py-hole is a network-level ad blocker, that blocks ads for your whole home or business network!
This is a small thing inspired by pi-hole, unfortunately the installation of pi-hole did too many things for me, so I wanted the same thing, but less complicated. You could check out pi-hole too - it may be just the right thing for you.
py-hole uses dnsmasq for its DNS resolution capabilities.
Thanks to the pi-hole project for much awesome work and inspiration
This program comes with no warranty, we don't even imply that it is fit for the purpose of blocking ads.
The program uses lists of domains on the internet that the user can configure.
This software is beta quality. It has been used on a number of small networks for many years with no issues.
curl -L https://packagecloud.io/time4tea/py-hole/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://packagecloud.io/time4tea/py-hole/any/ any main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/time4tea_py-hole.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install py-hole
This installation will add some dnsmasq configuration to /etc/dnsmasq.d, but it will not change your existing installation.
It will also NOT change any iptables rules, NOR install php, webservers or anything else. This means that if your py-hole box is also your DSL gateway all your current firewall settings are intact... Yay!
Not much config is required. You can edit the always and never files to either always or never block a particular domain.
sudo /opt/py-hole/py-hole
sudo service dnsmasq reload
to regenerate the config, which will happen automatically every night
Assuming you installed py-hole on a server with IP Address 192.168.0.1, try the following command on another machine on your network
nslookup google.com 192.168.0.1
If it is working, it should print something like:
Server: 192.168.0.1
Address: 192.168.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 172.217.23.14
You'll need to configure your DHCP server, which may be your DSL router, to give out the address of the py-hole box as the DNS server, rather than the ISP defaults.
You'll need to make sure that dnsmasq is set up how you want it. This will vary according to your own needs. Here are some configuration snippets. You'll probably need to set up the server.conf file below, at a minimum.
# use these servers as main resolvers
server=208.67.222.222
server=208.67.220.220
# file cotaining names of hosts on the local network
addn-hosts=/etc/hosts.mine
# Set this (and domain: see below) if you want to have a domain
# automatically added to simple names in a hosts-file.
expand-hosts
# Set the domain for dnsmasq. this is optional, but if it is set, it
# does the following things.
# 1) Allows DHCP hosts to have fully qualified domain names, as long
# as the domain part matches this setting.
# 2) Sets the "domain" DHCP option thereby potentially setting the
# domain of all systems configured by DHCP
# 3) Provides the domain part for "expand-hosts"
domain=mydomain.net
dnsmasq can be configured to be the DHCP server for you network, which has some benefits.
domain=mydomain.net
local=/mydomain.net/
dhcp-option=option:router,192.168.0.1
dhcp-range=192.168.0.50,192.168.0.240,12h
# fixed ips
dhcp-host=aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa,somehost,192.168.0.x,24h
dhcp-host=bb:bb:bb:bb:bb:bb,anotherhost,192.168.0.y,24h
Ubuntu comes with the horrible systemd. You might be able to get it to stop by doing the following (seems to work on LTS 20)
sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved
sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolvedand then edit /etc/resolv.conf to be
nameserver 127.0.0.1
If you've got feedback, please tell me at the github issues page:
https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole/issues
https://packagecloud.io/time4tea/py-hole
You can install this on an OpenWRT router to give yourself a break from malware and ads...
It's a bit manual, but perhaps somebody can package this in the OpenWrt style?
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It requires that your have python3 installed, and are using dnsmasq.
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Clone the repo
-
Run
./build-tar.sh- this will buildpy-hole-SNAPSHOT.tar.gz -
Copy this to your open wrt server, and log in to it
-
run
tar zxf <filename> -C / -
run
cat /tmp/pyhole-example-crontab.txtand copy the lines -
run
crontab -eand insert the lines you copied -
Go to the "Network/DHCP & DNS" in the UI and add "Additional Hosts file" of "/var/lib/py-hole/blackhole.list"