Hey yall! As the title suggests, im looking into a pihole build but idk where to start.
The raspberry pi website shows a zero 2w build, Is this still viable in 2024?
Is there a better alternative?
…or just run something like GitHub - AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome: Network-wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server or GitHub - 0xERR0R/blocky: Fast and lightweight DNS proxy as ad-blocker for local network with many features ? Both are common in many package repos.
I mean, the PiHole is basically your custom DNS-server. So as long as it is on a machine that runs 24x7x365 reliably it should be fine to run somewhere else.
Note that you need to set in your router as the primary DNS-server for it to work properly. You might also have to configure some others as backup in the case that the pihole system does end up failing
But please do check out the documentation, when I was playing around with it it was good!
As an idea, my setup: The router pulling the strings on the network is the DNS and it sources its entries from a Pi-Hole with fall-back being Digital Courage.
I’ve been using Pi-Hole in a few places for years and I’m not complaining…
Although the more lists we add the more attention it will require because for obvious reasons the more we block the greater the probability of false positives.
Determine your performance needs, how many requests you need to handle… As for a small LAN for 1-10 pc almost any small device should be enough.
I use, among others Friendlyelec ZeroPi (it used to be much cheaper) on which Armbian (Debian) sits and Pi-Hole runs. No problems whatsoever and there is no shortage of memory even with over 4 million blocked domains.
Just decide what hardware you want to do it on. It can be a cheap sbc with ARM or some x86… even a virtual machine on the server will do. Choose the OS according to your preferences and simply install pihole. The documentation is solid imho.
If you decide to do this based on ARM sbc then I suggest you choose something that is supported by Armbian or go straight for Raspberry Pi.
https://docs.pi-hole.net/main/basic-install/
And if not pi-hole you can think about https://nextdns.io