Pi-hole on
Raspberry Pi
with
Diet Pi Distro
Ho! Ho! Homelab!
A few years ago, Santa brought my kids and me Raspberry Pi kits for a fun family building project. I helped the kids get theirs up and running with the included Raspbian Operating System and learning tools, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with mine. Then one day I noticed some not-so-kid-friendly ads on one of my kids’ computer games and was suddenly motivated to build a DNS sinkhole as a network-wide ad blocker. (DNS is the service that performs tasks, like getting IP addresses when you type in a website’s name.)
What is a Raspberry Pi?
It’s a tiny computer. Check it out:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-started.html
What is Pi-hole?
https://docs.pi-hole.net/
Learn more on the Wikipedia page about DNS Sinkholes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_sinkhole
Process and Resources:
Pi-hole software was an easy pick for my DNS sinkhole, since many people have turned their Raspberry Pis into ad blockers with this open source software and I had heard only good things about it.
My choice of the Diet Pi GNU/Linux distro was really about choosing a light option that wasn’t Raspbian. Nothing wrong with Raspbian, but I like to try out new distros whenever I have the opportunity. Check it out: https://dietpi.com/
One goal I had with this project was to use a command-line only environment. I planned to setup the pi using my keyboard/monitor laptop station and then permanently place it next to my router and use SSH to provide maintenance via my regular workstation.
More coming soon-ish...
Pi-hole on
Raspberry Pi
with
Diet Pi Distro
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