Pi-Hole Notes

My kids were issued school-managed devices for homework and such, and since there’s lots of kid-inappropriate things on the Internet, I decided to set up a Pi-Hole.

These are my personal notes on Pi Hole setup.

Hardware:

• Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro connected via Ethernet to Verizon FIOS box
• Raspberry Pi Zero W for running Pi-Hole

Software Setup:

• Use Raspberry Pi Imager to install 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS onto an SD Card. (I tried using 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu, and couldn’t get the software to boot).
• Boot the Raspberry Pi and bring up a terminal in the GUI (Cmd on my keyboard brings me to the System Menu).
• Set a static IP address in /etc/dhcp.conf.
• Install Pi-Hole with the standard install instructions.
• Install some additional block lists from https://firebog.net/.
• Update the Gravity database so that the block lists take effect.
• Configure UDM DNS (look at the WAN settings) to point DNS to Raspberry Pi.

Logging in to the Raspberry Pi dashboard shows that around 9% 15% of DNS queries are being actively blocked.