Hi all,
I bought a raspberry pi zero and have installed pihole on it. I've changed it to a static IP through my router (static leases) and in my DHCP settings set the DNS server to my piholes IP address. I tried to follow the guide as closely as I could and oddly enough on the admin page it shows that it was blocking some stuff not too long ago (although not that I could tell). I'm using a technicolor tg799vac.
Any ideas? Thanks
Can you elaborate more on "not working"? If you think it is not working because you still see some ads, it could be because the ads are cached. Try powering off and on the device where you are seeing the ads.
thanks, I've tried clearing cache and restarting
Also don't forget that the blocked ads are dependent on the lists you use… with the default lists, I found it would block about 50-75% of the ads, and with a bunch of additional ones that number would increase to around 90%. Still needed ublock origin though to help with youtube ads and the other ads that slip through the cracks.
When I was setting up my pihole, I would reboot all my devices after I finished configuring it. Seems to help with them redirecting traffic through the pihole, and to clear the cache of any pre-existing ads. Easiest way for me to test is the BBC news app on my phone, as it is consistently blocked with pihole but would return on data. You can check to see which devices are actually using pihole as their DNS and which are bypassing it under the "network" setting.
yeah I added a lot of recommended lists online but doesn't seem to do anything. I have restarted my devices and the pi. My devices are listed under it.
Lockjaw?
TMJ
WTF.. I am suffering from it and randomly ran into this comment
grind your teeth at night? get a mouthguard. the fitted ones from a dentist are expensive but good
they seem like theyd be uncomfortable, but you get used to them quick and never look back
Unless you're super keen on using pihole, an alternative is https://nextdns.io and you can set it up on the router and adjust settings on your profile.
I wish more PiHoles didn't work.
why?
You don’t have it disabled? Sometimes during some games I play, I have to disable it for 5 mins and it doesn’t turn back on so I have to go in and manually set it back to enabled.
The other thing is, make sure the device you are connecting it to doesn’t have a different DNS server setup. To bypass some issues the PiHole caused on my system, some of my devices are set to 8.8.8.8 as the DNS To bypass the PiHole.
I recommend Cloudflare's DNS over Google's. Better performance, better privacy. Just switch to 1.1.1.1
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do that… I’m just lazy. It’s only one or two devices that use googles DNS to bypass the PiHole. And they don’t need to be super fast or private.
I use 1.1.1.2 (includes malware)
Theres also 1.1.1.3 that filters adult content + malware but who wants that
Have you set the DNS server on your LAN not WAN in your router?
Try setting DNS on a device level. I had to do that with our Android phones.
I tried, I went into the wifi settings, changed my ip to static and entered the Pi's IP address but I don't know what to enter in gateway, network prefix length, DNS 1 and DNS 2
So you're saying you're not getting any filtering at all?
Just ruling this stuff out:
Router: Technicolor tg799vac
Manually changing PC: I think I have tried but I'm not sure if I did it correctly, I went into ivp4 protocol and entered the IP address of my router but there were subnet masks and DNS that I wasn't sure what to enter
No VPN or work laptop
PiHole admin says it's working
@[Deactivated]: manually doing it - Lemme know how you go
1 Go to the Control Panel
2 Click Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings
3 Select the connection for which you want to configure
4 Right-click Local Area Connection > Properties
5 Select the Networking tab
6 Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)
7 Click Properties
8 Click Advanced
9 Select the DNS tab
10 Click OK
11 Select Use the following DNS server addresses
12 Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of your Pi
13 Restart the connection you selected in step 3
14 Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change.
@BanannaMan: I kinda think it's better that they leave individual computer settings as-is for now, and give a good idea what settings were changed on the router.
A misconfigured router could cause more problems and pointing router to the Pi-hole rather than individual computers will mean less setup and hassles for someone who might not understand what all the settings mean.
@lint: While I agree - I want to make sure the pihole is actually working and not configured incorrectly. Should revert changes afterwards, just a temporary check
@BanannaMan: Hey this actually worked ! On the websites I tried anyways except youtube, I still get ads but apparently that's normal (I tried 3 youtube videos and got ads on all three).
@[Deactivated]: Yeah youtube ads are normal
I'd recommend you to undo the changes and figure out whats going on with the router settings first. If you visit other peoples house or public networks your laptop wont work.
