Quick writeup regarding my experience installing and configuring PiHole, a DNS sinkhole, within my homelab. There are other great resources that you can also use else where to emulate this project.
Pi-Hole is a powerful network-wide ad blocker that runs on Raspberry Pi, making your entire network ad-free. This high-level guide will walk through the process of installing and configuring Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi with the DietPi operating system. We'll assume you've already set up your Raspberry Pi and it has a static local IP address of 192.168.1.203.
- A Raspberry Pi (any model should work). (This can be any model. I bought mine from Amazon: https://a.co/d/6qQ4fvL)
- DietPi OS installed and configured on your Raspberry Pi. (Mr Steve on Youtube has a fanastic guide on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO2_eZlVrj4)
- A static local IP address assigned to your Raspberry Pi.
You can access your Raspberry Pi through SSH from your computer. Open a terminal or command prompt on your computer and run:
ssh dietpi@192.168.1.203
Replace 192.168.1.203 with the IP address of your Raspberry Pi.
Once you've logged in to your Raspberry Pi, you can begin the installation of Pi-Hole. Run the following command:
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash (https://docs.pi-hole.net/main/basic-install/)
This command will download and run the Pi-Hole installation script. Follow the on-screen instructions to configure Pi-Hole. When asked to select the upstream DNS provider, you can choose your preferred option (e.g., Google, OpenDNS, or Custom).
For Pi-Hole to work effectively, you need to configure your router to use the Raspberry Pi's IP address (192.168.1.203) as the DNS server for your network. Access your router's settings through a web browser and find the DNS settings. Set the primary DNS server to 192.168.1.203 (as shown below in my Netgear Router's web interface).
Run sudo nmtui. Select edit a Connection. Select your connection > edit.
Set IPv4 configuration to Manual. Add DNS. Enter in PiHole IPv4 address.
Disable then reactivae the connection. Quit.
To access the Pi-Hole web interface and configure it further, open a web browser and enter your Raspberry Pi's IP address followed by "/admin" (e.g., http://192.168.1.203/admin/). You'll be presented with the Pi-Hole dashboard, where you can manage settings, view statistics, and add custom blocklists.