Tutorial to install a Network-wide ad blocking, DNS- and DHCP server on Raspberry Pi

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The Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole that protects your devices from unwanted content, without installing any client-side software.

Easy-to-install: our versatile installer walks you through the process, and takes less than ten minutes
Resolute: content is blocked in non-browser locations, such as ad-laden mobile apps and smart TVs
Responsive: seamlessly speeds up the feel of everyday browsing by caching DNS queries
Lightweight: runs smoothly with minimal hardware and software requirements
Robust: a command line interface that is quality assured for interoperability
Insightful: a beautiful responsive Web Interface dashboard to view and control your Pi-hole
Versatile: can optionally function as a DHCP server, ensuring all your devices are protected automatically
Scalable: capable of handling hundreds of millions of queries when installed on server-grade hardware
Modern: blocks ads over both IPv4 and IPv6
Free: open source software which helps ensure you are the sole person in control of your privacy

Setup the Raspberry Pi

For all my home-network projects I run Raspbian Debian Stretch Lite. The setup is trivial:

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi and a SD-card
Use Etcher to format and SD-card

Upgrade packages and distribution

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Upgrade firmware

sudo raspi-config
sudo rpi-update

Install my custom MOTD

This changes the login screen. Just copy it from this repository

sudo cp ~/motd.sh /etc/profile.d/motd.sh
sudo chown root:root /etc/profile.d/motd.sh
sudo chmod +x /etc/profile.d/motd.sh
sudo rm /etc/motd

Use sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config to change to PrintLastLog no

Enable root login

Set a root password via sudo passwd root
Edit sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set PermitRootLogin yes
Restart SSHD /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Enable password-less login

Create the .ssh directory via install -d -m 700 ~/.ssh
Create a SSH key on your PC: ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"
Install your public key for user 'pi' cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh [email protected] 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
Install your public key for user 'root' cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh [email protected] 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'

Cleanup & Install extra tools

sudo apt-get install -y sysstat vnstat screen
sudo apt-get purge apache2
sudo apt-get autoremove

Enable NTP time

timedatectl set-ntp true 
timedatectl status

# Time will be in GMT/UTC, if you want to adjust, use the following:
echo "Africa/Johannesburg" | sudo tee /etc/timezone
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata
timedatectl set-timezone Africa/Johannesburg

Reboot your Pi before continuing the next step. Login as 'root' to complete the next steps.

Install Cloudflare DNS

We will use Cloudflare via Argo Tunnel as our DNS provider

cd ~
wget https://bin.equinox.io/c/VdrWdbjqyF/cloudflared-stable-linux-arm.tgz
mkdir argo-tunnel
tar -xvzf cloudflared-stable-linux-arm.tgz -C ./argo-tunnel
rm cloudflared-stable-linux-arm.tgz
cd argo-tunnel
./cloudflared --version

To manually test it, run:

sudo ./cloudflared proxy-dns --port 54 --upstream https://1.1.1.1/.well-known/dns-query --upstream https://1.0.0.1/.well-known/dns-query

Let's install it as a system service by copying the service file and then starting it via sudo systemctl restart dnsproxy.service

Install email for notifications

We will use msmtp for this and I use my Google Apps account to send out email:

apt-get install msmtp ca-certificates mailutils
rm /usr/sbin/sendmail
ln -s /usr/bin/msmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail

Adjust /etc/msmtprc and /etc/msmtprc.aliases accordingly.

Install PiHole

This is really a one-liner via curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

Adjust PiHole configuration files

Adjust sudo nano /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf

The IPV4_ADDRESS to the IP of your Pi
Comment out PIHOLE_DNS_1 and PIHOLE_DNS_2
Enable DHCP_ACTIVE and DHCP settings
Adjust the PIHOLE_DOMAIN

Copy my whitelist.txt
Adjust /etc/dnsmasq.d/

In 01-pihole.conf comment out server and adjust server=127.0.0.1#54 so that it points to the local Cloudflare tunnel
Adjust 02-pihole-dhcp.conf to match your IP-range
Adjust 04-pihole-static-dhcp.conf to setup static IPs

Adjust /etc/hosts to setup other hosts which should be resolved in your network

Install SSL via Let's Encrypt

I am using DNS-01 authentication via Cloudflare DNS with acme.sh - this allows me to automatically renew SSL certificates without exposing services to the outside. Run the below as 'root'-user:

Install acme.sh curl https://get.acme.sh | sh
Register with Let's Encrypt acme.sh --upgrade --auto-upgrade --accountemail "youremail"
Export your Cloudflare API-key and email:

export CF_Key="YOUR-API-KEY"
export CF_Email="YOUR-CLOUDFLARE-EMAIL"

Adjust your /etc/lighthttpd/external.conf (change pihole.example.com to your own domain name)
Issue your certificate and adjust the domain pihole.example.com according to your own settings

acme.sh --force --issue  --dnssleep 30 --dns dns_cf -d pihole.example.com  --reloadcmd "cat /root/.acme.sh/pihole.example.com/pihole.example.com.key /root/.acme.sh/pihole.example.com/pihole.example.com.cer | tee /root/.acme.sh/pihole.example.com/pihole.example.com.combined.pem && systemctl restart lighttpd.service"

You are done - just reboot one more time and you should be able to access Pi-Hole via https://pihole.example.com

Post-install: Make your network take advantage of Pi-hole

Once you have completed the above steps, you will need to configure your router to have DHCP clients use Pi-hole as their DNS server which ensures that all devices connecting to your network will have content blocked without any further intervention.

If your router does not support setting the DNS server, you can use Pi-hole's built in DHCP server; just be sure to disable DHCP on your router first (if it has that feature available).

As a last resort, you can always manually set each device to use Pi-hole as their DNS server.

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