Can you post some screenshots of the router so we can take a look?
Just so you know - setting up static IP addresses, anytime someone joins the network you'll have to add them manually too.
In your router settings, you're supposed to enter your Pi-hole's IP address into DNS 1, and optionally a backup, like 1.1.1.1 into DNS 2. Leave the other stuff alone.
You should probably post screenshots of what you've done in your router because what you're saying is a bit ambiguous and it doesn't sound like you know what you're doing.
This is what I've done, I'm not sure if I can actually change my router DNS. The router DNS server I changed to the IP of my Pi which I set a static lease. I know the way around not being able to change your DNS on your router is to let the PiHole run the DCHP server and disable it on my laptop but then I don't get internet access at all. In the PiHole admin page, i set my "Range of IP addresses to be handed out" the same as my routers and put in my routers IP address.
You should probably post screenshots of what you've done in your router because what you're saying is a bit ambiguous and it doesn't sound like you know what you're doing.
yeah I thought it would easier considering all the 15 minute guides haha. I'm trying to learn all about networking and stuff so I can know what I'm doing.
@[Deactivated]: Typically the setup is:
Just FYI you dont need to black out your internal IP addresses - only public ones. MAC address maybe but I wouldnt even bother with that.
Router - Change DNS Setting to PiHole
I'm just wondering if I did this correctly, apart from the DNS server section on my router, there's no other options.
Wifi Clients - Flush their DNS settings so they point to the new one — did you do this part?
Nope, do I need to do this on every device? How would I flush DNS settings on devices like smart tvs and phones? I reconnected the internet connection and under settings it shows the DNS as the IP of pihole without me setting anything which is good but still not blocking ads.
Yeah youtube ads are normal
How did Linus get them to block?
Just FYI you dont need to black out your internal IP addresses - only public ones. MAC address maybe but I wouldnt even bother with that.
thanks for the tip :)
Nope, do I need to do this on every device? How would I flush DNS settings on devices like smart tvs and phones? I reconnected the internet connection and under settings it shows the DNS as the IP of pihole without me setting anything which is good but still not blocking ads.
Yes, you need to do this on every device, otherwise you may have to wait until they renew their DNS lease. That could be where your issues are coming from.
@BanannaMan: Seems to be working on my laptop though, although I can't seem to access a lot of sites
@[Deactivated]: From a quick glance that looks fine.
I usually have my routers use x.x.x.1 and up and have the DHCP reservation pool start with a higher number, but as long as there's no conflicts there, I see no problem.
Your next step to troubleshoot is to check on your device that it's been passed the Pi-hole address from the router. On Windows (let me know if you need help finding this information on other devices), you can either follow Lostoutback's first few steps:
1 Go to the Control Panel
2 Click Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings
3 Select the connection for which you want to configure
Then:
4 Right-click Local Area Connection > Status
5 Under Connection, click Details…
OR
Open Command Prompt and type: ipconfig /all
and press Enter.
Check what IP address(es) are listed under DNS Servers.
If the first one is your Pi-hole address, then your device is getting the correct configuration from the router. Also note the IPv4 Address of the device you're using.
If everything looks good there, open the Pi-hole admin page on the device you're using. Open a new tab go to a website with ads, for example smh.com.au. Immediately return to the Pi-hole tab and click Query Log in the menu on the left. You should see a bunch of DNS requests with the IP address listed under Client, some of which are green (passed to client) and some red (blocked by Pi-hole).
If you see that, then your setup is working and your device is properly using Pi-hole as its DNS server. You'll then need to experiment with different block lists to get optimal blocking. Just be aware that it's not possible to block YouTube ads with Pi-hole because the domains the ads come from are the same as those serving the video content. You can block YouTube ads with browser-based adblockers.
If you're not seeing DNS requests from your device in Pi-hole's query log, then you'll need to troubleshoot further.
@lint: So I've done what you suggested and I think the problem is the DNS, it appears on some devices but along with others so I don't think it's using it as the primary DNS. When I manually change it then I can see it being blocked in queries. Oddly enough, when I change my iphone DNS it blocks it but when I change my android pihole forwards it (in incognito as well)
I think the work around this was using PiHoles DCHP and turning the routers one off but for some reason that just kills the internet. I can connect but I don't have internet.
