Reseting Pi-hole Default Blacklist

hot2use · May 23, 2020, 7:22am

After upgrading my pi-hole from version 4.0 to version 5.0 I went ahead and deleted all the adlists in order to run pihole -g to update the database. What I didn't realize at the time, was that pi-hole still has to rely on a list of adlists to populate the database.

After searching for a couple of hours on the internet for a list of default adlists provided with the initial installation of pi-hole, the only reference I found was a screen shot on the GitHub page.

https://github.com/pi-hole/graphics/blob/22dd62825e88c34e090b48e3bc5f4e9819ad25ec/Screenshots/v4_pihole_blocklist_settings.png
(doesn't display correctly)

The screen shot contains the following items:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
https://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/justdomains
https://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts (actually without SSL)
https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/blocklist.php?download=domainblocklist (results in zero additons)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_tracking.txt
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_ad.txt
https://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.txt

I couldn't find this list in written form anywhere in the pi-hole documentation or in the forum.

Would it be possible to add an actual list of the default adlists you provide to the documentation section of pi-hole?

While this topic might be an actual feature-request, I have placed this topic in the General | Customizing Pi-hole section for everybody to discuss.

yubiuser · May 23, 2020, 8:07am

hot2use · May 23, 2020, 8:59am

Thank you for the links. I added the following text to the first original topic:

Could we add some tags to this post and pin it? While the title states blocklists, the actual configuration is for adlists. The word blacklist also pops to mind when thinking about finding the correct information.

And if the original documentation could encompass this information, then I guess this would benefit the whole pi-hole community. However, that is currently possibly only my opinion.

triatic · May 23, 2020, 11:55am

Documentation will likely become out of date as Adlists are altered. I would suggest the better solution is to fix pihole -r when the list of Adlists is empty.

I raised a bug report for this issue: Pi-hole fails to restore default list of adlists · Issue #3402 · pi-hole/pi-hole · GitHub

jfb · May 23, 2020, 1:51pm

I don't think the documentation is the correct place for that. The documentation explains program operation and options. We have the FAQ section for just this type of question, and this one was just updated in the past two weeks for V6. As you noted, this one may have been difficult to find, and the wording and tagging has been updated.

You can find the adlists that ship with Pi-hole in the source code of the installer script. This is always current and available online:

github.com

pi-hole/pi-hole/blob/4d25f695267590b61a4061f9bb43448005d99b85/automated install/basic-install.sh#L1226


      
              # In a variable, show the choices available; exit if Cancel is selected
              choices=$("${cmd[@]}" "${options[@]}" 2>&1 >/dev/tty) || { printf "  %bCancel was selected, exiting installer%b\\n" "${COL_LIGHT_RED}" "${COL_NC}"; rm "${adlistFile}" ;exit 1; }
              # For each choice available,
              for choice in ${choices}
              do
                  appendToListsFile "${choice}"
              done
              chmod 644 "${adlistFile}"
          }
          
          # Accept a string parameter, it must be one of the default lists
          # This function allow to not duplicate code in chooseBlocklists and
          # in installDefaultBlocklists
          appendToListsFile() {
              case $1 in
                  StevenBlack  )  echo "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts" >> "${adlistFile}";;
                  MalwareDom   )  echo "https://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/justdomains" >> "${adlistFile}";;
                  DisconTrack  )  echo "https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_tracking.txt" >> "${adlistFile}";;
                  DisconAd     )  echo "https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_ad.txt" >> "${adlistFile}";;
              esac
          }