Running Pi-Hole Network Wide Ad Blocker Using Docker

What is Pi-Hole?

The Pi-hole® is a DNS sinkhole that protects your devices from unwanted content, without installing any client-side software. -https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole

Installing Docker

  1. Log into the Linux based device
  2. Run the following commands in the terminal
    # install prerequisites
    sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common gnupg-agent -y
    # add docker gpg key
    curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
    # add docker software repository
    sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
    # install docker
    sudo apt install docker-ce docker-compose containerd.io -y
    # enable and start docker service
    sudo systemctl enable docker && sudo systemctl start docker
    # add the current user to the docker group
    sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
    # reauthenticate for the new group membership to take effect
    su - $USER
    # edit resolvd config
    sudo nano /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
  3. Uncomment the line starting with DNSStubListener= and set the value to no

    DNSStubListener=no

  4. Press CTRL+O, Enter, CTRL+X to write the changes to resolved.conf
  5. Continue with the following commands to restart systemd-resolve to free up port 53
    # restart the systemd-resolve service
    sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved

Running Pi-Hole

  1. Now that Docker is installed, run the following commands to setup the Pi-Hole Docker container and run it
    # create working directories
    mkdir /home/$USER/docker/pihole -p && mkdir /home/$USER/docker/pihole/dnsmasq.d -p
    # run the pihole docker container
    docker run -d --name=pihole -e TZ=America/New_York -e WEBPASSWORD=password -v /home/$USER/docker/pihole/:/etc/pihole -v /home/$USER/docker/pihole/dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d -p 80:80 -p 53:53/tcp -p 53:53/udp --restart=unless-stopped pihole/pihole
  2. Once the Pi-Hole container is downloaded and running, open a web browser and navigate to http://DNSorIP/admin

Documentation: https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole