Raspberry Pi - Who's gonna have a dabble?

[loudlashadjuster]

Baldchap said:

Whilst it's being discussed, has anybody got a Raspberry Pi running PiHole and clients running a VPN application (Nord VPN) to work successfully?

I have a PiHole and iOS and Windows devices using ExpressVPN, that close enough? All works perfectly.

[rednotdead]

Baldchap said:

Whilst it's being discussed, has anybody got a Raspberry Pi running PiHole and clients running a VPN application (Nord VPN) to work successfully?

Yes - not had any problems at all. What are you seeing?

[markiii]

rednotdead said:

Anyone got a decent solution for a dashboard to view/manage multiple pis? Currently using RPI-monitor which gives the basics but it's one webpage per pi, although you can add a 'friends' link to easily get to the others. Just wondered if there's something out there to easily aggregate all pis into one display without going overboard with zabbix and the like.

anyone?

[dxg]

Dave. said:

MikeGTi said:

dxg said:

Tune in next week when I tell you the story of how I burnt my house down...

Well it's been 9 months.... how long do we have to wait 'til he's legally dead?



(ps - he's not, he's been posting elsewhere)

I might be posting from a tent.


(I'm not).

[Dave.]

dxg said:

I might be posting from a tent.


(I'm not).

Did you get any further with the project?

[dxg]

Dave. said:

dxg said:

I might be posting from a tent.


(I'm not).

Did you get any further with the project?

Sadly not. I hit real problems getting the pi zero to keep its WiFi connection. I tried a static IP and I messed around with the power management but nothing seemed to work. In the end, I bought a zero - sized hat with an Ethernet port on it, but that required cutting the back out the back box and I sort of ran of time and motivation at that point.

If anyone knows his to get a pi zero to keep its WiFi connection alive, that would be fantastic. I had it logging data every second, so it's not as if a lack of activity might have been causing the power management to shut it down, so I am at a loss...

[Dave.]

dxg said:

Sadly not. I hit real problems getting the pi zero to keep its WiFi connection. I tried a static IP and I messed around with the power management but nothing seemed to work. In the end, I bought a zero - sized hat with an Ethernet port on it, but that required cutting the back out the back box and I sort of ran of time and motivation at that point.

If anyone knows his to get a pi zero to keep its WiFi connection alive, that would be fantastic. I had it logging data every second, so it's not as if a lack of activity might have been causing the power management to shut it down, so I am at a loss...

A quick google points to power supply not being beefy enough, or setting the WiFI county code.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t...

[Watchman]

There's a new 32-bit OS as well as the 64-bit beta and the 8Gb Pi. I upgraded to the new 32-bit OS today but it crashed twice, within 5 mins of me booting so I've reverted to the previous version. It's supposed to be a full release but I guess it'll need some time to settle.

[Baldchap]

rednotdead said:

Baldchap said:

Whilst it's being discussed, has anybody got a Raspberry Pi running PiHole and clients running a VPN application (Nord VPN) to work successfully?

Yes - not had any problems at all. What are you seeing?

With the VPN app running it's simply as if the PiHole isn't there.

[rednotdead]

That's by design to prevent DNS leaks, with the nordvpn app enabled the client will use nordvpn's DNS servers instead of the pihole: https://support.nordvpn.com/General-info/104740970...

A way around it is to setup nordvpn on your router (DDWRT will do it) so the all outbound traffic goes via nordvpn. You could also setup a pi with pihole and the nordvpn client. I've toyed with the idea but I don't use nord all the time, only when I'm connected to an untrusted network.

[Baldchap]

rednotdead said:

That's by design to prevent DNS leaks, with the nordvpn app enabled the client will use nordvpn's DNS servers instead of the pihole: https://support.nordvpn.com/General-info/104740970...

A way around it is to setup nordvpn on your router (DDWRT will do it) so the all outbound traffic goes via nordvpn. You could also setup a pi with pihole and the nordvpn client. I've toyed with the idea but I don't use nord all the time, only when I'm connected to an untrusted network.

