Category: Raspberry Pi

This post is part of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi series.

I’ve posted that my main reason for buying a Raspberry Pi was to use as a Pi-hole for blokcing adverts.

Having found that a very good use, I’ve found myself wondering what else I could use a Raspberry Pi for? They’re almost throwaway in terms of cost (£59.99 on Amazon UK) and there is a lot of software available for them.

One use I have is to piggyback on the Pi-hole by installing a VPN; I travel a lot for work and this would allow me to VPN into the Raspberry Pi when I am away and send all network travel through the Pi-hole. Ad free browsing even when away from home (I have an Android mobile so could use a VPN on the phone as well).

One potential use is as an HTPC (Home Theatre PC). A few years ago there was a raft of HTPCs available, but they seem to have pretty much disappeared (or become horrendously high price).

I will be doing posts in future as I experiment with my Raspberry Pi. Or a Pi anyway as I have a second one sat on my desk waiting to be put to some use.

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

I’ve been a Windows user ever since I first started using a PC back in 1995; my exposure to other operating systems has been very limited so I was slightly tentative about buying a Raspberry Pi and setting up Pi-hole. I have to say that the process has been very smooth and the Pi-hole is an effective ad blocker.

The Pi-hole admin interface is very easy to use and the few items which need to be performed at command line are nice and straightforward. If I’d known how easy it was going to be and how effective the Pi-hole is ad stopped adverts, I’d have built one much earlier than I did.

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

While the Pi-hole blocklists will automatically update, the Pi-hole itself does not. However, updating the Pi-hole is a simple job. Log onto your Pi-hole, most likely using SSH, and type the following command:

pihole -up

The update of Pi-hole will take a few minutes to run through; progress will be shown and a confirmation message shown when finished.

The Pi-hole admin interface will show when a new updateis available for the Pi-hole; it is recommended to keep up-to-date with Pi-hole to ensure the best security.

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

With the Raspberry Pi configured to allow remote access using SSH, we can connect to it using an SSH on any other machine. Windows 10 has the SSH client enabled by default from the April 2018 Update (Windows version 1803).

To access the Raspberry Pi, you need the username and IP address for your IP:

The default username for a Raspberry Pi is pi; use the following command to access the Pi (replacing the highlighted section with your PI’s IP address:

ssh pi@{ipaddress}

If you’re connecting using SSH for the first time, you may be prompted to continue connecting; type yes and hit return.

Enter the pi user’s password; you’ll be taken to the command prompt of the Raspberry Pi.

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

As with a number of the other items shown in this series, the DNS Servers are selected during installation, but can be changed in the admin interface. To change the DNS Servers, log into the admin interface, select Settings and click on the DNS tab; you can change to one of the default DNS servers in the list or you can enter custom DNS servers:

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

While the blocklists used by your Pi-hole will be the ones you selected during the initial install and configuration, they can be changed. This is done via the Pi-hole admin interface.

In the left pane, select Settings and click on the Blocklists tab.

Click te red trash can icon to delete a list; enter the name of a new list in the text field at the bottom and then click Save. When you’ve made all the changes required, click Save and Update:

Your changes will be saved and the blocklists updated.

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

When the Pi-hole is installed, you have the option to select which blocklists should be used. The blocklists will be downloaded at that point, but need to be kept up-to-date. Fortunately, there is a cron job which runs automatically once a week and updates these blocklists.

If you want to run a manua update of the blocklists, log into the Pi-hole admin interface and select Tools and then click Update Gravity; when the page loads, click Update:

Continue reading “Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Update Blocklists”

This post is part of the series on using the Pi-hole; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

When using a Pi-hole to block adverts, you will come across sites which you want to access, but which are being blocked. The message you will see is not readily apparent that the site has been blocked by the Pi-hole:

Continue reading “Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Whitelisting a Site”