Category: 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.

While the Pi-hole has worked very well, there are times when I’ve had issues and wondered if it was the Pi-hole causing them. One of the good features of the Pi-hole is that it is very easy to temporarily disable it, which allows you to either easily rule out the Pi-hole as the cause of the problem or confirm that it was responsible.

To temporarily disable the Pi-hole, log into the admin interface and click Disable on the right pane:

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

This post is part of the series on building my new Raspberry Pi; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

The Pi-hole admin interface is where you maintain your blocklists, whitelists and general settings. You can access it in two ways:

1. http://{ip address of pi-hole}/
2. http://pi.hole/

When the admin page interface, you will see basic information for the last 24 hours:

Continue reading “Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Admin Interface”

This post is part of the series on building my new Raspberry Pi; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

With Pi-hole installed and configured, the main way you will use your Pi-hole is to simply browse the Internet.

With the router directing all DNs queries to the Pi-hole, it will use the loaded block lists to stop adverts from those domains being loaded. I’ve found the experience of surfing the Internet far smooth since I installed the Pi-hole. The amount of data has also noticeably dropped.

I have been white-listing some sites which do not have overly intrusively adverts (no sound, no video or moving images). I’ll cover white-listing later in this series.

This series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi, in which I am going to show how to use the Pi-hole.

If you’re reading this post on azurecurve, this index will automatically update, otherwise you need to check back to the original post.

Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi
Disabling Pi-hole
Whitelisting a Site
Update Blocklists
Maintain Blocklists
Change DNS Servers
Connecting With SSH
Updating the Pi-hole
Conclusion
Adventures With A Raspberry Pi: Raspberry PI Update Fails

This post is part of the series on building my new Raspberry Pi; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

With Pi-hole installed and configured, the final step is to change the DNS settings on the router to point to the Pi-hole rather than the old DNS servers. In my case, they were pointing to OpenDNS on the router, so it as a case of changing them to look to the IP address configured on the Pi-hole which is set to use OpenDNS.

Every router is different in how DNS servers are configured; if your router doesn’t allow the DNS servers to be changed, you could change the DNS settings on your computers instead; bear in mind this approach takes far more effort.

This post is part of the series on building my new Raspberry Pi; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

In the last post, I stepped through the installation of the Pi-hole software on a Raspberry Pi. It will install with a admin password provided which you can change (and I would recommend you do so).

You can change the password by logging into your Raspberry Pi and typing the following command (where the highlighted section is replaced with your password of choice):

sudo pihole -a -p password

There are two issues with this.

The first is, as you’re typing this command, anyone looking over your shoulder will see the new password.

The other issue, is if you use special characters in your password, you will need to escape them. For example, a password of P!hole would need to be entered as P\!hole.

This post is part of the series on building my new Raspberry Pi; this series is a sub-series of the Adventures with a Raspberry Pi.

Installing the Pi-hole was something which I was quite concerned about doing. A week or so before I boguth my Pi-hole I mentioned Pi-hole on Twitter and a friend had a go at installing it on an unsed Raspberry Pi he had. He actually had quite a few problems which put me off for a short time.

However, when he resolved his problems he realised that the problems were his and not Pi-hole in general. So, I decided I was back on for building a Pi-hole.

Once the Raspberry Pi had arrived and been built, I set about installing Pi-hole. It is actually quite straightforward. As with Linux in general, you do not need to download the software as you would on Windows. Instead it is all, usually, handled from the command line.

To download and start the install Pi-hole type this command at the Linux command line prompt:

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

The Pi-hole installer does require some user interaction, but guides you though the process. On the welcome screen, click OK to proceed:

Continue reading “Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Install Pi-hole”

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

Before launching into the installation of Pi-hole, I thought it might be useful to explain what a Pi-hole is and why you might want to use one.

From Wikipedia

Pi-hole is a Linux network-level advertisement and Internet tracker blocking application which acts as a DNS sinkhole (and optionally a DHCP server), intended for use on a private network. It is designed for use on embedded devices with network capability, such as the Raspberry Pi, but it can be used on other machines running Linux and cloud implementations.

Pi-hole has the ability to block traditional website adverts as well as adverts in unconventional places, such as smart TVs and mobile operating system adverts.

I run quote a few PCs, laptops, tablets and so on in the house, as well as mobile phones or tablets when people visit; I have uBlock Origin installed in Vivaldi, but I wanted something a bit broader in terms of ad blocking. The actual impetus to sorting out a Pi-hole was when Google announced they’d be making changes to Extensions ion Chrome which would have crippled ad blockers.

Internet adverts have become far too intrusive and I just want them gone (I have a small set of whitelisted sites where they have ads which are not intrusive (no video, sound, flashing or otherwise moving images).

Continue reading “Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: What is Pi-hole?”