6 ms·

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year a

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year ago though because I wanted to run it on my OPNSense box. I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely.

fdgadfagfgd 3y ago
I think op's saying local DNS was fine and preferred, just not usable outside the home network.
zikduruqe 3y ago
> I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely. Exact same setup for me also. I also run Tailscale since I have run into some remote networks that blocked wireguard's port.
- progbits 3y ago
  How's the latency? I like the idea and might set that up but my residential ISP doesn't have great peering and latency isn't great. I wonder if that extra roundtrip would be noticable or not.
  - zikduruqe 3y ago
    I'm on a 2 Gbps fiber link at home, so none as far as I'm concerned.
  - vin047 3y ago
    I do the same thing and am on 500mbps - don’t experience any issues
  - omnicognate 3y ago
    I do this from my phone with crummy copper ADSL at home that gets <20Mbps in the uplink and don't notice the difference between it being on and being off. YMMV of course, and all I'm doing is basic web browsing, occasional youtube videos and chat apps but it's fine for that.
tamimio 3y ago
I did have several issues with adguard home, after some time (or packets?) the dns wouldn’t resolve and basically you can’t open any website, you can ping with no issues but not opening the site, only resolved by either restarting the server or waiting few minutes, didn’t bother to troubleshoot it but I tried it on several hardware and got the same issues with different interruptions time.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  I experience similar issues with Cloudflare Zero Trust (I have it setup to work as an ad blocker, using a Terraform config to update blocklists pulled from eg uBlock Origin sources). It'll work great most of the time, but when it stops working I need to disconnect and reconnect. Hard to complain since it's free, though.
lencastre 3y ago
Is there any config update to the wire guard profile needed to ensure that DNS request traffic is routed through pi-hole?
- evanreichard 3y ago
  I use the bare WireGuard app on iOS. I just statically set the DNS server to the AdGuard Home IP (or Pi-hole IP) on my local network in the app.
therealfiona 3y ago
Too many false positives with Pi-Hole. I never felt comfortable putting my partner on the same vlan that it was serving DNS requests for fear that something would break for them when I was out of town, unable to get into the pi-hole and sort out the issue. I also had my banking app stop working one day. Never could get it working. Eventually I just got fed up with having to switch vlans or to mobile data to check my bank and got rid of the pi-hole. The blocker on PFsense eventually had the same issue. Realistically, I was probably running too many overly restricting blocklists for my actual needs. But, I also don't want to fiddle with messing with the out of the block blocklists that also caused me issues.
- qzx_pierri 3y ago
  Couldn't you just monitor the query log and whitelist domains that were false positives?
  - kelnos 3y ago
    "Just" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. That sounds like a lot of work, and it isn't always obvious which weirdly-spelled domain is causing the issue.
    - qzx_pierri 3y ago
      > "Just" is doing a lot of work in that sentence Not really. You can pull your phone out and do it in less than a minute > it isn't always obvious which weirdly-spelled domain is causing the issue It typically /is/ pretty obvious. You can drill down to the device making the request, and it becomes obvious once you see the blocked query To each their own though. I personally don't want to pay a company to do something for me that I can do myself.
- evanreichard 3y ago
  I can empathize with the sometimes aggressive blocking, and as you pointed out can be pretty block list dependent. I generally will go in and whitelist things if a site breaks due to a DNS block, but of course putting your partner on the same VLAN can be problematic. I "got around" that by having a button in Home Assistant that will completely turn off Pi-hole (and now AdGuard). So my partner will go in and toggle that if there's a problem. AdGuard Home does also have the ability to completely disable blocking for specific clients.
theshrike79 3y ago
SD card corruption that just slowly started degrading the results, twice. For the price of a single Pi, I can get NextDNS ad protection for _all_ my devices for multiple years. No matter where they are.
- throwaway742 3y ago
  Just run it in a container. No need to use an actual Pi.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Running pihole on a Pi is severely overrated. I run it on my NAS Linux server (in a Docker container) where I have a bunch of other things. Zero problems, now using it for more than two years.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    I tried that too, but the Pi needs to be bridged to the network for it to show up properly and that caused issues with docker containers not being able to access it properly. Most likely it can be made to work, but I have more money than time to spend on faffing about with stuff that should Just Work, so I threw $10 at NextDNS which solved all my issues instantly :)
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      I don't even have a clue how I solved it for myself, but again, didn't have a problem.
- stupidog 3y ago
  Same here. After a few SD Card corruptions, I was done. NextDNS has been fantastic. And like you said, easily portable.
  - Moru 3y ago
    The Pi needs a bit more power than most USB powerplugs deliver, did you get any warnings about underpower? The SD Card corruptions are often caused by this.
RulerOf 3y ago
> I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? My primary problem with Pi-hole or any other DNS-based blocker is that it silently breaks things. YouTube stopped saving my spot in videos. I couldn't click through on any link that involved a tracking service. These things accomplish their stated task well, but leave behind an insidious trail of browser errors, broken pages, and broken apps without ever indicating to the user what the cause of the problem really is. DNS just isn't the right tool for fixing shitty UX in the browser DOM or a mobile app. It's a happy coincidence that it works more often than not.
- jethro_tell 3y ago
  Is this an issue that next dns fixes for you?
  - RulerOf 3y ago
    Never used it, but I wouldn't expect it to, assuming it works the same way.
- foxylad 3y ago
  Odd - I have a pi-hole on my home network and never hit the issue with YouTube. The only breakage I've found is the top "results" (actually sponsored ads) on Google search don't work, but I always scroll past those anyway to discourage bad behaviour. In fact pi-hole works so well that I'm always struck by how awful the internet has become when I venture away from my home network. Doctorow's enshitification in action.
  - RulerOf 3y ago
    The YouTube thing was what turned me on to Pi-Hole's list of commonly-whitelisted domains[1], but even after adding it, the experience of things breaking was just ultimately too frustrating to keep using it. It's really an issue with feedback, though. When my ad blocker breaks a page, it says that it blocked something. When pi-hole breaks a page, it just appears to be broken. 1: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains/212 https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains...
vin047 3y ago
This is the way. Added Unbound as my upstream DNS server in recursive mode for extra privacy!

