Pihole - Deathraymind/HomeLab GitHub Wiki

Setting Up Pi-hole on Ubuntu

It is recommended to have a dedicated device to this sinkhole as we are going to be messing with the DNS name servers of the host device, which could conflict with other services.

Check Port 53 Usage

Before setting up Pi-hole, make sure port 53 is available by checking which process is currently using it.

sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN

It is likely that systemd-resolved is listening on port 53. To free up the port, disable and stop systemd-resolved:

sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved.service
sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved

Configure DNS for Your Host

Edit the /etc/resolv.conf file to specify your DNS server. For example, using Google's DNS server:

sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

Add the following line to the file:

nameserver 8.8.8.8

If there are other nameservers listed, consider commenting them out to avoid conflicts.

Install Pi-hole with Docker

To install Pi-hole with Docker, run the following command:

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

To change the Pi-hole admin password, use the following command:

sudo pihole -a -p

Configuring pfSense

Configure DNS Servers in pfSense

  1. Log in to pfSense's web interface: https://172.16.0.1/ (Use your pfSense server's IP address).

  2. Navigate to System > General Setup.

  3. In the "DNS Server Settings" section, set the top DNS server to the IP address of your Pi-hole (e.g., 172.16.16.40).

  4. Set the secondary DNS server to a reliable external DNS server, such as Google's DNS (e.g., 8.8.8.8).

Configure DHCP Server in pfSense

  1. Go to Server > DHCP Server.

  2. Scroll down to "Server Options."

  3. Set the top DNS server to the IP address of your Pi-hole (e.g., 172.16.16.40).

  4. Set the secondary DNS server to a reliable external DNS server (e.g., 8.8.8.8).

  5. Save, apply, and refresh the DHCP settings on your devices.

Verify Pi-hole Operation

After completing these steps, Pi-hole should be blocking queries. For example, when visiting a website like cnn.com, you should see blocked queries on the Pi-hole dashboard.

Note: Ensure that your Pi-hole container is running and configured to bind port 53 to the host machine.

This documentation provides a step-by-step guide for setting up Pi-hole on Ubuntu and configuring DNS settings in pfSense. Users can follow these instructions to create a working Pi-hole setup for network-wide ad-blocking.