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If you are, what is it? How are you running it? Dedicated hardware? A VM? In a container? I only have the two options since they are considered some of the most popular.

If you are, what is it? How are you running it? Dedicated hardware? A VM? In a container?

I only have the two options since they are considered some of the most popular.

This poll is now closed.

Adguard Home
17 % (1 votes)
piHole
67 % (4 votes)
Other (Post below)
17 % (1 votes)
[–] • 3 pts

I have a fanless PC running Linux that is my server box. It hosts my NAS and other odds n ends including pi-hole.

I bought my bf a pi zero that already had pi-hole on it and that was practically plug and play since he didn't need a real server.

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

You bought your BF a Pi Zero? Wow! Awesome! Want to really surprise him? Get him a Pi 5 or a Le Potato.

Anyway, I run Pi Hole on my Raspberry Pi 5. It's totally awesome. It's one of those "geeze, why didn't I do this years ago." It makes network management so easy and flexible. I like its local DNS management.

Oh, I don't believe in using containers except for enterprise deployments. It's not useful on a small machine.

[–] • 2 pts

I've had a lot of pi's but the last one cracked the sdcard from heat. He doesn't see a use for one or I would give him one. I just got tired of ads on his network so did up the zero for him as something he doesn't have to maintain. He's a geek but doesn't bother with the Linux stuff and doesn't need much weird stuff at home like I do, apparently.

I've been using a dd-wrt router forever and pi hole for ages as well. I love pi-hole. I've caught so many weird things like a wifi extender pinging a time server constantly to display uptime. I can get stupid stuff like a floor mop that needs a firmware update and then block the MAC on my router.

[–] • 0 pt

I used to be a hard core windows user, but recently, I've gone hard core Debian and Ubuntu on clusters of SBCs. It all works, no nasty "upgrades" and i get good performance on low powered hardware.

[–] • 1 pt

I sometimes use privoxy on my router. That does not have all the things you describe.

[–] • 1 pt

No, but when I get my pi rack set up hopefully sometime this decade I'll probably set up a piHole. Until then it's just browser-based blocking client-side.

[–] • 1 pt

piHole. Be careful though. Make sure when you setup your PC's DNS that you just accept that you'll "need" to use google, or cloudflare or whatever as secondary / tertiary DNS resolvers. BECAUSE IF YOU'RE LIKE ME and you set ONLY your pihole as a DNS, then your pihole server goes down. LLOOOLOLOLOLOLOLOL It's easy to fix, but not if you don't remember.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

I have pihole running in a VM in my homelab on a 3-node cluster with HA. If the node it's on goes down it will move/restart on another node on its own.

I probably should have two of them running at all times though. That would make a lot of sense. I wonder if there is a plugin to keep the config in sync or something.

Oh, I should also mention, DNS is stupid. Primary and secondary doesn't mean anything. The system does not check for "aliveness" of the dns server, it also does not use the "primary" as the preferred DNS. IF you have a primary and secondary set it will pick one at random, randomly. If the one it picks times out it will try the other one.

So, if you are setting the RPI as primary and google as your secondary, a random assortment of your DNS queries are going to go directly to google even if your RPI is online and working as expected.

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

I'll eventually buy another 1 or 2 mini PCs and do proxmox HA clusters, but I'm busy being a nigger.

"Oh, I should also mention, DNS is stupid. Primary and secondary doesn't mean anything. The system does not check for "aliveness" of the dns server, it also does not use the "primary" as the preferred DNS. IF you have a primary and secondary set it will pick one at random, randomly. If the one it picks times out it will try the other one. "

That may be true for windows, but it's definitely not true for Linux. I can watch the pihole query log and see all of my traffic go through there. Also, pihole isn't to block jewgle DNS or cloudflare. You still use them, after the DNS block happens. It fowards all DNS reuqests to an actual DNS server if a block doesn't happen.

[–] • 0 pt

TLDR; Not true. Both kind of go retard but in different ways.

Longer version.... Well, in my experience Linux systems are more likely to "pin" to a system it had a successful connection to previously.

If they are following spec, that is basically how dns is (currently) designed.

>The terms "primary" and "secondary" DNS are largely a misnomer when it comes to how operating systems like Windows or Linux actually handle DNS resolution. While DHCP can provide a list of DNS servers, the order in which they are listed does not guarantee a strict priority or failover sequence. For Windows clients, the system typically attempts to query the first DNS server in the list provided by DHCP. If there is no response within a short time frame (often around 1-2 seconds), it will then try the next server in the list. This behavior means that a secondary DNS server is used only after a timeout from the primary, but this is a client-side implementation detail, not a standard requirement. Linux systems, on the other hand, may use DNS servers in a different manner, such as round-robin fashion, depending on the specific implementation and configuration. There is no universal rule dictating the order of DNS server usage across all operating systems. Therefore, while the primary and secondary labels are commonly used in network configuration, they do not enforce a strict hierarchy or guaranteed failover behavior. The actual behavior depends on the client's operating system and its DNS resolver implementation.

[–] • 0 pt

As a note, I have used piHole for a long time and before that plugins in pfsense/opensense. I was just wondering what other people use.