So I've done what you suggested and I think the problem is the DNS, it appears on some devices but along with others so I don't think it's using it as the primary DNS.
Is your Pi-hole address the first one listed in the DNS server list? If it is, it should be ok, if not your router may using the ISP's DNS address as the primary. I know some Telstra-provided routers don't allow you to change the DNS server, but I thought such routers just didn't have anywhere to provide put in a DNS address, whereas yours does.
Oddly enough, when I change my iphone DNS it blocks it but when I change my android pihole forwards it (in incognito as well)
Could you please elaborate on this? When you change your iPhone DNS to point to the Pi-hole, it successfully blocks ads, but when you do it on Android it still doesn't go through Pi-hole? Or something else?
I think the work around this was using PiHoles DCHP and turning the routers one off but for some reason that just kills the internet. I can connect but I don't have internet.
Several questions about this one:
Does it just kill internet access or does it also kill LAN access? For example, can you still access the Pi-hole admin page when you do this?
Do your devices successfully obtain a DHCP lease from Pi-hole? You can check same way as in my previous post, as well as in Pi-hole admin page > Settings > DHCP and check under DHCP leases.
Did you also make sure the Router (gateway) IP address in Pi-hole's DHCP settings is pointing to your router address?
Is your Pi-hole address the first one listed in the DNS server list? If it is, it should be ok, if not your router may using the ISP's DNS address as the primary. I know some Telstra-provided routers don't allow you to change the DNS server, but I thought such routers just didn't have anywhere to provide put in a DNS address, whereas yours does.
Yeah I had a look, the DNS address is there but it's not primary, the first 2001:7003:44d2:b600::1 is this. The DNS I put in earlier appears though. I think that's my main problem.
Could you please elaborate on this? When you change your iPhone DNS to point to the Pi-hole, it successfully blocks ads, but when you do it on Android it still doesn't go through Pi-hole? Or something else?
I realized on the iPhone, i can actually change my DNS but on my android, it reverts back to the one mentioned above
Does it just kill internet access or does it also kill LAN access? For example, can you still access the Pi-hole admin page when you do this?
I didn't remember so I tried to set it again, oddly enough it worked this time and there's no trouble with the internet. I did the exact same thing like 5 times and each time ended up with no internet but connected. PiHole seems to work great on two phones and one laptop now! Other devices I can't seem to get to work for the life of me (for my other two laptops, forgetting and reconnecting wifi, I've tried both automatic and setting the DNS to the pihole, flushing DNS and restarting each time. One laptop just uses googles DNS no matter what I do, the other one has 2 only, both of which are servers on my laptop where pihole is working)
Do your devices successfully obtain a DHCP lease from Pi-hole? You can check same way as in my previous post, as well as in Pi-hole admin page > Settings > DHCP and check under DHCP leases.
On all my laptops yes, now that the pihole DCHP is working, I checked and all of time have the piholes IP.
Did you also make sure the Router (gateway) IP address in Pi-hole's DHCP settings is pointing to your router address?
yep
This is the most I've gotten it to work so far thanks to you and and Lostoutback, I feel terrible for taking up your time and I'd buy you both drinks if I could.
@[Deactivated]: Glad you've gotten it mostly working. Always good to try these sorts of things, usually learn something new along the way each time.
That other DNS address is an IPv6 address. I don't have much experience with it since I've never had an ISP with IPv6 support, so I don't know if it's the final culprit. Maybe you could tick the Enable IPv6 support option in Pi-hole's DHCP settings.
Good luck!
For anyone interested in a Pi-Hole (and you should be)
don't use it on a Pi-Zero (no ethernet)
this introduces latency and potential for errors
If you have a Synology NAS try this-
https://servicemax.com.au/tips/pi-hole-in-docker-on-synology…
Not true, while wired is recommended, it works perfectly well on Wi-Fi. DNS requests are tiny and easily managed on a Wi-Fi connection.
You can also easily add a USB Ethernet adapter to a Pi-Zero to keep the project cost down.
Don't be ridiculous, it is absolutely true.
The importance that you assign to these facts might vary, but not the truth of the statements.
It might work, but I'd never install something like that in a professional situation, and I'd never recommend it for home users due to the potential for sh!t to break.
I came in here expecting something totally different.