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Thread: Pihole

  1. #1
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Pihole

    I said in my other thread, the one where i am dying, i would put up a thread about pihole and why everyone should use it. So here it is.

    What is pihole, well its an application that can reduce, will reduce you coming across adverts and malicious pages/ads and all sorts of utter bollox on web pages these days.
    Think of it like a network wide automatic version of addblock. But this works on everything, including pcs, tablets, phones and even those useless Apple isheep devices that you normally cant put add blockers on.

    So how does it do it, well its a dns server. Dns ... er the basics.. of it.. is like a sort of telephone directory for web pages. It converts domain names like "www.mutantscottishwillys.co.uk" into ip addresses that locate the site on the internet.
    For instance www.bbc.co.uk is really 212.58.244.66, google.com is 216.58.204.14 ect ect.. Right now the IT folk on here are prob doing back flips but you get the picture.

    Anyway pihole acts as a separate DNS server on your own home network, when your browser goes to say a site that is blacklisted by pihole it will basically return a message saying go do one.. well sort of. What this does is stops your computer from reaching dodgy sites, or being redirected by ad frames or web site contents to known pain in the arse addresses.
    And there are thousands of addresses that can be used with the easily available block lists.

    What this also does apart from keep you a bit safer on the internet is make browsing a fair bit faster, you would be really surprised if you saw just how much in a typical web page is redirected to other sites for content (adds, picture hosting, shite like that) - so with your own bouncer on the front door to you homes internet refusing stuff right there and then you get a much faster browsing experience.

    So how do you set up pihole, well i will come to that bit if enough folk are interested below. Ohh and when i have typed up the details.


    But yes you really do want to run it.

  2. #2
    Guest R3K1355's Avatar
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    Does this also get around those annoying sites that have Adblock detector scripts running?

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    Guest ben8000's Avatar
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    Definitely interested.

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    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Ok pihole can be found here https://pi-hole.net/
    Now remember this is not a windows app, its meant to be ran 24/7 on a linux box. You will need something running linux that is on all the time.
    The raspberry pi or similar single board computer is ideal for this, hence why its call pi hole. I ran mine on an orange pi glued to the back of my router for 18months before transferring it to a proper esxi virtual machine on my new microserver a few days ago.

    Going to presume you have a pi running with raspbian for this post, if folk want to know about buying and setting up a pi then can do that further down.

    Its dead easy to do.
    Set your pi to a static ipaddress, something you will remember down low in the address range on your lan - i try to keep all my infrastructure ip's sub 10 (so mine is on 192.168.1.3 for the main web interface and dns server) you dont need to do this and leave it on dhcp but it may start moving about ips on your wan and if your pointing clients at a moving target then... well you know..

    1st make sure your pi OS is up to date with
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

    Thats should do the trick
    Then install
    Go in as root or run this command as root
    curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

    Follow its on screen instructions

    Once its running visit the dashboard page on the ip you gave it.

    Should look something like this (mine has been rebooted earlier so the stats are low, it normally deals with tens of thousands of requests)





    Finally either set your main WAN router to hand out the address of your new DNS server over its primary one, i cant say how to do this as the routers are all different but the option should be in one of its menus.

    If not set your clients to point to it manually, in windows this can be found in the ipv4 page of the main network configuration panel in control panels. set it as your primary dns, secondary can be what ever you want (i run googles 4.4.4.4 or 8.8.8.) but if you want to test pihole is running right leave it blank as if your install didnt work you wont be able to get external web pages. this is a good way to test all is working.

    Once done you should be protected against some malware from the web, many adverts will be blocked and things go a lot quicker.

    Post up if you have problems.

  5. #5
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by R3K1355 View Post
    Does this also get around those annoying sites that have Adblock detector scripts running?
    It can do, it wont catch everything but if you find something that the add blocker isnt dealing with then you could try adding it to piholes block list. You would need the ip address of the offending web page element but thats easy with most bowsers now.

    Oh this will work on mac as well, and there is a white list option if you find some sites blocked you need - also as i said there is a manual black list as well and i use it for several annoyances.

    You should loose adverts in youtube as well which is a massive win.

  6. #6
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Just for a quick test, go to the dailymails website before and after installing pihole (clear caches first) and see what difference it makes.
    Its massive, plus you can add the dailscum to your black list and never have to see it again.

  7. #7
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Ohh and this thing can run on real low powered devices and still perform fine.
    It even works on the pizero which was a giveaway last year iirc on a magazine front page. Or its a fiver i think to buy. Single core 1 gb ram iirc.

  8. #8
    Guest R3K1355's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sideways14a View Post
    if folk want to know about buying and setting up a pi then can do that further down.
    Yes do that.


    Assume we've only ever seen Linux on the IT guys computer at work.

  9. #9
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Well i am far from an expert on linux, in fact i am not really a fan of it at all. Everything seems to be 10 times as complicated as it should be with little consideration to users friendlyness.

    This is where the pi and its massive following help though.
    First thing is to get one https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ they aint expensive.

    Then its as simple as following the OS build instructions for noobs (the os new out of box software) which will give you the option of installing the actual operating system you want to use which in this case will be the pi's very own raspbian.
    https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

    To do this you can either get an SD memory card with noobs on it you just slot in the pi or download an image from there website and use a usb SD memory card reader on a pc to write the files to it to use to boot up on the pi.
    https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/...-pi-setting-up

    YOu can plug the pi into an hdmi port on your TV or monitor to do the setup, once you have configured it properly and your a bit more able with linux you can activate SSH and use something like putty to remote into it across your wired or wireless network and thus it doesnt need to be plugged into anything other than a power cable.

  10. #10
    Head Mod Scottie's Avatar
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    Sounds like a good idea. Makes me wonder could you not just get an ADSL router etc with the software ability built in to do most of this?
    2004 - on : 1999 S14a 398bhp 378lb/ft
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  11. #11
    I <3 BBS LM Actual_Ben_Taylor's Avatar
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    I've got an old netbook with lubuntu on it, might try running it on that...

  12. #12
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    You could try it in virtual box under windows, just setup a quick and dirty vm and install ubuntu in it then follow the instructions on the pihole page to install pihole.
    Once you have used it you prob want to keep it so either a pi, old pc or virtual machines on a wee server or something.

  13. #13
    Banned sideways14a's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scottie View Post
    Sounds like a good idea. Makes me wonder could you not just get an ADSL router etc with the software ability built in to do most of this?
    Well there are openwrt routers out there, some have functionality like this i would think - but they are not the norm.
    You can build your own which is what i am going to do with a pfsense VM and a twin 10G network card in this microserver.. well i am going to attempt it, will prob end in confusing disaster.

    Doubt it would end up in commercial or ISP routers as you would be able to block advertising and all sorts.
    You can do the same with other packages and setups but pihole is nice and easy once you get the OS up and running.

    Now where are my bloody SFP cables i ordered???? prob got delivered to my work by mistake.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by sideways14a View Post
    Well there are openwrt routers out there, some have functionality like this i would think - but they are not the norm.
    You can build your own which is what i am going to do with a pfsense VM and a twin 10G network card in this microserver.. well i am going to attempt it, will prob end in confusing disaster.

    Doubt it would end up in commercial or ISP routers as you would be able to block advertising and all sorts.
    You can do the same with other packages and setups but pihole is nice and easy once you get the OS up and running.

    Now where are my bloody SFP cables i ordered???? prob got delivered to my work by mistake.
    This is what i pretty much run, except pfblockerNG instead of pihole.

    West Country REO

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