What order are DNS rules executed in?

General
1

I have looked about quite a bit and I cannot find any information on this. Specifically...

  • What order are allow/blocking rules executed in?
  • Does Pi-Hole stop at the first 'hit' (matching rule) or is it the last 'hit' that takes affect?
  • Are the installed domain lists checked first followed by the ad-hoc 'domain' entries? Or the other way round? Or are they actually all fundamentally the same list
  • Does the order of the rules in the 'domain' list matter?
  • Are regex rules treated the same as absolute rules for the purposes of ordering?
  • How does grouping effect things?

So, if I have a 'blocking' rule somewhere and an 'allow' rule somewhere else, which one will Pi-Hole settle on using? And does it matter where my two rules are defined?

2

Allow rules always take precedence over block rules.

The order is explained here: Domain Database - Pi-hole documentation

  • Allowed exact domains
  • Allowed lists
  • Allowed Regex
  • Blocked exact domains
  • Blocked lists
  • Blocked Regex

Pi-hole stops at the first match. If a domain is allowed, there is no need to keep searching. Also, if it is blocked by an "exact domain entry", there is no need to check regex rules.

No.

3

It doesn't affect blocking priorities as such.

The purpose of Pi-hole's Group Management is to allow client specific filtering, e.g. by having specific clients assigned to a group that is assigned a more restrictive set of blocklists.

4

Thank you very much for the clarification - much appreciated. Though I do feel a tad embarrassed at not finding it in the docs - my apologies for being blind/stupid