Techbee22 - Pi-Hole

I love pihole! Great for blocking stuff at the DNS level. They advertise as being an "AD" Blocker but these days they are not. More of a net nanny for families or a way to see whats going on and out of the LAN. I use it to filter webcontent and blocking telemetry, tracking, and analytics.

If you do use this, make the following network changes:

After you install and setup by using the following command: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
Change the password for pihole! Commad: pihole -a -p
On your DHCP server setup DNS to only go to your pihole's IP address.
Configure Router to go upstream to the DNS resolver of Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and not Google's 8.8.8.8.
Setup a firewall rule to only allow your Pi-Hole compute for port 53. If you can, because many routers/firewalls don't allow Firewall rule changes.
The listed REGEX keywords will block most stuff.
Add Block Lists
Always test!

Chronometer

Calculates stats and displays to an LCD

Dashboard

I really like that it gives you the current CPU temp and memory usage.

Alot more information is given if you log in.

Useful Links

https://docs.pi-hole.net/ftldns/blockingmode/ - Blocking Modes

https://scotthelme.co.uk/securing-dns-across-all-of-my-devices-with-pihole-dns-over-https-1-1-1-1/

https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains/212 - Commonly Whitelisted

https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/d5056q/tutorial_v2_how_to_run_2_pihole_servers_in_ha/ - How to setup High Availability for two Pi-Holes one IP

A little script I cooked up for the High Availability for two Pi-Holes to use one floating IP.

The reason for this script is that if the DNS fails to work but the Pi still has a network it will not failover to the backup. This script I have running every min using /etc/crontab.

#!/bin/bash

LOG=/home/pi/Desktop/messages.log

REBOOTLOG=/home/pi/Desktop/reboot.log

EMAILADDER=MY-EMAIL-ADDRESS@gmail.com

echo "

  ###########################################################

  ###### DNS Keep-Alive Started #############################

  ###########################################################

timeout 7 ping -c3 -s1 192.168.1.1

if [ $? != 0 ]

then

 echo "unable to ping 192.168.1.1 - rebooting" >> $LOG

 echo "DNS Server - unable to ping 192.168.1.1 - rebooting" | ssmtp $EMAILADDER

 echo "Rebooted" >> $REBOOTLOG

 sleep 2

 sudo /sbin/reboot

fi

 systemctl status pihole-FTL | grep -q "inactive"

     if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then

         echo "systemctl status inactive" >> $LOG

 sudo systemctl stop keepalived

 sudo systemctl disable keepalived

 echo "DNS Server - pihole-FTL - systemctl status inactive - Failing over to Backup" | ssmtp $EMAILADDER

 exit

fi

 systemctl status pihole-FTL | grep -q "failed"

     if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then

         echo "systemctl status failed" >> $LOG

 sudo systemctl stop keepalived

 sudo systemctl disable keepalived

 echo "DNS Server - pihole-FTL - systemctl status failed - Failing over to Backup" | ssmtp $EMAILADDER

 exit

fi

 systemctl status pihole-FTL | grep -q "failure"

     if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then

         echo "systemctl status failure" >> $LOG

 sudo systemctl stop keepalived

 sudo systemctl disable keepalived

 echo "DNS Server - pihole-FTL - systemctl status failure - Failing over to Backup" | ssmtp $EMAILADDER

 exit

fi

exit

~~~~ Useful Links ~~~~

A little script I cooked up for the High Availability for two Pi-Holes to use one floating IP.

The reason for this script is that if the DNS fails to work but the Pi still has a network it will not failover to the backup. This script I have running every min using /etc/crontab.

Useful Links