Pi-hole: an ad-blocking DNS Server

Since COVID hit, I cooked more frequently (probably as pretty much everybody else) and was increasingly frustrated with the the sheer amount of ads on cooking websites. On a computer I could install an ad blocker but on the phone? I had to find a solution that works on phones and on tablets.

I shopped around and eventually found Pi-hole. Installing it on a Raspberry Pi 4 was a breeze. I added a recursive DNS server (unbound) that resolves hostnames from our router (FRITZ!Box). A guide is available in the Pi-hole docs.

At some point I will probably install a VPN server, but that was out of scope for now.

I learned lots more about the dig command, IPv6 and DNS. Also, apparently all FRITZ!Box routers can be SSH’ed into (german only: more on antary.de). Pretty cool.