Background:
- I’ve been trying to find a guide on getting a DNS server setup with both Lancache and Pihole running on the same Linux host but kept finding the inefficient solution of ‘make two linux hosts and run one on each’, which I knew shouldn’t be needed. Found what I needed to make happen with Wendell’s Forbidden Router post, but figure it may be helpful if I post how I setup my server:
The Setup:
- I setup an Ubuntu 20.04 VM w/ 4c, 8Gb RAM, 32gb OS drive, 500gb secondary drive for the lancache. Feel free to scale this as needed for the size of the cache you wish to implement though
- Performed a basic Ubuntu install. Only thing of note is setting the static IP to the IP I wish for the Lancache DNS and installing the Open SSH server service. Once finished, SSH into the VM
Prerequisites and Dependencies:
- Double-check there are no pending OS upgrades, install the docker-ce dependency packages, add it’s repository, and install docker.
sudo su
apt update && apt upgrade -y &&
apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common -y &&
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add &&
add-apt-repository “deb [arch=amd64] Index of linux/ubuntu/ focal stable” -y &&
apt install docker-ce -y
- Update the interface config to add our second IP for Pihole. This requires going to where it has ‘- YOUR_IP_ADDRESS’, hit enter for a new line under it, space until it is to the same depth in the YAML file because YAML formatting, and adding the second IP in the same way as the first. Test ping to verify the second IP is reachable
nano /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml
netplan apply
- Next we need to setup our secondary drive. If you’re doing a RAID array, DigitalOcean did a decent writeup on getting an mdadm array setup. In addition to setting up the drive, I decided to setup the docker folders and permission sets for them to use. I ended up setting up the log files on the OS disk, but feel free to set them up on the secondary disk instead. Just make sure your drive mounts and persists through reboots and you cap your max LANCACHE size to be less than the secondary disk actual size.
lsblk # Identify your secondary drive. In my case it was /dev/sdb
parted /dev/sdb mklabel gpt &&
parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext4 0% 100% &&
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 &&
parted /dev/sdb name 1 docker &&
mkdir -p /docker/lancache/logs &&
chmod -R 775 /docker/lancache/logs &&
mkdir -p /lancache &&
chmod -R 775 /lancache &&
mkdir -p /docker/pihole &&
chmod -R 775 /docker/pihole &&
echo “/dev/sdb1 /lancache ext4 defaults 0 0” >> /etc/fstab &&
mount -a &&
df -h
- Next, we need to make sure that port 53 doesn’t get bound by Ubuntu, which is does by default. To free it up, we need to set the resolved.conf that systemd uses to disable the DNSStubListener. Note: While this step SHOULDN’T be necessary as we’re binding our containers to specific IPs, I’m recommending this be done anyway to prevent any issues.
echo “DNSStubListener=no” >> /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
rm /etc/resolv.conf &&
ln -s /var/run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf &&
service systemd-resolved restart &&
nslookup forum.level1techs.com #Verify DNS queries still resolve
Docker install and setup:
- Run the following to add your user to the docker group and setup docker service to start and auto-start on reboot
usermod -aG docker YOUR_USERNAME &&
systemctl start docker && systemctl enable docker
- Now for the actual docker run files. If you make a mistake you can run
docker stop CONTAINER_NAME && docker rm CONTAINER_NAMEto stop and remove the container. For my run files below, I specified 1TB for the size of the cache. The cache index size is set to 250MB, as monolith documentation recommends 250MB per 1TB of Cache. I setFIRST_IPas the IP that was setup during the initial ubuntu install,PIHOLE_IPas the IP that was added after the install, and I specified a larger than default CACHE_SLICE_SIZE of 8m as this caused better performance with Battle.net and Origin downloads with no noted difference with steam, but your milage may vary.
docker run -d
–name=lancache-dns
–restart unless-stopped
–detach -p FIRST_IP:53:53/udp -e USE_GENERIC_CACHE=true -e LANCACHE_IP=FIRST_IP
-e UPSTREAM_DNS=PIHOLE_IP -e TZ=America/New_York
lancachenet/lancache-dns:latest &&docker run -d
–restart unless-stopped
–name lancache
–detach -v /lancache:/data/cache -v /docker/lancache/logs:/data/logs
-p FIRST_IP:80:80 -p _FIRST_IP:443:443
-e CACHE_INDEX_SIZE=250m -e CACHE_MAX_AGE=3650d -e CACHE_DISK_SIZE=100000m -e CACHE_SLICE_SIZE=8m -e TZ=America/New_York
lancachenet/monolithic:latest
- Next we’ll setup our upstream DNS server, Pihole
docker run -d
–name pihole
-p PIHOLE_IP:53:53/tcp -p PIHOLE_IP:53:53/udp
-p PIHOLE_IP:80:80
-e TZ=America/New_York
-v /docker/pihole:/etc/pihole
-v /docker/pihole/etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d
–dns=1.0.0.1
–restart=unless-stopped
–hostname Level1DNS
-e WEBPASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE
-e VIRTUAL_HOST=“Level1DNS”
-e PROXY_LOCATION=“Level1DNS”
-e ServerIP=“127.0.0.1”
pihole/pihole:latest
Test and Verify:
- With all the containers up and running, the only thing left is to verify it’s all working as expected and persists through reboots.
- First is to run a quick
docker psto verify all 3 containers are running. Next reboot and verify they all come up - Next run
tail -f /docker/lancache/logs/access.logto check the HIT/MISS logs for our cache and openhttp://PIHOLE_IP/admin/index.phpto check our Pihole dashboard - Set your client of choice to point to the
FIRST_IPand try downloading a game. Thetail -f /docker/lancache/logs/access.logshould show activity and refreshing thehttp://PIHOLE_IP/admin/index.phpshould show a new client along with an increase in total queries
In hindsight I should probably just setup a run script to build this out automagically, but I’m not that good of a scripter at the moment.