We have installed pi-hole on a pi attached to our network; we then use it as our DNS service in order to block ads.

Instead of setting it as the default DNS for all dhcp clients on the network, we manually specify it on each of our devices (phones, computers, ipad) so that it is easier to get around if it is down/causing trouble.

When we want to access a link which is going through an ad/tracking site that is blocked we simply log in to the pi-hole web interface and disable pi-hole for 30 seconds to 5 minutes. Usually 30 seconds is enough because most of the links go to the tracker/ad server which then forwards it along to a clean unblocked site.

It’s important to update the blocked list semi-regularly… at least if you want to stay ahead of the tricky ad folks like google. We also manually block certain sites by adding them to the blacklist and manually ok certain sites by adding them to the whitelist. All of this is easily done through the pi-hole web interface. You can also see various statistics via the web interface.

The pi-hole web interface’s password is the old student password.

At this time, we cannot update Pi-hole from the Web interface as we need to restart the server, which would interrupt the update process.

Run the following command on your Pi-hole:

pihole -up

You will need to SSH into your machine or access it directly via a keyboard and monitor. Typically, Pi-hole is running as a headless server so SSH is the preferred choice to run the command.

check our 1password vault for info on how to install / setup the system.