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Don't fall for the trap that they recommend an expensive Pi 5: I am running Pi-hole on a Pi 2 but you can basically run this on obsolete hardware, whether that's a Pi or a PC/laptop
I'm running Pi-hole and Pi-VPN on a Zero W (using a Geekworm case w/RJ45). It's not very taxing at all.
I also run two other Pi-hole instances in my server cluster (one in Docker and one in an LXC container). Mostly just for uptime reasons, so I can take any one of them down at any time to perform maintenance and/or upgrade.
Can confirm. I have 10 year old pi2 that is dedicated to pi hole and even that is not utilizing all of its 1gb of memory
I run mine on a PI 0. Also use it as a samba disk partition for transferring files.
You may even be able to run it on a NAS. My NAS supports docker, which means I can run a pihole on it. I have a Pi 3b as my dedicated primary, but my NAS runs as a backup.
I've been thinking of setting one up for a while, if I have a home server would I be better off hosting it on that or as a separate device? What are the alternatives to a raspberry pi? They've shot up in price over the years.
If you have a server running, I wouldn't buy more hardware. They have good example documentation for just such a configuration:
https://docs.pi-hole.net/docker/
If your server already has those ports bound (specifically the DNS port 53) you are going to have to get creative; otherwise it'll work well!
Worst case, a cheapo pi 3 will do the job. At one point I had it running on a pi zero, so hardware requirements are pretty low.
If your using docker and the ports are bound you can just use the network mode host so the container gets it's own ip. It's how I have adguard running on my unraid server
edit: Sorry I mixed up the details as @starkzarn@infosec.pub pointed out. It's a macvlan configuration. My intention was to point out it's possible. Here's some documentation https://docs.docker.com/engine/network/drivers/macvlan/
Thanks, PoopMonster, that's a good tip!
That's not how that works. network_mode: host shares the network namespace with the container host, so it doesn't do any NAT, it only exists on the host's IP. It would be akin to running a natively installed app, rather than in a container. macvlan networking is what gives a container its own IP on the logical network, without the layer of NAT that the default bridge mode networking that docker typically does.
I personally like it on a dedicated Pi simplly because I don't want DNS to die if i'm doing other server maintenance. the Pi is pretty much set it and forget it.
But i guerss you might as well try it on your server first and you can always buy a Pi if you find it to be too much of a pain.
Setup and run two.
This way if one goes down, the other takes over (also makes updates / maintenance easier)
I put it onto my home server and it is working great. I can't tell you about all the options, but it was so easy to start another VM for it that I didn't look at other options too carefully.
Definitely dont bother with buying a pi if you've got other hardware.
I have one physical (a 3b I had no use for anymore), and two running as containers. The containers do most of the heavy lifting, since they are so much faster than a pi they respond far faster, but the physical is nice for when I take down the clusters for maintenance (or when I lose power, the clusters shut down after about 3 minutes, the pi will keep going for a while on UPS).
phrasing
I'm reasonably certain the name was intentional because of the way it could be phrased.
I recommend having two. Otherwise your home internet goes down everytime you update or reboot or it crashes.
Interesting... And this is not a criticism, simply an observation...
I've a single Pihole instance running on a RPi 4 and have experienced not a single instance of any of the 3 probs you mention. Except, of course, the very few minutes it takes for a reboot which I can schedule and am aware when it's happening...
🤷♂️
Literally just had my pihole hard crash this weekend due to a bad update to FTL. Apparently they had a major version upgrade and didn't bother to read the notes so I had to do a full OS reinstall.
Back up your configs people. Had to dig through documentation to find the sqlite file and then parse through it like some sort of animal.
Literally just had my pihole hard crash this weekend due to a bad update to FTL. Apparently they had a major version upgrade and didn’t bother to read the notes so I had to do a full OS reinstall.
The v6 upgrade was such a disaster. I was bitten by it too, it started the upgrade then halfway through decided it didn't like my OS (debian-testing) and crapped out ... leaving me with a b0rked installation. Luckily I was able to return to v5 using my system backup. It was a right pain to figure out how to restore though, because they write files all over /opt, /etc, /usr/bin, /usr/local and /var.
For this reason I have since dockerized my pihole installation. Not only does this allow you to choose the exact pihole version you want (a bare metal install only supports the latest version), but it allows you to centralize your configuration files neatly under a docker volume, so you only have to backup the volume.
The beauty is that you can shove Pi in it of course.
Any reason to use this instead of a free NextDNS?
Local hosting
Additionally you have control over it. Sure, you don't need local since you're using it in conjunction with the internet. You control it though. You decide entirely what you want to trust and don't have to delegate that trust as much.
Raspberry Pi 1b > DietPi > Pi-hole > Unbound <3
I never hear anyone else talk about dietpi, I install that more than raspbian
DietPi looks interesting, especially for a 0W and my older B+ model that's just hanging around doing nothing...
Ive got a pi hole running, but I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle. To me it feels like it breaks more things than it helps.
If it's websites that are breaking, maybe you are using some really aggressive blocklist. Also, you can use multiple blocklists and assign clients to them however you please.
I took fell into the 7 million sites blocked trap!
I use adguard home in conjunction with NextDNS.
I find adguard a little better in the UI department. Have it in a docker container so it's a set and forget.