A few of my friends experienced the glory of PiHole in my home network and asked, if I could install such a thing in their networks as well.

Which I obviously could, but none of them are interested in updating/maintaining such a device. So I would like to collect some suggestions on how to deploy such a box with (ideally) zero interaction from my side until the end of times.

My hardware platform of choice would be a cheap thin client (Futro s920 or something like that) running Ubuntu with unattended updates enabled.

Pihole itself seem to offer an auto-updater, but I’m not sure how stable that runs in the long run - maybe Docker would be better suited here?

  • @francisEnglish
    0•1 year ago

    Spitballing ideas:

    • ~Run PiHole on a public facing server/port. You’ll probably need to plan out the security aspects of it, but then your friends could then just set their devices to use the PiHole DNS (much like how people can set their devices to use 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8).~
    • Drop a Pi with PiHole in their network that is managed with some fleet/IOT management platform like Balena. That’ll in theory get you PiHole running in a container, and you’ll have a management platform to actually remotely connect to the Pi to manage it.

    You may be already aware, but be mindful of the danger associated with having an ounce of responsibility for their DNS uptime. The bonus of option #1 is that you could also empower your friends to “bypass” PiHole should it go belly up.

    Edit: Don’t do #1 unless you can properly secure it.

    • DesertCreosoteEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      DO NOT run a public DNS resolver. It’ll get used as part of a DNS amplification attack, and your system will be used to DDOS somebody else.

      The only viable solutions here are to either have OPs friends VPN all traffic through OPs network (there might be a way to use split tunneling to reduce total traffic used, though I’m just spitballing here), to deploy hardware locally on their network, or to use a public solution. Everything else is going to be a security risk.

      • @francisEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Thanks for the explicit mention, I should have been less vague with my “planning the security aspects” comment. I was thinking firewall rules would mitigate that, but could moot if the friends are on a dynamic lease.

        VPN is a bit of a non starter since that would require installing and running a VPN client 24/7 on all devices, else you’re dropping in a site to site VPN device on the network… At that point you might as well cut out the extra complication and just run PiHole on that point.

        I actually learned about public AdGuard servers in this thread! I’d definitely lean that way if I were OP (because I personally do not want to field “the internet is not working” calls in the middle of the night).

        • DesertCreosoteEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          No worries, I just wanted to make very sure that the risks for #1 were properly understood.

          VPN might be able to work with split tunneling, but I haven’t tried it myself. It’d probably be more complicated than it’s worth!

          I’d also lean towards the public AdGuard servers in this case, for the same reason! I’m happy to field certain calls from friends and family, but I don’t want to get the “my internet isn’t working!” calls at 2am-- I get enough of those from work! 😁