fdgadfagfgd 3y ago

I think op's saying local DNS was fine and preferred, just not usable outside the home network.

zikduruqe 3y ago

> I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely. Exact same setup for me also. I also run Tailscale since I have run into some remote networks that blocked wireguard's port.

progbits 3y ago
How's the latency? I like the idea and might set that up but my residential ISP doesn't have great peering and latency isn't great. I wonder if that extra roundtrip would be noticable or not.
- zikduruqe 3y ago
  I'm on a 2 Gbps fiber link at home, so none as far as I'm concerned.
- vin047 3y ago
  I do the same thing and am on 500mbps - don’t experience any issues
- omnicognate 3y ago
  I do this from my phone with crummy copper ADSL at home that gets <20Mbps in the uplink and don't notice the difference between it being on and being off. YMMV of course, and all I'm doing is basic web browsing, occasional youtube videos and chat apps but it's fine for that.

tamimio 3y ago

I did have several issues with adguard home, after some time (or packets?) the dns wouldn’t resolve and basically you can’t open any website, you can ping with no issues but not opening the site, only resolved by either restarting the server or waiting few minutes, didn’t bother to troubleshoot it but I tried it on several hardware and got the same issues with different interruptions time.

IggleSniggle 3y ago
I experience similar issues with Cloudflare Zero Trust (I have it setup to work as an ad blocker, using a Terraform config to update blocklists pulled from eg uBlock Origin sources). It'll work great most of the time, but when it stops working I need to disconnect and reconnect. Hard to complain since it's free, though.

lencastre 3y ago

Is there any config update to the wire guard profile needed to ensure that DNS request traffic is routed through pi-hole?

evanreichard 3y ago
I use the bare WireGuard app on iOS. I just statically set the DNS server to the AdGuard Home IP (or Pi-hole IP) on my local network in the app.

