Pi-hole

[Church of Noise]

thebraketester said:

I’ve got a 4 coming soon so should keep me entertained for a while.

Has anyone setup a pi from scratch headless?

Yes, it's quite straightforward - loads of guides online.
Main thing is that you add a file called ssh into the root folder, which is required to be able to log in using ssh.

[nmd87]

Church of Noise said:

Yes, it's quite straightforward - loads of guides online.
Main thing is that you add a file called ssh into the root folder, which is required to be able to log in using ssh.

Same here. Then logged in to it remotely using an open source windows application called Putty.

[Nimby]

Church of Noise said:

thebraketester said:

I’ve got a 4 coming soon so should keep me entertained for a while.

Has anyone setup a pi from scratch headless?

Yes, it's quite straightforward - loads of guides online.
Main thing is that you add a file called ssh into the root folder, which is required to be able to log in using ssh.

Doesn't that file have to be .ssh (ie leading dot, no filename)?
If you want to SSH via wifi, also add a file called wpa_supplicant.conf containing

country=GB
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1


network={
    ssid="yourssid"
    psk="yourwifipassword"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

Then in SSH run raspiconfig, enable VNC, and do the rest using VNC desktop viewer

Ahh - PH doesn't allow a code example that ends in }

Edited by Nimby on Saturday 15th February 17:46

[thebraketester]

No its just 'ssh'

They way I made that file was by using the Terminal in mac

"cd /Users/youloginnamehere/Desktop"

and then

"touch ssh"


Had a bit of a job getting the pi up and running. Mainly because I ordered it with a card with NOOBS installed on it and by the looks of it you cannot set that up via SSH.

So I installed a fresh copy of Rasbian and it worked great.

[thebraketester]

Pi Hole installed but not working. I have changed all the DNS settings on the router to the pi holes address.

Any ideas?

[GlenMH]

megaphone said:

Been testing over a couple of days, I have the default blacklists enabled and I switched off my web-browser ad blocks. All good and browsing does feel quicker, noticed I get a few white empty blocks instead of ads, PH has a big block across the top of the page, enabling adblock in Safari gets rid of this, need to decide if I keep both running.

I leave both running on my laptop to make sure I am covered when I am out and about.

[thebraketester]

Sorry.... I was very unclear.

Pi Hole is running



DNS settings on my router all set to the RPi IP address. DNS Flushed ( i think )

I have turned off ABP and adverts still show.... like the PiHole isnt working/blocking correctly.


Thanks.
Rich

Edited by thebraketester on Saturday 15th February 20:18

[thebraketester]

Hang on......

For some reason the DNS was set on my laptops network settings as 1.1.1.1, so having deleted that, it seems to be working now.

[megaphone]

thebraketester said:

Hang on......

For some reason the DNS was set on my laptops network settings as 1.1.1.1, so having deleted that, it seems to be working now.

Devices will often hang on to the previous IP and DNS when using DHCP, often a reboot will get them on the correct settings.

[thebraketester]

I have just installed quite a useful add on for PiHole which logs 'speed test' results


http://fuzzthepiguy.tech/pihole/

One of the commands failed but it seems to run fine on mine.

[Semmelweiss]

thebraketester said:

I have just installed quite a useful add on for PiHole which logs 'speed test' results


http://fuzzthepiguy.tech/pihole/

One of the commands failed but it seems to run fine on mine.

I had to install the PHP key and repository to my Raspi4, before I could install php7-sqlite.

Works fine with SpeedTest.

[Church of Noise]

FYI, the final version of v5.0 was released a couple of days ago: https://pi-hole.net/2020/05/10/pi-hole-v5-0-is-her...

I've been running the beta before the release for a couple of months and have been very pleased with it.

[thebraketester]

Can you just do the sudo apt update (or what ever they are) commands or does it require a new install

[Dave.]

pihole -up

[Blockbuster]

thebraketester said:

Can you just do the sudo apt update (or what ever they are) commands or does it require a new install

No new install needed. The command needed is 'pihole -up'.

