Wrote post Setting up Pi-Hole

_posts/2023-08-20-setting-up-pi-hole.md

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+---
+title: Setting up Pi-Hole
+date: 2023-08-20 12:00:00 +0200
+categories: [network]
+tags: [homeserver, docker, ubuntu, container, traefik, dns, pi-hole] # TAG names should always be lowercase
+---
+
+[Pi-Hole](https://pi-hole.net/) is a wonderful local DNS service. Besides its main purpose being network wide add blocking, I use it also to inspect with which domains my VMs are connecting and to set up local DNS records. In this post I describe how I set up Pi-Hole as a Docker container and use Traefik to access the web UI of Pi-Hole.
+
+> I'm installing the Pi-Hole container on my Docker host VM that has Traefik already installed. See my post about [installing Docker with Portainer & Traefik](/posts/installing_docker) for more info about Traefik.
+{: .prompt-info}
+
+
+## The port 53 problem
+
+Pi-Hole uses the default port for a DNS server: port 53. But my host OS is Ubuntu server and modern releases of Ubuntu include `systemd-resolved` which is configured by default to implement a caching DNS stub resolver. This prevents Pi-Hole from listening on port 53. I followed [this guide](https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole#installing-on-ubuntu-or-fedora) from the Pi-Hole GitHub page to resolve this.
+
+
+## The Docker compose file
+
+I used this [quick start template](https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole/#quick-start) from the Pi-Hole GitHub repo as a base for my Docker compose file. 
+
+```yml
+version: "3"
+
+services:
+  pihole:
+    container_name: pihole
+    image: pihole/pihole:latest
+    ports:
+      - "53:53/tcp"
+      - "53:53/udp"
+      - "6898:80/tcp"
+    networks:
+      - proxy
+    environment:
+      TZ: 'Europe/Brussels'
+      WEBPASSWORD: 'MY-PASSWD'
+      FTLCONF_LOCAL_IPV4: 'LOCAL-IP'
+    # Volumes store your data between container upgrades
+    volumes:
+      - '/home/myuser/pihole/etc-pihole:/etc/pihole'
+      - '/home/myuser/pihole/etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d'
+    restart: unless-stopped
+    labels:
+      - "traefik.enable=true"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole.entrypoints=web"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole.rule=Host(`pihole.local.mywebsite.be`)"
+      - "traefik.http.middlewares.pihole-https-redirect.redirectscheme.scheme=https"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole.middlewares=pihole-https-redirect"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.entrypoints=websecure"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.rule=Host(`pihole.local.mywebsite.be`)"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.tls=true"
+      - "traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.service=pihole"
+      - "traefik.http.services.pihole.loadbalancer.server.port=80"
+
+networks:
+  proxy:
+    external: true
+```
+{: file='/home/myuser/pihole/docker-compose.yml'}
+
+The port binds for port 53 are necessary for the DNS service. I also bound port 80 to a higher port (I selected port 6898 but it can be any unused port) to access the web interface without Traefik. For the environment variables, I changed `MY-PASSWD` with a password for the web UI and `LOCAL-IP` with the local IP address of my Docker host VM. The labels are all the labels that are needed for Traefik to route `pihole.local.mywebsite.be` to the web interface of Pi-Hole that is listening on port 80 in the container. We need to add a few labels to tell Traefik to connect to port 80 because Traefik will by default connect to the lowest open port and that is 53 in this case.
+
+> I explained all these labels in my post about [setting up Traefik](/posts/installing_docker/#adding-containers).
+{: .prompt-tip}
+
+The last thing to do before I could start the container is adding firewall rules in Proxmox to allow connections to ports 53 and 6898.
+
+Now I can start the container with:
+
+```shell
+docker compose up -d
+```
+
+
+## Setting Pi-Hole as the local DNS server
+
+The last thing I needed to do was telling my VMs and other devices to use my new Pi-Hole container as their DNS server. To take full advantage of the Pi-Hole network wide add blocking, it is best to configure the Pi-Hole instance as the DNS server in the routers settings because then the router will set it as the DNS server for all the devices connected to its network. Unfortunately, I cannot change my DNS server in my routers settings because I use a router from my ISP. I'm definitely planning on changing this with my own router, but that is a project for another day. So the next best thing is to manually set the local IP address of my Pi-Hole service (that is the IP address of my Docker container) as the preferred DNS server on every device I want to use Pi-Hole with.
+
+
+### In Proxmox
+
+Adding a DNS server in Proxmox is as easy as going to the `System/DNS`{: .filepath} tab under the node and clicking the `Edit` button.
+
+
+### In Ubuntu
+
+In the `/etc/netplan/`{: .filepath} directory should be a YAML file containing the network configuration. Here I can add the DNS server (nameserver). The example below is from my Docker VM that has a static IP address.
+
+```yaml
+network:
+  ethernets:
+    ens18:
+      addresses:
+      - LOCAL-IP/24
+      nameservers:
+        addresses: [127.0.0.1]
+        search: []
+      routes:
+      - to: default
+        via: GATEWAY-IP
+```
+{: file='/etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml'}
+
+Here I replaced `LOCAL-IP` with the IP address of my Docker VM and `GATEWAY-IP` with the IP address of my router. Since Pi-Hole is running as a service on this VM I can add the loopback IP address (`127.0.0.1`) as DNS server instead of the local IP address of the VM.
+
+
+### TrueNAS
+
+Adding DNS servers in TrueNAS can easily be done in the `Network/Global configuration`{: .filepath} tab.
+
+
+### MacOS
+
+Changing the DNS settings in MacOS can be done by going to the `Network`{: .filepath} tab in the System settings app. Here I selected the interface and pressed the `Details` button. Now I can add the DNS server in the `DNS`{: .filepath} tab in the new window that opened.
+
+
+### iOS
+
+The DNS settings in iOS can be found in the Settings app: go to Wi-Fi, tick the little info icon behind the Wi-Fi network and scroll down until you see the option `Configure DNS`.