Discussion
mattley said:
I'll try and phrase this better than last time.
Pi Hole is a terrible ad blocker if you still want to consume internet content, Pi Hole is a fantastic learning tool but, as you're seeing, a terrible desktop solution.
For what you want I'd suggest uBlock origin in firefox, click allow in private browsing and use a private browsing window, pause ublock to watch what you want and then firefox will clean up any trackers 4od want to leave hanging around.
Pi-Hole is fine to use for devices which don't have the ability to use a decent adblocker like uBlock origin, such as phones and iPads.Pi Hole is a terrible ad blocker if you still want to consume internet content, Pi Hole is a fantastic learning tool but, as you're seeing, a terrible desktop solution.
For what you want I'd suggest uBlock origin in firefox, click allow in private browsing and use a private browsing window, pause ublock to watch what you want and then firefox will clean up any trackers 4od want to leave hanging around.
For TVs, to remove adverts from streaming services I prefer to use OpenDNS as there are so few domains you actually need to block to solve the issue.
h0b0 said:
bmwmike said:
pihole took a bit of tweaking but its working well now, even blocks some youtube ads. Nobody seems to be complaining at home either..
Most adverts on YouTube are hosted on their own servers so pi-hole can’t distinguish them and block them. I blame Linus tech tips because he did a “how to” on it and very quickly afterwards YouTube took action by moving the hosting model. Pi-hole is still useful for a whole house as blocker though. No adverts in iOS games is nice. For example, my kids play hay day where you can click on a movie ticket to watch adverts. With pi-hole the movie ticket isn’t there. As others have said though, there are better browser based ad blockers and I use them on our PCs. I only installed them because of the totally incompetent way Pistonheads has dealt with adverts in the US. There seemed to be a period where there was no testing and the adverts were worse than spam and made it impossible to use the site. That isn’t an exaggeration. I tried to work with the PHs team but they couldn’t keep up with their advert serving partner’s crap so I gave up.
For YouTube adverts you can also go premium for $10/month and it removes the advert breaks. If you happen to be in Turkey for a few minutes and sign up it costs $1/month. Even when you get back home it still only charges $1/month and reverts back to geographically accurate content. I had to take this route for two reasons. In appropriate content and some ads were running for hours and didn’t have a skip option. I think there’s enough ads built into “sponsored content” that I don’t want to deal with additional adverts.
On the topic of browser plugins though - nope, big fat nope from me. Too much of a security risk and the supply/build chains and even ownership of those plugins is dubious. Welcome one into my banking DOM? nah, no thanks. Yes i know they can be excluded from certain sites, but still, no thanks.
bmwmike said:
h0b0 said:
bmwmike said:
pihole took a bit of tweaking but its working well now, even blocks some youtube ads. Nobody seems to be complaining at home either..
Most adverts on YouTube are hosted on their own servers so pi-hole can’t distinguish them and block them. I blame Linus tech tips because he did a “how to” on it and very quickly afterwards YouTube took action by moving the hosting model. Pi-hole is still useful for a whole house as blocker though. No adverts in iOS games is nice. For example, my kids play hay day where you can click on a movie ticket to watch adverts. With pi-hole the movie ticket isn’t there. As others have said though, there are better browser based ad blockers and I use them on our PCs. I only installed them because of the totally incompetent way Pistonheads has dealt with adverts in the US. There seemed to be a period where there was no testing and the adverts were worse than spam and made it impossible to use the site. That isn’t an exaggeration. I tried to work with the PHs team but they couldn’t keep up with their advert serving partner’s crap so I gave up.
For YouTube adverts you can also go premium for $10/month and it removes the advert breaks. If you happen to be in Turkey for a few minutes and sign up it costs $1/month. Even when you get back home it still only charges $1/month and reverts back to geographically accurate content. I had to take this route for two reasons. In appropriate content and some ads were running for hours and didn’t have a skip option. I think there’s enough ads built into “sponsored content” that I don’t want to deal with additional adverts.
On the topic of browser plugins though - nope, big fat nope from me. Too much of a security risk and the supply/build chains and even ownership of those plugins is dubious. Welcome one into my banking DOM? nah, no thanks. Yes i know they can be excluded from certain sites, but still, no thanks.
7n8n said:
Mine is still going strong, running it on DietPi with Unbound.
I have whitelisted a few common domains such as Google ad services (wife likes to use the Google shopping pages) and some tracking domains that my Chinese smartphone will keep pinging if it can't connect.
Out of curiosity: why give in to the Chinese trackers? It's one of the reason I'm happy to have the Pi-Hole here as there are a couple of Xiaomi devices on the network, and I'd rather keep my data to myself thank you very much I have whitelisted a few common domains such as Google ad services (wife likes to use the Google shopping pages) and some tracking domains that my Chinese smartphone will keep pinging if it can't connect.
Church of Noise said:
7n8n said:
Mine is still going strong, running it on DietPi with Unbound.