Do you know if you can omit certain devices by the router method? For example by MAC address? Thinking the boy's gaming might take a hit if it goes via NordVPN's servers.

[rednotdead]

Baldchap said:

Do you know if you can omit certain devices by the router method? For example by MAC address? Thinking the boy's gaming might take a hit if it goes via NordVPN's servers.

I can't answer the question but I would ask why the need to use nordvpn all time? Privacy concerns? I thought long and hard about what I wanted and ended up with pihole and DNS over https using cloudflare (https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/). That gives me the benefit of ad blocking and some measure of privacy re my DNS requests (https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/). TBH I couldn't be arsed fannying around providing nordvpn for the whole home AND ad blocking. 2 x pis with pihole and DNS over https and jobs a good un, everyone's happy and I'm happy with the compromise. We use the nordvpn client only when away from home and using coffeshop/hotel networks.

[loudlashadjuster]

rednotdead said:

I can't answer the question but I would ask why the need to use nordvpn all time? Privacy concerns? I thought long and hard about what I wanted and ended up with pihole and DNS over https using cloudflare (https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/). That gives me the benefit of ad blocking and some measure of privacy re my DNS requests (https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/). TBH I couldn't be arsed fannying around providing nordvpn for the whole home AND ad blocking. 2 x pis with pihole and DNS over https and jobs a good un, everyone's happy and I'm happy with the compromise. We use the nordvpn client only when away from home and using coffeshop/hotel networks.

Indeed. There are enough things that don't work 100% ,100% of the time that mean an always-on VPN can become a bit of a pita for some clients/applications. I intended to run two parallel networks, one VPN-ed and one plain as I thought the continual on-off-on of the VPN client on different devices would get very annoying. In fact, I came to the conclusion it would be more hassle than it's worth and realised that devices fall into three classes

1) Never need VPN - Mainly the server and 'dumb' network clients like printers.
2) Need VPN occasionally - Phones, tablets and PCs, some more than others.
3) Always running VPN - Just a media PC in the living room which does some globetrotting to pick up Netflix etc. in different locales

The class 2 devices are easy to enable/disable when an app or site refuses to work properly through the VPN, easier even than swapping SSIDs or changing ethernet cables. Devices in the other classes just sit there, working.

The only thing I don't have working to satisfaction are smart TVs, Chromecasts etc. as they are always 'local'. I live with it with judicious use of the media PC and some occasional content 'acquisition'.

And although I've never tried it, I imagine piggybacking work VPNs on my domestic VPN would be...less than optimal!

[Digger]

I think this is the main thread?

Where is the best place to buy the kits these days? Looks like Amazon to me?

From memory it used to be CCL, but no longer it seems.

[Watchman]

Digger said:

I think this is the main thread?

Where is the best place to buy the kits these days? Looks like Amazon to me?

From memory it used to be CCL, but no longer it seems.

Pi Hut and Pimoroni are my favs.

[thebraketester]

Mine has just complete fkered my network up. I was using it as a controller for my unifi equipment and to run pihole and it was running fine. I tried to update it and it just fkered everything up... no idea why, but it took me a solid day to get my network back up and running. Needless to say, the raspi isnt being used now.

[Dave.]

CPC too.

[Digger]

Dave. said:

CPC too.

Aah yes that is who I was thinking of when I said CCL.

[C2Red]

Digger said:

Dave. said:

CPC too.

Aah yes that is who I was thinking of when I said CCL.

I bought my 4b 4gb from AliExpress, about 20% cheaper, generic case etc; but works fine. Sorry on phone so no links.

[hutchst]

thebraketester said:

Mine has just complete fkered my network up. I was using it as a controller for my unifi equipment and to run pihole and it was running fine. I tried to update it and it just fkered everything up... no idea why, but it took me a solid day to get my network back up and running. Needless to say, the raspi isnt being used now.

How do you do the updates? SSH into the pi from a laptop then pihole -up is pretty seamless. Gives the chance to update Debian the same way while you're at it.