First-time user and general networking noob -- I just installed pi-hole 6 and I'm trying to do some stress tests to see if it's blocking everything it should be. It's definitely blocking some things, but when I went to https://adblock.turtlecute.org/, I only scored 80 and it had a bunch of domains listed that it said I wasn't blocking. So (as recommend on that page) I added https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Turtlecute33/toolz/master/src/d3host.txt to my pi-hole and ran it again -- still 80. Then I added the same d3host.txt to ublock and suddenly it's up to 98. Is turtlecute a good test of how well pi-hole is working, and if so, why isn't it blocking these domains when the same list works with ublock?
My advice - skip all these ad-testing websites. They are generally meaningless. They select domains that you may never visit, or provide ads in a format that Pi-hole cannot block. Chasing a 100% score on those sites is generally a fruitless endeavor.
The real test - do you see ads in your everyday activity? A few good websites to test with (and I'm not vouching for or advocating for any of the content at those sites - they are just crawling with ads):
- cnn.com
- dailymail.co.uk
- yahoo.com
No ads (or very few ads) on those sites? Pi-hole is working.
You can also look at your query log in Pi-hole, filter on the allowed domains and see if any of those are objectionable. If so, locally deny them.
Here are screen shots just taken of the daily mail sports page.
With Pi-hole active:
With Pi-hole disabled - no blocking:
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The domain selection is definitely arbitrary -- my question was more whether I should investigate the fact that adding the blocklist to ublock produced the intended effect (turtlecute report showed blocked domains), while adding the exact same blocklist to pi-hole had no effect on the report from turtlecute.
Pi-hole and uBlock work in fundamentally different ways.
Pi-hole is a DNS blocker that works for the entire network. It blocks domains.
uBlock is a content blocker that runs on a single browser. It has the ability to inspect specific elements of the code and traffic received and block them. It can block paths on URL's, Javascript elements, etc. But, it is on the browser only and won't work for other devices on the network or even other apps on the same platform as the browser. The adlists for uBlock are written quite differently than adlists for Pi-hole.
My advice - run them both. uBlock will get first crack at blocking browser ads, then Pi-hole filters what's left.
For browsers on which uBlock is not active, then Pi-hole does all the blocking.
Hm, after turning off ghostery and ublock, dailymail was loading with tons of ads. I went to the query log and denied everything that seemed potentially questionable and still tons of ads.
Ok, I got it to block ads by removing cloudflare as my secondary DNS server -- now the pi-hole is the only DNS server.
Is that an ok thing to do?
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