How to install Pi-Hole

In this article I will explain how to install pi-hole. But first a short introduction to pi-hole itself.

The Pi-hole is an advertising-aware DNS server that prevents ads from being downloaded. In other words…surf the internet without those annoying ads popping up all over the place. This is annoying because most websites have way to many ads, but more important because in many occasions ads are infecting your software with malware.

So lets get to it.

1 Find your raspberry pi and dust it off (in my case) or buy one. Also any other pc will work. But a small computer uses less power and its silence and all.

2 Download raspbian jessie lite (or the normal edition) and use a disk imaging tool to write it to an SD card. I used a 4GB one, this is more then enough.

3 Put the SD card in your Raspberry pi and boot it up. Once its booted run the sudo apt-get upgrade command to install the latest packages. Then run the curl -L https://install.pi-hole.net |bash command. Then a short wizard will start. Nothing to complicated, some questions about network settings and DNS preference. I’m sure you can handle it. Then it will install some more packages, nothing serious so just wait a bit.

4 Edit your DNS settings on every network device or edit your routers DNS settings. Either way, set it to use your pi’s ip address as the DNS server. For instance on my network the pi has the ip address 192.168.1.66. So on my mac I would go to the advanced settings of my WiFi connection and added the ip address as the DNS server.

5 browse to some news websites like normal and maybe you already see a change on the pages. Some white spaces, or blank sidebars. There used to be ads there (gnif gnif). Just to make sure what you are ‘missing’ go to the ip address of your pi, in my case 192.168.1.66/admin and watch the magic happen.

Some things to take in to consideration:

1 use a secondary DNS server in your settings, for example 8.8.8.8 (google’s DNS server). In case your pi-hole stops working, you want to have a backup DNS (with ads though :))

2 If you like this and want to support the developers (and you should) then donate some cash or bitcoin(s).