therealfiona 3y ago

Too many false positives with Pi-Hole. I never felt comfortable putting my partner on the same vlan that it was serving DNS requests for fear that something would break for them when I was out of town, unable to get into the pi-hole and sort out the issue. I also had my banking app stop working one day. Never could get it working. Eventually I just got fed up with having to switch vlans or to mobile data to check my bank and got rid of the pi-hole. The blocker on PFsense eventually had the same issue. Realistically, I was probably running too many overly restricting blocklists for my actual needs. But, I also don't want to fiddle with messing with the out of the block blocklists that also caused me issues.

qzx_pierri 3y ago
Couldn't you just monitor the query log and whitelist domains that were false positives?
- kelnos 3y ago
  "Just" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. That sounds like a lot of work, and it isn't always obvious which weirdly-spelled domain is causing the issue.
  - qzx_pierri 3y ago
    > "Just" is doing a lot of work in that sentence Not really. You can pull your phone out and do it in less than a minute > it isn't always obvious which weirdly-spelled domain is causing the issue It typically /is/ pretty obvious. You can drill down to the device making the request, and it becomes obvious once you see the blocked query To each their own though. I personally don't want to pay a company to do something for me that I can do myself.
evanreichard 3y ago
I can empathize with the sometimes aggressive blocking, and as you pointed out can be pretty block list dependent. I generally will go in and whitelist things if a site breaks due to a DNS block, but of course putting your partner on the same VLAN can be problematic. I "got around" that by having a button in Home Assistant that will completely turn off Pi-hole (and now AdGuard). So my partner will go in and toggle that if there's a problem. AdGuard Home does also have the ability to completely disable blocking for specific clients.

theshrike79 3y ago

SD card corruption that just slowly started degrading the results, twice. For the price of a single Pi, I can get NextDNS ad protection for _all_ my devices for multiple years. No matter where they are.

throwaway742 3y ago
Just run it in a container. No need to use an actual Pi.
pdimitar 3y ago
Running pihole on a Pi is severely overrated. I run it on my NAS Linux server (in a Docker container) where I have a bunch of other things. Zero problems, now using it for more than two years.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I tried that too, but the Pi needs to be bridged to the network for it to show up properly and that caused issues with docker containers not being able to access it properly. Most likely it can be made to work, but I have more money than time to spend on faffing about with stuff that should Just Work, so I threw $10 at NextDNS which solved all my issues instantly :)
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I don't even have a clue how I solved it for myself, but again, didn't have a problem.
stupidog 3y ago
Same here. After a few SD Card corruptions, I was done. NextDNS has been fantastic. And like you said, easily portable.
- Moru 3y ago
  The Pi needs a bit more power than most USB powerplugs deliver, did you get any warnings about underpower? The SD Card corruptions are often caused by this.

RulerOf 3y ago

> I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? My primary problem with Pi-hole or any other DNS-based blocker is that it silently breaks things. YouTube stopped saving my spot in videos. I couldn't click through on any link that involved a tracking service. These things accomplish their stated task well, but leave behind an insidious trail of browser errors, broken pages, and broken apps without ever indicating to the user what the cause of the problem really is. DNS just isn't the right tool for fixing shitty UX in the browser DOM or a mobile app. It's a happy coincidence that it works more often than not.

jethro_tell 3y ago
Is this an issue that next dns fixes for you?
- RulerOf 3y ago
  Never used it, but I wouldn't expect it to, assuming it works the same way.
foxylad 3y ago
Odd - I have a pi-hole on my home network and never hit the issue with YouTube. The only breakage I've found is the top "results" (actually sponsored ads) on Google search don't work, but I always scroll past those anyway to discourage bad behaviour. In fact pi-hole works so well that I'm always struck by how awful the internet has become when I venture away from my home network. Doctorow's enshitification in action.
- RulerOf 3y ago
  The YouTube thing was what turned me on to Pi-Hole's list of commonly-whitelisted domains[1], but even after adding it, the experience of things breaking was just ultimately too frustrating to keep using it. It's really an issue with feedback, though. When my ad blocker breaks a page, it says that it blocked something. When pi-hole breaks a page, it just appears to be broken. 1: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains/212 https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains...

vin047 3y ago

This is the way. Added Unbound as my upstream DNS server in recursive mode for extra privacy!