Shut Your Pi-Hole

Chances are you will be using a browser like Firefox or Chrome, also more then likely you will have a browser extension for blocking ads. But as more and more use their mobile devices to browse the web at home, don’t you want the same level of protection? or just after a “Gotta Catch Em All” option. Say hello to Pi-Hole, purposed RaspberryPi that blocks ads of all sorts at the network level.

Once you go through this guide on setting up the Pi-Hole, ads will get blocked before they even get to your computer, smartphone, or any other device on your network. Of course, this solution will only work when devices are connected to you home network or the network you set this up on, so if you leave the network the blocking will cease.

This will not only stop ad’s on website, but also app markets and in games. Neat, right! Well don’t forget, Ad’s are how many websites generate revenue and offer “FREE” services. So, unless you want your favourite free service website to charge or go out of business at the end of this tutorial i recommend using the white-list.

What You’ll Need

Raspberry Pi (I’ll be using a Model B+)
SD card (4GB+)
Ethernet cable <— this long —>
Micro USB for Power

Download:

Raspbian Jessie Lite

No keyboard/mouse required.

Step One: Download and Burn the Pi-Hole Image

The first thing you’ll need to install Jessie lite onto your SD card (Help with this click HERE).

Once you have your OS onto your card, insurt into your Pi, connecting the network cable to your router/switch then power it up.

To remote onto your Pi you will need to find the IP address your Pi, if you have access to your DHCP server/home router IP table find your Pi and make a note of its IP address. Otherwise you will need to use an IP Scanner tool of some description, personally i still use Look@Lan, but you can google for one.At the login prompt username is “pi” password by default is “raspberry”, first thing let’s quickly change that. After logging in in the prompt type in:passwdIt will prompt for current password then enter your new one twice. You will have to close and re-open your putty session.

Install Pi-Hole

Now you should be sat in front of a command prompt for your Pi. to install the Pi-Hole software type in this command:

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

Go through all the options and configure if you like otherwise stick with the default and just press enter on each question.

Thats it installed. Now simply to configure your router or DHCP server. That is unless your provider is VIRGIN! then you dont have granulor control over your DHCP server settings. But fear not, in this case you simply need to disable DHCP service on your router and enable it within Pi-Hole. YES, they though of this exact scenario.

If you’ve manualy configured your DNS or have set your routers DNS then head over to: