Why I Set Up a Pi-hole and How I Got It Working

This is a simple write-up of how I set up a Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi. I will cover what it does, how I installed it, and the bits that went wrong for me.

I had read about Pi-hole and how it can reduce ads across all devices on your Wi-Fi. I already use browser ad blockers, but I wanted to tinker with a Raspberry Pi and this felt like the perfect project.

Pi-hole runs as a local DNS server and blocks ads for every device on your network.

Why I bothered

Ads have become more intrusive than ever, especially on streaming services, YouTube, and certain websites. I wanted:

• Faster browsing (maybe)
• Fewer distractions
• More privacy
• Some nerdy fun

I had a spare Raspberry Pi 3 from a friend, so I put it to work.

The network flow

Here is the traffic flow after setting it up:

Device -> Router -> Pi-hole -> Internet

Initial setup

Before I could begin, I needed:

• HDMI to Micro HDMI cable
• USB-A keyboard
• USB-A mouse (I did not have one, so keyboard-only)

How does the Pi connect?

I was not even sure if my Pi supported Wi-Fi. To check, I ran:

iwconfig

I looked for wlan0 in the output and it was there, so Wi-Fi was a go.

Installing Pi-hole

Installation was a one-liner:

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

I selected a few popular blocklists and configured Pi-hole to run on port 8080 because port 80 was already in use.

Connecting the Raspberry Pi to Wi-Fi

To get Wi-Fi working, I edited:

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Then added:

network={
    ssid="YourWiFiSSID"
    psk="YourWiFiPassword"
}

After a reboot, I got the IP address using:

hostname -I

Telling the router to use Pi-hole

I logged into my router (default IP and password were printed on the back) and changed DNS from automatic to manual. Then I entered the Pi's IP so it could handle DNS requests.

What is DNS resolution?

It is how your devices translate domain names (like bbc.co.uk) into IP addresses. Pi-hole sits here and blocks unwanted domains.

Taking a look at the dashboard

To access the dashboard, I visited:

http://192.168.1.XXX/admin

It loaded, but there was zero activity. Uh-oh. Here is what a working one looks like:

Diagnosing why it was inactive

When I first checked the dashboard, it was not blocking anything. I tried a few things before it finally worked.

1. Checking the network interface

The dashboard showed it was using Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi. Since my Pi was on Wi-Fi, that needed fixing. I tried:

sudo pihole -r

It skipped the interface selection, so I edited the config directly:

sudo nano /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf

and updated:

PIHOLE_INTERFACE=wlan0

After saving and rebooting, I tested:

nslookup bbc.co.uk 192.168.1.XXX

It timed out, so Pi-hole still was not responding to DNS requests.

2. Checking for open ports

I checked if Pi-hole was listening on port 53:

sudo netstat -tulnp | grep ":53"

Port 53 was open, so at least it was listening.

3. Testing connectivity on the network

From my PC, I ran:

ping 192.168.1.XXX

That worked. Then I tested DNS on the Pi itself:

dig bbc.co.uk @127.0.0.1

// and

dig bbc.co.uk @192.168.1.XXX

Only the first command worked. So the Pi could resolve its own DNS, but not accept requests from other devices.

4. Updating the listen addresses

I updated the DNS config so it listened on both localhost and the network interface:

sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.d/01-pihole.conf

and added:

listen-address=127.0.0.1
listen-address=192.168.1.XXX

5. Testing again

After restarting Pi-hole, I tested again:

dig bbc.co.uk @192.168.1.XXX

This time it worked. Finally.

Ready for use

After that, the dashboard started showing activity and ads were being blocked.

Making devices use Pi-hole

Here is how I routed devices through it:

• Windows PC: Updated DNS manually in Ethernet settings
• iPhone and Apple TV: Changed DNS under their Wi-Fi settings

Once configured, ads started disappearing across those devices.

Blocklists and limitations

Out of the box, Pi-hole does not block YouTube/ITVX ads. That is not a bug, those services often serve ads and content from the same domains.

To strengthen Pi-hole, I added a few more URLs to the block list and ran:

pihole -g

I added:

• The Firebog list collection
• Steven Black's hosts file

Even then, YouTube remains tricky. DNS-level blocking has limits.

Final thoughts

Setting up Pi-hole was not totally smooth, but it was a fun weekend project. I learned a lot doing this.

My internet is now cleaner, faster, and more private. If you are comfortable with the terminal and enjoy tinkering, I would recommend it.

Bonus project: turn the Pi into a media server

With Pi-hole sorted, I plugged in an external hard drive full of movies and photos. It auto-mounted, so I could browse the files straight away.

I set up Samba (SMB) to access them from my Windows PC. I am now trying to use Kodi on my Xbox to stream the content. The only snag: the "Windows network" option is not showing up. Still working on that.

Let me know if you have had a similar experience, or if you have tips for getting Kodi working with SMB.