PiHole blocking URLs and adverts. Acting as DNS.
-Raspberry Pi 4
Actual Behaviour:
PiHole is receiving queries semi-infrequently and blocking nothing. The URL/Domains filter is also not working.
Things of note. My PiHole no longer appears in the client list of my router. Clients used to appear in the list of configured clients. The queries are trackable through the PiHole dashboard, but don't seem to be affected by the setup. Wired connection.
You debug log doesn't show the option for web interface Theme. This means you are using the default one (auto theme).
The auto theme automatically selects between Light and Dark themes if the browser is configured to do so. As a result you are currently using the dark theme and the colors were changed.
Did you clear the browser cache after enabling the group?
If you did and still are seeing ads, maybe you need to block a few more domains.
After clearing my browser cache, it seems to be working pretty effectively. One or two getting through, but a much more reasonable amount.
I take it that I simply, one at a time, clear browsers caches before use (just once, but first use post PiHole installation).
I am also trying to use PiHole to restrict access to certain websites using it's URL domain feature. Using Blacklist functions, that does not seem to be working.
I'm a bit confused here. I thought by having PiHole act as the DNS for my network...I would be able to restrict URLs fairly easily as that's the primary function of a DNS.
I've tried beefing up the adlists, but it almost every webpage is showing ads on every device. I'm very lost as to what part of the process is lacking here, the Pi, the router, the PiHole configuration, the devices internal settings...I don't know, it just doesn't seem to work the way I hoped.
No.
The DNS server function is to translate human readable domains into IPs.
Example:
If you type on your browser an URL like https://www.example.com/path/page.php, the browser will ask the DNS server: What is the IP of www.example.com? (only the domain).
The DNS server will answer with an IP. After that the browser will request the URL, replacing the domain if the IP.
Pi-hole works just like that and answers with the real IP for every allowed domain, but if the query is asking for the IP of a blocked domain, Pi-hole answers with 0.0.0.0 and the browser is not able to download the content.
Pi-hole will never know the other URL parts (https:// or /path/page.php). Only the domain will be received.
Go to Domains in Pihole. Enter the domain in the box under "Domain" and click the "Add to Blacklist" button (Pihole version 5). This has to be a domain, such as example.com, cnn.com, etc. It can't be "http://www.example.com" as that's a URL.
Go to Query Log, find an entry where the domain you want to block is listed. Click the "Blacklist" button to the right of the Query Log Entry.
This confirms that I have somehow set the PiHole up wrong. I have tried both of these options and neither has worked. This, on top of the extremely low % blocked and seeing ads everywhere.
I will clean wipe it and start the installation process again.
That could suggest that Pi-hole is being by-passed, e.g. if the browser was using DoT, or the client it runs on is aware of alternative DNS servers, or some VPN client or antivirus s/w is forcefully redirecting DNS to other DNS servers.