I have whitelisted a few common domains such as Google ad services (wife likes to use the Google shopping pages) and some tracking domains that my Chinese smartphone will keep pinging if it can't connect.
Out of curiosity: why give in to the Chinese trackers? It's one of the reason I'm happy to have the Pi-Hole here as there are a couple of Xiaomi devices on the network, and I'd rather keep my data to myself thank you very much I have whitelisted a few common domains such as Google ad services (wife likes to use the Google shopping pages) and some tracking domains that my Chinese smartphone will keep pinging if it can't connect.
. Running for over a year like that with no problems. Recently i download some iSpy or similar chinese app from Play on to a mobile device to connect to the DVR, and since then i get the DVR itself pinging a domain in China - this had never happened since before i connected the mobile app to the DVR, and the DVR itself had never had updates (nor could be updated, it really was junk). I'd have never have known unless i had PIH running to see the domain showing up - it popped up to the top of the block list. Wierd, but true.I've been looking into getting one, and recently acquired a 10 000 mAh power bank that can charge and deliver current at the same time (very few of them are able to do that btw), but have had some funny stuff happening at very heavy loads so disconnected for now.
I was considering PiJuice for a while...
I was considering PiJuice for a while...
Just looking at both those, pijuice is a little pricey for what i need.
Powerbank would be fine but results can vary (including the powerbank shutting down as the load from the pi isn’t enough to keep it awake).
ETA - this looks ideal, i think...
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2465
Powerbank would be fine but results can vary (including the powerbank shutting down as the load from the pi isn’t enough to keep it awake).
ETA - this looks ideal, i think...
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2465
Edited by Dave. on Thursday 8th April 19:46
troc said:
If it’s a pi 4 you can jab boot off an ssd. Otherwise, there are ways to keep the swap in ram instead of the sd card.
It’s also not uncommon to keep an image just preemptively swap sd cards. Or, indeed, just run 2 pi’s with a little routine to keep the two Pihole instances in sync.
https://github.com/vmstan/gravity-syncIt’s also not uncommon to keep an image just preemptively swap sd cards. Or, indeed, just run 2 pi’s with a little routine to keep the two Pihole instances in sync.
This is easy to setup and works well.
It also works with pihole docker containers which makes the whole reinstall simple.
troc said:
I power my pi using PoE from my switch which is behind a large APC ups together with the rest of my networking kit.
Same here. I run dual piholes connected to a PoE switch. Pretty much the whole network, inc the modem and wireless access points, is UPS backed up so that it continues to function in the event of a power cut.Word of warning for anyone wanting to PoE their Pi: some of the hats will only autosense 10/100 and not 10/100/1000. If you’ve using a 1g port then they need to manually set the speed on the switch. The instructions with the hat don’t tell you this. Will freely admit that it had me foxed for a good couple of days.
Church of Noise said:
Out of curiosity: why give in to the Chinese trackers? It's one of the reason I'm happy to have the Pi-Hole here as there are a couple of Xiaomi devices on the network, and I'd rather keep my data to myself thank you very much
I don't really care if they know how long I spend on whatever app. The device can stop working properly or stop sleeping properly if you block too much,as it will keep trying over and over again to connect to the servers. Also, I find it can skew the logs if you have 40% of events as attempts to one domain.
Murphy's law for you
I got a second Pi Zero W and installed DietPi iso Raspberry Pi OS Lite, seems more 'light weight' (as proven by reduced processor and memory load) so I also put it on the 'primary' device.
(btw, just cloned the ssd and then changed the IP address and interface in resolv.conf, dhcpcd.conf and reconfigured pi-hole).
Considering installing the early dev version of v6.0 on the backup device, just to see what is happening.
I got a second Pi Zero W and installed DietPi iso Raspberry Pi OS Lite, seems more 'light weight' (as proven by reduced processor and memory load) so I also put it on the 'primary' device.
(btw, just cloned the ssd and then changed the IP address and interface in resolv.conf, dhcpcd.conf and reconfigured pi-hole).
Considering installing the early dev version of v6.0 on the backup device, just to see what is happening.
Mattt said:
Do you run your Pi Zero W with a LAN adapter? I have mine all wired on “normal” Pi due to reliability and latency concern.
The main one is on a LAN adapter indeed, the recently added second one isn't.Effect can be measured: latency (e.g. when pinging the devices) is higher on WiFi, and on one device (the laptop I'm writing this on), the both Pi's are configured as DNS server, the one on WiFi is hardly 'used' at all.
I would be surprised if you would notice in reality because the difference in ping e.g. is a matter of 10 ms .
So all in all, I would say it makes a difference, but I never noticed at all: also the primary Pi didn't have the LAN adapter from day one and I didn't notice an increase in speed when switching to LAN...
(FYI: another LAN adapter is on the way for the second Pi Zero W, not because of speed reasons but because I prefer to have as much devices as possible on cable and keep the WiFi bands as uncluttered as possible for those devices that need it)
Never noticed a difference in reliability either.
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff