Effective ways to test PiHole?

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1

I've just finished installing Pi-hole on my RPi and have configured it to run as my DHCP server. All wifi devices have been rebooted, so hoping to understand some ways that i can look to test the effectiveness of Pi-hole?

Thanks in advance, looking forward to being a part of the community.

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From a client that you expect to use Pi-hole, run the following commands:

nslookup pi.hole

That should return your Pi-hole's IP, and that IP should also match that of the server at the start of the very same reply. If so, it confirms that your client is using Pi-hole as DNS server.

nslookup flurry.com 192.168.0.xx

Replace 192.168.0.xx with your Pi-hole's actual IP address before executing.
That should return 0.0.0.0 with a default Pi-hole, which confirms your Pi-hole is blocking domains.

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nslookup flurry.com 192.168.0.18
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  192.168.0.18

DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out
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4

i'm comfortable that Pi-Hole is installed and operating correctly. just wondering where i should expect it to work? Ads on websites should no longer visible. Any other benefits of using pi-hole?

5

(You can format your output for readability by using the </> Preformatted text menu option. I've just done that for your above command output. :wink: )

I would feel uncomfortable in your place, as your command shows Pi-hole is not working as expected.

What's the output of the first nslookup?

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6

Run a debug log, and examine the contents. Near the top there is a section where Pi-hole tests itself.

You can also upload the log when prompted and post the token here so we can examine the log as well.

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nslookup flurry.com
Server: raspberrypi
Address: 192.168.1.18

Name: flurry.com
Addresses: ::
0.0.0.0

looks like its working fine now. the debug log is massive, do i need to post it if i'm getting these results?

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Your Pi-hole appears to be working.

You don't post the log. You would post the alphanumeric token that lets us find your log.

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