Pi-hole - I Totally Love Ads

Once upon a time, when I was a king, there was no internet, no websites — just a simple world. Over the years, information technology has evolved, connecting people across the globe. The internet began to rule the digital age, and then, eventually, Ads took over.

Until Ad-blockers arrived!.

In this post, we will set up Pi-hole, a DNS-level ad-blocker that blocks domains that serve ads and trackers, thereby enhancing network security.

Ingredient

To cook we need the following,

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
- Cost ~1800 INR
Raspberry Pi Case
- Cost ~300 INR
DietPi
microSDXC
- Took from sibling.

Installation

We flash our SD card with DietPi OS, then set up Wi-Fi.

Note: Set a static IP to Raspberry Pi to maintain consistency in the network.

Use dietpi-software, to install Pi-hole seamlessly.

Let’s check the Pi-hole version to confirm installation.

We also install Unbound for validating and caching DNS entries.

Another version check to confirm Unbound installation.

Customization

We add Unbound as Custom DNS servers and uncheck any Upstream DNS Servers.

The default list is StevenBlack, I personally use the following list for more extensive coverage.

https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/
https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts;showintro=0
https://hosts.anudeep.me/mirror/adservers.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jerryn70/GoodbyeAds/master/Hosts/GoodbyeAds.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/master/data/hosts/spy.txt

At last, add a whitelist just to be on a safer side.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anudeepND/whitelist/master/domains/whitelist.txt

Since the list contains only static domains, it becomes insufficient for newly generated domains. Using regex enables us to dynamically address this limitation.

I use the below Regex deny,

^ad([sxv]?[0-9]*|system)[_.-]([^.[:space:]]+\.){1,}|[_.-]ad([sxv]?[0-9]*|system)[_.-]
^(.+[_.-])?adse?rv(er?|ice)?s?[0-9]*[_.-]
^(.+[_.-])?telemetry[_.-]
^adim(age|g)s?[0-9]*[_.-]
^adtrack(er|ing)?[0-9]*[_.-]
^advert(s|is(ing|ements?))?[0-9]*[_.-]
^aff(iliat(es?|ion))?[_.-]
^analytics?[_.-]
^banners?[_.-]
^beacons?[0-9]*[_.-]
^count(ers?)?[0-9]*[_.-]
^mads\.
^pixels?[-.]
^stat(s|istics)?[0-9]*[_.-]
(.*\.|^)((think)?with)?google($|((adservices|apis|mail|static|syndication|tagmanager|tagservices|usercontent|zip|-analytics)($|\..+)))
(.*\.|^)g(gpht|mail|static|v(t[12])?)($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)chrom(e(experiments)?|ium)($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)ampproject($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)doubleclick($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)firebaseio($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)googlevideo($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)waze($|\..+)
(.*\.|^)y(outube|timg)($|\..+)

Configuration

For convenience, the router’s DNS server can be changed to the Pi-hole IP address so that every device connected to the router uses Pi-hole by default.