sync is much easier to setup and maintain. My 2 pihole instances are running for my guest network only and AGH is running everything else.
I am very happy with Blocky https://github.com/0xERR0R/blocky
No UI, just a simply config file if that is your thing.
Pi-Hole’s great. Got my primary instance on a Pi 4 and three secondaries (one per vlan) on LXCs. Works so well it feels weird seeing ads when I’m not at home, I’m actually considering using Tailscale to route all my queries through my home connection.
I do this and it works great. Ad block on all my devices regardless of proprietary sandboxes. I also use Syncthing over my tailnet IP addresses so that traffic never leaves my “grounds”. I’m slowly building out a whole suite of services I host only within my tailnet, jellyfin, calibre, invidious, it been a great learning experience. I’m about to set up a proper home lab, finally moving everything off an old laptop.
Hint: you don’t need to route all your traffic through your VPN to make use of the pihole adblocking: Just DNS. If your at home internet is even moderately stable/good then this should barely affect your roaming internet experience, since DNS traffic is such a small part of all traffic.
Also, since I’m already mirroring the configuration of my PiHole instance to a secondary one, I’m considering putting a tertiary one on some forever-free cloud server instance and just using that when not at home (put it into the same wireguard vpn to prevent security nightmares). That way my roaming private DNS wouldn’t even depend on my home internet.
I second that, turns out 90% of the queries on my network come from my Libratone speakers and they seem to desperately try and reach China (.com.cn)
I run pihole on proxomox, and also opnsense in the same box. Then you can forward all port 53 traffic to your pihole. Some devices have hard-coded DNS that will bypass the DHCP DNS.
Some chromecasts stop working when you do that.
Really? I run several Chromecasts, and I block their access to all DNS services except my internal Pi-holes. They work just fine.
It’s probably not blocking DNS-over-HTTPS
Lol - not my first rodeo. I’m blocking dns.google as well, and I’m 99.999% certain Google won’t have coded Chromecasts to use anyone else’s DNS servers.
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s all models, but the ultras do at least.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/pmt4cw/chromecast_ultra_just_updated_and_now_wont_work/
Ah - I only have the Chromecast GTVs. Good to know I don’t need to pay for an upgrade then!
Chuck 'em in the garbage and get something that doesn’t break when you insist on privacy.
pihole is mature and very functional. i jumped in last summer, no regrets.
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https://lemmy.world/post/10327372
This dude uses mini PCs for pi type tasks.
Might be easier to get a hold of.
Good luck OP
PiHole runs great on older Raspberry Pi’s(I am still using a pi3). Older models are still very easy to get and a readily available from the approved resellers list.
Agreed that’s what I’m doing as well.
Was running on my original pi b up till I replaced it recently with a pi 4. Was a little slow but worked fine.
Same here, but I’ve also set up a Pi Zero W to run pihole/unbound at the inlaws place without any issue.
