Pi Hole - network-wide ad blocking

imc67

@girish definately!

marcusquinn

Haha, Pie Hole / Cake Hole is British for your mouth, as in; shut your pie hole

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pie Hole

@marcusquinn
Pi-hole, not Pie hole

marcusquinn

@Hillside502 3.14159265359... hole

timbo

How is the progress here?

savity

@timbo Yeah any information this ?

girish

Last I checked it was quite tricky to deploy pi-hole with docker. Does anyone have experience with this style of deployment? It was really made like a "distribution"/"OS" instead of a separate app.

iamthefij

@girish It's pretty straightforward as far as I can tell. I've got two instances hosted via Docker on Raspberry Pis at my home.

I agree with folks above suggesting though that it'd be best to expose only to internal services and likely inside a VPN. There is probably a decent way to do this in a single app, but I wonder if there is value in creating a new way to expose particular Apps to other apps via a shared network.

This would allow exposing a Pi-Hole app that has no "public" ports to any VPN app (OpenVPN, Wireguard, etc) with an internal hostname (app name?).

girish

@iamthefij So, let's say the VPN app had a way to set a custom name server and one could just edit some file and set it to the pi-hole app, would this be good enough already? Given that the OpenVPN app is custom anyway, we can even add a simple UI that allows a user to set the DNS server IP (as you say, this might be the internal host name since IP might be dynamic actually).

This seems quite doable.

doodlemania2

I've got one up and running on a public endpoint, no sweat. I just set the server to only allow queries from my IP range, deny all by default.

iamthefij

@girish yea, that's pretty much all that should be required. As long as the two containers can communicate via their internal host names, it should be sufficient.

The other advantage here is that it enables you to use the DNS from a mobile phone. Otherwise whenever you switch to a new network you receive the networks DNS via DHCP.

iamthefij

@doodlemania2 I'm not sure exactly what you've configured, but many folks do not have static IP addresses to do this with. Not only does my home network frequently change IP addresses, but my mobile network does as well.

imc67

@Mallewax said in AdGuard - Network-wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server:

Pihole plus Wireguard

Let's vote more here: https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1355/pi-hole-network-wide-ad-blocking

In short why:

WireGuard is a very fast, safe and stateless VPN, great with mobile apps to be ALWAYS CONNECTED via your own VPN & covered by the Pi-hole adfilter & security platform. Faster (mobile) connections (no more ads and bulky stuff) to your own safe VPN (no more sniffing by mobile providers or obscure VPN providers).

Need to say more

girish

@iamthefij For OpenVPN, I started a new thread - https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3139/openvpn-admin-ui

iamthefij

Cool! Do apps already have access to each other through the bridge? Or would that need to be made possible as well?

girish

While there is network connectivity between the apps (docker's icc is true), the apps do not know the internal IPs and thus cannot easily discover each other. We have to come up with some sort of standard hostname naming mechanism to allow easy configurability.

yusf

Being able to host Cloudron behind Wireguard in a way where apps would only be accessed through WG would be a nice feature for security-demanding deployments.

Edit: Sorry, wrong thread.

savity

Are there any news Regarding Wireguard and Pihole in Cloudron?

murgero

@imc67 said in Pi Hole - network-wide ad blocking:

Only in combination with a VPN like WireGuard it's a perfect combination to be online, outside of your 'safe home wifi', without sniffing of mobile providers proxies and "free open wifi", and with a kind of safetynet by Pi-Hole.

This is a common misconception - Just because you are using a VPN does not mean you are completely safe. Sure you maybe safe from traffic sniffers at your local mcdonalds or starbucks, but a VPN that is tied to your name and a device that has other software on it like facebook, twitter, etc still makes you vulnerable to data leakage, tracking and more.

marcusquinn

@murgero Exactly that! There's a reason why not one single bank in the world has "Login with Google/Facebook/Twitter" etc.

girish

@savity I did give pi-hole a try but it was really hard to package from source easily. I managed to instead package the new kid in the block - AdGuard. Some reviews here https://home-assistant-guide.com/2020/09/26/adguard-home-vs-pi-hole-2020-two-ad-and-internet-tracker-blockers-compared/ and https://mariushosting.com/synology-adguard-vs-pi-hole/ . It requires some support from the platform, depending on time we might add it to Cloudron 6 (or the release after). https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3075/adguard-network-wide-ads-trackers-blocking-dns-server is the forum topic for that.

savity

@girish Sad to hear thath Pi-hole didn't workout but lets see how AdGuard is Thanks for your Work

murgero

@girish I have adguard installed via homeassistant on a RPi4 and it works just as pi-hole does. Admin UI looks similar as well. I'd suspect you will find little to no complaints on packaging adg or pih.

girish

@murgero Yes, it also seems adh has some important features like DoH.

girish

Adguard Home will be available in Cloudron 6 - https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3075/adguard-network-wide-ads-trackers-blocking-dns-server . It is similar to pi hole (and more feature rich).

varunsridharan

@girish i would love to see PI-Hole in Cloudron.

And option to setup Pihole with Android Private DNS which requires DNS-over-TLS

and i wrote a quick setup script for Pihole DNS-over-TLS

https://github.com/varunsridharan/pi-hole-android-private-dns/blob/main/pi-hole5.sh

girish

I have added an option to make the DNS server of the OpenVPN app configuration - https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3875/adding-custom-dns-server . So, you can install AdGuard Home and OpenVPN and then make OpenVPN use AdGuard as the DNS server.

girish

Just leaving a note here for people looking into pi-hole. Starting 6.2, Cloudron also supports DoT (DNS over TLS) in AdGuard Home. This makes it work out of the box in Android phones.

jdaviescoates

@girish so if I've got this right, I could AdGuard to stop any ads ever being shown on the Android tablet my kids use? (most are blocked already either using uBlock Origin in the browsers or e.g. NewPipe instead of YouTube - although I can't uninstall YT on this machine and no doubt the kids will find and open it at some point)

Could I somehow achieve that using a Cloudron installed on a VPS, or is AdGuard something I'd need running on a machine at home? Thanks!

necrevistonnezr

@jdaviescoates
yes, you can do that (mind you that you can filter ads based on domains etc - there are sneaky ads that you can’t catch with a DNS filter (e.g. if they come from the same domain as the content, etc). But it helps a lot.

IMHO it’s easier though to just get a dedicated Raspberry Pi, put www.dietpi.com on it, and you should be good to go with Pi-Hole, Unbound, and encrypted DNS in minutes. It has A LOT of other apps as well including AdGuard Home (and many you won’t even find on Cloudron such as Wireguard, Home Assistant, Pydio, Plex, etc.) - though not dockerized - but I like to have this dedicated little device kept simple and not facing the internet.Just servicing the local network with some services.

jdaviescoates

@necrevistonnezr thanks, so just be clear it sounds like I would need a machine at home to take advantage of this stuff, right?

Or is it somehow possible to use a VPS too?

Thanks!

necrevistonnezr

@jdaviescoates yes, a „machine“ at home (well, it’s just a tiny box)

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Pi Hole - network-wide ad blocking