Docker seems to cause almost everyone issues! Use Virtualbox with Debian/Ubuntu instead!

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If I'm not mistaken, it's not recommended to run a docker container. I don't see it mentioned it the setup guides. I don't really understand docker myself, but I do know you don't have to run an entire operating system, and supposedly, it just runs the software needed. Well, if you look through the help section, bascially every other post that has an issue, is because it's using Docker.

To my very limited understanding, Docker gives you a set of software, and scripts, that WHO knows made, and who knows what it does, and you all just expect it to work. And basically every time, there's some strange issue that I have never, ever once had. I strongly feel, that it would be a lot less work on the devs part helping you all with your non-standard setup, if you'd instead run a 250MB Virtual Maichine of Debian / Ubuntu Linux.

That's right, I said 250MB. And when you get the system booted to the login prompt, it actually goes down, to around half that or even less to run the system, with pi-hole and unbound both loaded and running.

So, I'm kind of tired of seeing all these "oh this isn't working" posts because docker just causes way too many issues. Not ONLY do you have to configure pi-hole correctly, but then you ALSO have to configure the docker network container correctly, and it's to me, a stupid and unnecessay complexity and causes you to spend time fixing something that would work fine, if you all would just dedicate 150 or less MB of ram, to a virtualbox instance (once it's booted).

I really want to read your feedback on this, because I never have issues with my setup, I don't update as frequently, but when I do, it works fine, and you don't constantly see me on the forums with issueo about pi-hole because this setup works.

I just had to get that off my chest because I see it way too often, and it's starting to get a bit annoying. I think we could all save eachother's time, the devs, and your own, if you'd go with a standard VM setup.

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"Docker seems to cause almost everyone issues!"

I suspect this is not the case. You may not understand Docker, but there are plenty of users who do.

How did you come to this conclusion?

This is quite wrong. We offer a Pi-hole image and directions how to use it.

https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole

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Well then... don't I look stupid!

I'm just wondering if you have a guide for docker, there is always, seemingly constantly posts with docker container issues. Maybe the guide could be extra descriptive in some sections where there are common misconfigurations?

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Installation - Pi-hole documentation

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How did you arrive at that conclusion?
A quick perfunctory count shows that out of roughly 14,000 posts in the Help category, only around 430 (or roughly 3 percent) carry a docker tag.

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Discourse lets you hide them from view. Click on your profile icon then on the person icon at the bottom and select Preferences.

Then click on Notifications > Categories in the side menu and in the Muted drop down select Help|docker and click Save Changes.

Then click on Notifications > Tags in the side menu and in the Muted drop down select docker and click Save Changes.

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VirtualBox and Docker are two entirely different things with different purpose/use-cases.

VirtualBox is a virtual machine engine, which runs a complete virtual computer with virtual (and possibly real passed-through) hardware. It hence runs an own bootloader an kernel as well.

Docker is a container engine which runs just userland on the host system, no bootloader and kernel, but uses all hardware features of the host system directly (the ones it is allowed to use). This way a Docker container can be much lighter compared to running VirtualBox and a VM on the host system.

It would be possible to run Pi-hole with a smaller Docker base OS than Debian, e.g. Alpine. Wasn't there a PR open to add Alpine support to Pi-hole for just that purpose? Probably I mix it up with a different software. However the Debian Docker base container is already much lighter than Debian for a VM would be possible, and it makes it much easier for Pi-hole developers to share much installer/script code between real machines and the container image.

Note that this is a support forum, where people usually post when they have problems, not when everything works well. So of course you'll find issues about everything, but that doesn't say anything about the stability/reliability of the Pi-hole or its Docker container.

If you have a particular issue with it, open a new topic about it and in sure the community will be happy to help.

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Your right about the Debian image size.

Our current image (based on Debian) is smaller than a Debian VM.
Also, every docker container stars way faster than a VM.

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I'm not sure if there is one currently. Pi-hole requires bash at this point in time. I'd like to be fully POSIX but that's an undertaking. I guess we could use Alpine with bash added to the base image, that feels 'dirty' to me, the concept of Alpine is busybox and dash. I don't think musl is a problem anymore, and I think we had an Alpine image in the past. Recently there was a request for a scratch image, I don't think that is possible with s6-init.

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There was an alpine image a long time ago, but it was dropped back in 2018 due to time constraints on keeping it updated

https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole/issues/206#issuecomment-355721035

It's a nice goal to aim toward if we can do it - but I know I certainly don't have the time to look into it myself.

The "beauty" of the container being based on debian at the moment is that beyond a few simple docker-specific tweaks, cutting a new docker release is as simple as starting with the base image, and installing Pi-hole into it using the --unattended flag, just like one might do on real hardware.

It really helps us keep on top of getting releases out at a similar time to the main release, and is also pretty low maintenance. Most errors/issues I see reported on it usually boil down to configuration more than compatibility

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Wow really got a lot of feedback on my un-educated complaint. How quickly can you all start a docker pihole? I can start my debian VM after Vbox is open (15 seconds on hard disk) in about 30 seconds. I turned off a bunch of services using sysctl.

If it's in the 10 to 15 second range I'll give it a go and learn how to use it.

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If the image is already downloaded, it starts almost instantly.

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Feel free to use whatever platform you want. Your lack of docker expertise should not prevent others from using it.

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