I’ve been thinking of setting one up for a while, if I have a home server would I be better off hosting it on that or as a separate device? What are the alternatives to a raspberry pi? They’ve shot up in price over the years.
The Beauty Of Having A Pi-hole · Den Delimarsky
Submitted 7 hours ago by fusspilz@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
President@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
Definitely dont bother with buying a pi if you’ve got other hardware.
I have one physical (a 3b I had no use for anymore), and two running as containers. The containers do most of the heavy lifting, since they are so much faster than a pi they respond far faster, but the physical is nice for when I take down the clusters for maintenance (or when I lose power, the clusters shut down after about 3 minutes, the pi will keep going for a while on UPS).
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I personally like it on a dedicated Pi simplly because I don’t want DNS to die if i’m doing other server maintenance. the Pi is pretty much set it and forget it.
normalexit@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
If you have a server running, I wouldn’t buy more hardware. They have good example documentation for just such a configuration:
If your server already has those ports bound (specifically the DNS port 53) you are going to have to get creative; otherwise it’ll work well!
If not a cheapo pi 3 works, just so long as it is always on.
PoopMonster@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
If your using docker and the ports are bound you can just use the network mode host so the container gets it’s own ip. It’s how I have adguard running on my unraid server
Brokkr@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I put it onto my home server and it is working great. I can’t tell you about all the options, but it was so easy to start another VM for it that I didn’t look at other options too carefully.
adarza@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
if you’ve already got something running 24/7, you could just put it there. it doesn’t need much for resources.
pihole does not need it’s own box. it can run as a container (docker instructions in the official docs) or in a small vm.
i have two small vm running dietpi and used that to install pihole. i fully expected to run a few more things on them, that’s why i chose dietpi–just have never gotten that far (it’s only been like three years now).
themurphy@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
I have it on my Pi, and it does the job just fine. But if you have a home server with a little more power, do it there instead.
The last thing you want is your DNS to bottleneck. Never had a problem with my Rasp5, but it all depends on how many other services you try to run.
JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I run mine on a Intel N100 based mini PC from Beelink running Proxmox. It’s just about the only thing it does at the moment so I’ve had no concerns about bottlenecking.
It’s much more powerful than a pi and costs a not too dissimilar amount to one after you factor in a case, storage, power supply.
swampdownloader@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
I run my main pihole on a pi and the backup on a NUC mini pc. Le Potato is a cheap pi alternative.
adhocfungus@midwest.social 4 hours ago
Is it possible to do something like this with a newer router? My wireless-G router is finally dying after 20 years, and if I need to upgrade it’d be nice to wrap it all in one.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
You can do it with any router by manually configuring devices, but one that lets you advertise the PiHole IP as the DHCP DNS option makes it a lot easier.
2910000@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
OpenWrt with AdGuard Home is one option. Big fan of the former, haven’t used the latter
confusedwiseman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
I played with a pi-hole setup for a bit. It was nice. I got distracted and set up NextDNS. That’s where I am now.
I like I can easily turn it on/off when I just need to do something and no time to fuss with it.
I’ve got a home server, just not fully setup and going yet, but someday…
Any thoughts on why I might do pi-hole over something like NextDNS? I think the cost is roughly $1/mo.
lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
If that’s what you’re happy with and works for you, continue.
Personally, I’m creating an environment in which I’m not dependent on any cloud provider on the front end.
I do have a cloud backup solution for all my data files on the off chance I lose every single on-site backup and closely-held remote backups (read: not in main building but still on property…).
Just trying to get away from reliance on the existence of someone else’s computer/datacenter…
🤷♂️
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Ive I’ve a pi hole running, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle. To me it feels like it breaks more things than it helps.
Hellmo_Luciferrari@lemm.ee 4 hours ago
What issues do you have?
dan69@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Anyone have recs for a site that I can pick up simple hardware for this purpose. Maybe not a pi but like a nuc? Or a refurbed.
swampdownloader@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
eBay for NUC. Le potato for a pi alternative.
yaroto98@lemmy.org 5 hours ago
I recommend having two. Otherwise your home internet goes down everytime you update or reboot or it crashes.
lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Interesting…
I’ve a single Pihole instance running on a RPi 4 and have experienced not a single instance of any of the 3 probs you mention. Except, of course, the very few minutes it takes for a reboot which I can schedule and am aware when it’s happening…
🤷♂️
JordanZ@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I’d say part of it comes down to what your log level is set at. My pi-hole ran on the pi for like 3-4 years before it destroyed the sd card and crashed. I know some people make immutable filesystems for them etc. If you’re writing to the sd card it’s just a matter of when, not if it will fail.
muhyb@programming.dev 4 hours ago
I didn’t have a problem on my Pi-hole for a very long time too. OP has that probably because s/he’s using it as a DHCP server as well.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
Literally just had my pihole hard crash this weekend due to a bad update to FTL. Apparently they had a major version upgrade and didn’t bother to read the notes so I had to do a full OS reinstall.
Back up your configs people. Had to dig through documentation to find the sqlite file and then parse through it like some sort of animal.
ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Yeah, I believe it can vary depending on how you host it.
In my experience whenever I brought down the PiHole instance (Docker Compose) I would lose all internet access, which is expected since I’m essentially taking away my devices one and only library, so to mitigate this I spun up PiHole on another device and set that as my secondary (backup) DNS resolver.
This way I can take a container down, update it and all without losing resolution to the internet.
yaroto98@lemmy.org 4 hours ago
Right, I didn’t have any issues running it on a pi for years too. The problems came when I started messing with things. So, really my advice is to help save people from ideas like mine.
I decided one day to take a bunch of old laptops and create a proxmox cluster out of them. It worked great, but I didn’t have a use for them, I was just playing. So, I decided to retire the pi and put the pihole on the cluster. HA for the win!
I did that and came woke up a few days later to my family complaining that they had no internet. I found the pihole container on a different node and it wouldn’t start. Turns out with proxmox you need separate storage for HA to work. I had assumed that it would be similar to jboss clustering which I’m familiar with, and the container would be on all the nodes and only one actice at a time, with some syncing between nodes. Nope.
What’s worse is the container refused to move back to the origional node AND wouldn’t start. The pi was stored away at this point so I figured it would be easier to just create a new container, but duh, no internet. Turn off dns settings on the router, bam have internet.
Eventually set up the old pi again, and it took me a while to figure out what I had done wrong with proxmox. But while I was figuring it out it was nice to have the backup.
Now I always have two running on different hardware, just in case.
shiroininja@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Mine never crashed until the latest major update, now it’s down every time I come home. Am mad
yaroto98@lemmy.org 4 hours ago
Yep, if you have somewhere to put a docker container or VM you can have redundancy.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
honestly don’t find it necessary. raspberry OS basically never needs to be rebooted and if you really need planned maintenance you can just use a normal DNS server til you’re done.
yaroto98@lemmy.org 4 hours ago
Right, I never said two raspberry pis, I meant two instances. Like one pi and a container run elsewhere.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Adguard Home has been absolutely rock solid for me, and it offers DoT and DoH servers so you can easily connect devices over those protocols if you want to.
yaroto98@lemmy.org 9 minutes ago
Great, I recommend having two Adguard Home instances.