Got Pi Hole up and running (I think). Anything obvious I need to do?

[mrblotto]

Hey all!
After looking over this thread

Google to kill ad-blocking in Chrome?


I got to thinking I'd like to mess around and set one up. Went out and got a R-Pi 3, went thru NOOB, tossed on Raspian, then installed Pi-Hole. After a bit of figuring out I was able to configure it as the DNS server for my router (so I dont have to configure each device separately).

I'm pretty sure it's working ok. I turned off ABP on this site and I dont see any ads at all, just some blank spaces where I'm guessing ads would be lol.

I'm just gonna set it up over by my router w/o a monitor, kb or mouse.

1. Is there a way I can remote into it? I see VNC Viewer, but that's just the viewer. I also need something to run on the Pi itself (server). Any suggestions? Edit: Found out it's already included. Just had to configure it

2. I went ahead and chose one of the recommended 'Upstream DNS servers' (Comodo). No reason I picked that one. More or less closed my eyes and pointed lol. Is there a different/recommended one instead I should use?

3. I did the same with the 'blocklist list'. Just picked one of them from the onscreen choices. I chose StevenBlacks. Again, any other recommendations?

4. I'm looking at the 'Network overview' in the Pi Hole Admin Console, and the only device that is 'using Pi Hole' is the router (It's green). All the other devices are red. I'm guessing this is normal if it's configured thru the router vs. individual devices?

That's about all I can think of atm. All in all I had a lot of fun getting it up and running and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to monkey around with HW based ad-blocking. Cheap, not extraordinarily difficult, and a learning process all in one. Tons of tutorials out on the inter webs as well

Blah-Toe

 

[mxnerd]

I tried Pi-Hole briefly a couple months ago. It worked OK but it also caused some problems at the time. It blocked most of the VONS.com supermarket ads and I couldn't even see what's on sale, I had to turn on debugging feature either on Pi-Hole or my router to debug what's being blocked and unblock several domains.

And another big issue was that it seems blocked my OOMA VOIP phone so that the OOMA phone wasn't able to receive or making calls.

I found it too cumbersome and the trouble it causes does not worth the time I spent.

Ad-blocker extensions for browsers are much easier to configure.

If Chrome disables ad-blocking extensions in the future, I'll switch to Firefox.