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Mmm, Pi-hole

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Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#151

Post by ryandrake »

givinguflac wrote: post #100
mistermann wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone recommend a "2018 good choice" for a consumer router that can run custom firmware (including dnsmasq), or a trustworthy recommendation website? Wirecutter for example doesn't note third party firmware: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/

I’ve been running the mid to high end Asus routers for years now and am very happy with them. Running wrt-Merlin firmware and AB-Solution via entware is everything I need and doesn’t complicate things with additional devices like pi-hole.

Yes, this is my preference as well. You can also run a vpn with this setup (as you can with other custom firmwares) so you can take advantage of this adblocking from outside your home.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#152

Post by chooseaname »

badbug wrote: post #129

I tried pi-hole but my family couldn't make it work. Pihole blocks a lot of content they want to see, for example, email newsletters from our city gov. I understand why (privacy/tracking concerns) but it was just blocking too much and frustrating non-technical users in my house.

I'm very curious why it would block city gov. I've been running it for over a year on my server and I have not heard a peep out of any family members complaining about not reaching anything.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#153

Post by jjnoakes »

I hate ads as much as the next guy. This cat-and-mouse game has been going on for as long as I can remember.

But I have to wonder why the ad networks don't require content creators to place some "ad libraries" into the web servers or CMS systems directly, so that the ads are served exactly the same way as the content (same domain, same pages, etc).

That's my nightmare scenario. I figured it would have happened everywhere by now. I see it in a few places but it seems pretty rare.

Is it the heterogeneous server-side environments that are slowing down this approach?

If it ever takes off, what is the mouse to do?

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#154

Post by ocdtrekkie »

I set up a Pi-hole recently, and its been a good experience. Probably the one thing I always have difficulty with though is online streaming for TV channels. I tried whitelisting domains they used for their ads so that the shows would play, I ended up giving up after a half hour and pressing pause on the Pi-hole to watch.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#155

Post by ryandrake »

windexh8er wrote: post #97
ryandrake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s essentially dnsmasq which can be run directly on your wireless router if you are using custom firmware. No separate hw needed, no need to horse around with dockers or containers or any of that stuff. I’d guess a lot of people are already running dnsmasq for other purposes, so adding the blocklist and periodically updating it should be trivial.

I'd argue Pi-hole is quite a bit more than dnsmasq (it's actually a fork of dnsmasq called ftldns) out of the box. It's also very much more approachable by the majority and the web interface gives people immediate feedback and configurability without having to understand configurations for the services directly. https://pi-hole.net/2018/08/06/pi-hole-v4-0-released-with-ft... https://docs.pi-hole.net/ftldns/

Interesting, didnt realize the “pi-hole” branded package was more than vanilla dnsmasq glued together with shell scripts.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#156

Post by y4mi »

chooseaname wrote: post #152
badbug wrote: post #129

I tried pi-hole but my family couldn't make it work. Pihole blocks a lot of content they want to see, for example, email newsletters from our city gov. I understand why (privacy/tracking concerns) but it was just blocking too much and frustrating non-technical users in my house.

I'm very curious why it would block city gov. I've been running it for over a year on my server and I have not heard a peep out of any family members complaining about not reaching anything.

A lot of newsletters use click tracking. These scripts are blocked with a full block list, making everything unusable. It's often affiliate stuff and the newsletters that do this stuff

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#157

Post by ryandrake »

jschwartzi wrote: post #149
cptskippy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was doing this using Tomato and it introduced serious stability issues in the two routers (both Asus) I tried it on. Pi-Hole is a drop in replacement to an existing network setup that doesn't require hacking your router to install a custom firmware. It will also persist router upgrades. My only gripe with Pi-Hole, which isn't their fault really, is that power losses can quickly corrupt the Raspberry Pi's SD Card. I…

Use a different root filesystem. Ext4 is not robust against power loss, as I've discovered in multiple embedded Linux systems where Ext4 was used. The best filesystems for robustness against power loss seem to be log-structured filesystems like YAFFS2 or QNX's ETFS. The design of the filesystem basically means that a block is never modified on flash, only obsoleted by future writes. The trade-off is that the filesyst…

Back in the day (also before ext4) we solved this by mounting the root filesystem read-only. Depending on any other application for the machine, you may not need filesystem writes at all once it is set up. Bonus: it’s even friendlier to the flash.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#158

Post by Improvotter »

slacka wrote: post #131
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked, which is absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous. I see absolutely no negative effects browsing like this. Everything I've come across still works fine. Even sites that detect uBlock Origin and tell me to disable it, will work with that disabled and Pi-hole still blocking the ads instead. I heavily believe we sh…

> I heavily believe we should be supporting creators Agreed. Do you disable your pi-hole on sites like Reddit? They vet their ads so not have any of the malicious attributes that you described. All the larger newspagers like WaPo and NYT are also good about this too. I'm all for blocking intrusive or malicious ads. But quality content depends on ad revenue. The author dedicated an entire paragraph on donating to the…

> Agreed. Do you disable your pi-hole on sites like Reddit? They vet their ads so not have any of the malicious attributes that you described.

I've still got ads blocked on reddit because they're so clickbaity as of late. They look like posts from subreddits I'm subscribed to and turn out to be an ad, no thank you.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#159

Post by thieving_magpie »

slacka wrote: post #131
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked, which is absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous. I see absolutely no negative effects browsing like this. Everything I've come across still works fine. Even sites that detect uBlock Origin and tell me to disable it, will work with that disabled and Pi-hole still blocking the ads instead. I heavily believe we sh…

> I heavily believe we should be supporting creators Agreed. Do you disable your pi-hole on sites like Reddit? They vet their ads so not have any of the malicious attributes that you described. All the larger newspagers like WaPo and NYT are also good about this too. I'm all for blocking intrusive or malicious ads. But quality content depends on ad revenue. The author dedicated an entire paragraph on donating to the…

I hope more companies offer a paid version of their site that completely removes Advertisements. I cannot stand ads and won't use a site if I can see them. I'm not trying to be a bad guy though, I want to use those sites legitimately. My only option is to not visit them until they offer a compromise.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#160

Post by badbug »

mirceal wrote: post #136
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the same thing with emails sent from an airline. It was frustrating because I did actually want to follow the links in the emails as they were to do with a flight I was taking.

You can whitelist domains, you can add to the blacklist or you can temporarily disable pihole (5-10min whatever) while you do something.

Yes you can. But having non-technical people verbalize the need to whitelist a domain is incredibly painful.
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