The new version 5 is pretty good. If the wife is complaining about stuff being blocked on her laptop, I can now whitelist them just for her

[thebraketester]

Thats guys!

[HiAsAKite]

Hey folks,

Never got round to implementing this before. Seriously considering this, and acquiring a Raspberry Pi to do this.
Will be my first foray into using a Raspberry Pi.

Those of you who do use Pis, is anyone using a Rp 4 ModelB, and are there any gotcha's with these? - eg do they overheat , recommendation of heatsinks etc?

Conscious it will be 'always on' etc. Do you just leave them running, or batch a restart time ?
I will most likely mount it behind a cabinet in the living room next to the router, so it can be wired in directly.

My coding is... basic to say the least.
BBC Basic in fact, along with a small amount of Pascal, Fortran77, 6502 Assembly, and I know v. basic linux command line. So any tips appreciated - but at the moment want to make sure I get the right hardware/case etc

[troc]

If all you are running is a pihole, then a 4 is overkill they do run hotter than the 3B but mine had been stable (running a few other things as well as being powered by my PoE switch) for many months.

Just get a decent case, follow the Pihole instructions and voila.

[PF62]

HiAsAKite said:

Those of you who do use Pis, is anyone using a Rp 4 ModelB, and are there any gotcha's with these? - eg do they overheat , recommendation of heatsinks etc?

Conscious it will be 'always on' etc. Do you just leave them running, or batch a restart time ?
I will most likely mount it behind a cabinet in the living room next to the router, so it can be wired in directly.

That's what I use - works fine (only used for pi-hole) and has sat there working for months without any heatsink or fan or anything special.

HiAsAKite said:

My coding is... basic to say the least.
BBC Basic in fact, along with a small amount of Pascal, Fortran77, 6502 Assembly, and I know v. basic linux command line. So any tips appreciated - but at the moment want to make sure I get the right hardware/case etc

Better than mine then. I just copied and pasted from the various guides which exist.

The only issue I had was I did a headless installation and couldn't connect by ssh. It took a short bit of googling to find that for headless setup, if you want to enable ssh you need to place a file named 'ssh', without any extension onto the boot partition of the SD card.

Operationally the only issue has been the need to set up the wife's iPad so she can bypass the pi-hole when she wants to click through on the multitude of marketing emails she receives (which the pi-hole blocks), but then to switch back when she has finished. I could try and amend the filters to deal with these emails, but I can't be bothered.

[HiAsAKite]

OK- before splashing out on a Rpi, and new router*, I've been running a test by putting an old router (Asus N66RT) onto my network with its own sub-net range, installing pi-hole onto a ubuntu laptop, and seeing if how it behaves when I put laptops onto the sub-net.

Initially: - pi-hole is installed and "running" on a the laptop. Everything is 'green' on the dashboard
Failures - the only 'client' it can see, is the localhost. Other machines did not appear to be able to send it DNS queries, nor did it see their queries.

It got ridiculous in that I could send n s lookup* requests, directed at the pihole, and I would get no response.
I'd configured it as the DNS server on the router. I'd given it a static local IP. I could even do n s lookup* from the pihole machine, to itself, and get nothing back (though sometimes the pihole machine itself would be able to resolve addresses).

After 2 days of scratching my head - I finally got to the bottom of it.

My ubuntu laptop has wifi and RJ45 interface.
I'm running on wifi.
Turns out pihole was configured to only listen to DNS requests on the ethernet interface...!
So the requests were coming in - but it was ignoring them :-(

Once check box in the right place, now seems to be working :-)

Plus side - page loadings appear much quicker. But to actually deploy this in my home network I will need to invest in a router, as the virgin superhub does not allow you to change DNS providers...

So next steps:-
- Invest in a RPi
- Obtain a router, to place downstream of the superhub and switch the superhub into modem mode.

Anyone know of any decent home routers?- ideally:
- with 5+ LAN ports. (My Asus only has 4 - I'll need an additional one for the RPi)
- lower power requirements, and compact
Does not need wifi, as have Unifi APs about the place..


(*n s lookup deliberately typed with spaces, as typing without appears to upset PH input validation checks...)