PiHole on Docker and Kubernetes (I almost gave up)

[@TechnoTim]

Does Pi-Hole work for you? 🥧🕳️ BTW, if you're new were welcome! Don't forget to subscribe for more content like this!

[@ricardo-sf]

using your guide + other info scoured on the web i was able to migrate pihole from a docker swarm to kubernetes and configure metallb so it could be hosted on its own IP (rather than a node ip)

[@jeffreyplum5259]

I overbuilt my machines for use as virtualization servers. This meant Full ram and SSD storage. I was always limited by the core count on my systems under full virtualization. Quad core CPUs do not have the thread count for heavy traditional VM use. Now I hope to cluster them with Kubernetes / Rancher. With containers I hope to do more without heavy VM overhead. Super Pi-hole being one use. Many thanks.

[@Paperclown]

rofl. got a chuckle how he begins the video talking about importance of adblockers ... right after he runs > 2 < youtube adreels.

[@smudgepost]

I thought up this idea and wondered how hard it would be to do.. SO glad you've done it!! I will try and replicate

[@zr00t]

So I went down a rabbit hole tonight that started with your 20 things to do with virtual machine, then how to set up Rancher/K8/Docker and ultimately landed here and I followed each of your videos and with a few tweaks of my own (I used my wildcard Let's Encrypt certs on my Rancher install) now have Pihole up and running in my environment. I haven't switched over my DHCP server to provide that address yet, but after a few more days of testing, I certainly will. Thank you for your very well put together and helpful videos!

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you!

[@erickortiz5054]

I had an edge server I got a few months ago (EC200a). It was just collecting dust. Your videos inspired me to put it to use. So, I have been following a lot of your tutorials over the past few days. Great content! Cheers.

[@Leonardo-my6ch]

Amazing video. Something to keep in mind, you can set a password variable in Rancher-> Resources->Secrets, in that place is secure, and them you can use it in the workload in Environments variables->Add From Sources. Another thing is with that configuration i have a problem with the 53 port, my pihole never block anything so digging a little i found that you have to put the External IP:Port value after Hostport instead just the port. So... hopefully, this tips could help somebody.

[@TechnoTim]

Thanks for sharing!

[@kriswachtell]

BTW, I wondered if you would consider showing setting up Unbound in connection with HA Pi-Hole on a kubernetes HA cluster? Your channel is by far the most informative. Big thanks for all you do!

[@MrFisselort]

Much love Tim. I've been following you for a while. Awesome tutorials man, keep em' coming! :)

[@TechnoTim]

Awesome, thank you!

[@bbbmaker]

Tim, thanks for this, I struggled with many different setup guides and only yours worked for me! Subscribed!

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you!

[@MartinPugh]

Oh man, you are not kidding about the DNS thing. How has setting up basic networking on an Ubuntu server become such a nightmare. I admit I was already tired tonight when I started and completely glossed over the part where you fixed it. After 45 minutes and an unknown number of different websites, all with different options, none of which worked, I gave up and backed everything out. Then I remembered your comments at the start of the video but my brain is too flustered now. A task for tomorrow with a clearer head. Thanks for the great video, I promise to pay attention next time 😁

[@TechnoTim]

Haha! Yeah, I literally almost gave up. (Not clickbait) Only video so far that spanned more than one day. I had to clear my head too!

[@MartinPugh]

Well, I thought I had it, but it seems not. There was still a local port 53 listener even after running through your steps so I added in a reboot. Now I have no local listener on port 53, but also no nameserver being pulled through from /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head. I'll crack it but need to do a bit more of the day job first

[@MartinPugh]

And we're running. It never occurred to me that having pihole alive would also intercept the traffic for the local hosts DNS resolver so although I'd downloaded the container, I hadn't started it, thinking there was still something broken. Phew, that was a slog.

[@uno-tu9xx]

A big thanks for taking the time to do all this. Your explanations are clear and offer encouragement :-:

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you so much!

[@iphonewhatsapp1862]

Thousand thanks. This one of the first videos I saw from you, It was really productive, thanks a lot for such a fine job, even the background music allows to concentrate, the detail of the picture-in-picture and the information very clear, this definitely deserves to subscribe and keep looking at the rest of the content

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! This is an early one too, tons more on my channel!

[@memack101]

Just completed setting up PiHole using this video has my main guide. Thank you.

[@TechnoTim]

Nice work!

[@Shane-Singleton]

Another great tutorial, Tim. I am considering PiHole when I refresh my network. I'm also going to be upgrading to a physical pfSense netgate device. What I need to figure out is if I want to use just PiHole in a docker container like you're doing or if I want to use BlockerNG on pfSense. Reason I'm not going to virtualize pfSense is because I want my router on low power usage hardware so it can live longer on my UPS as when we have power outages that last more than a minute or two the first thing I do is down all of my servers. So if I were virtualizing pfSense that would draw a lot more power than this little Netgate NG-1100 and kill my UPS battery quicker. I've got my work laptop docking station, and a few other mission criticals hooked up to the UPS as well so every watt of usage counts.

[@TechnoTim]

Either are great options! Thank you!

[@FlexibleToast]

Couple things. I noticed here and in your new handbrake video you considered or did put the password as an environment variable. This is what Kubernetes secrets is for. You could store the webpasswd as a secret. What would be really awesome is to revisit this video and add unbound as a sidecar for pihole. Maybe I'll look into it.

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! Yep, agreed on k8s secret. I try not to overly complicate some of my videos since some folks are beginners.

[@FlexibleToast]

@@TechnoTim I totally get that. I haven't dove into Rancher as much as I should have probably, but I was thinking there is probably an easy way to do a secret.

[@ibrudiiv]

Thanks for all your videos :) Freed up my rpi for other projects now! Next step is traefik but I had some troubles with DNS and domains setting it all up, gonna give it a spin some other time

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! Nice work!

[@mcrgk]

Hi Tim. Will you be creating a video for installing PiHole on Rancher 2.70? The interface is completely different, so cannot follow along with your video. Thanks!

[@kriswachtell]

Big thank you for all the work you do. I love your channel. I almost also gave up on this. If one runs multiple servers and worker nodes. Do you need to install resolvconf on all servers and worker nodes?

[@hbeat-music]

Amazing tutorial!!! Subscribing right now, you deserved. KUDOS !!

[@coertdeneve7567]

A big thank you Tim! Love your style (compressed & huge amount of relevant info). I'm exploring Proxmox on a somewhat more modest scale. Would like to see the Pihole client detailed info (hostnames) instead of the 1 Pihole hostname in the lower part of the dashboard. It should be do-able in this set-up, I guess. The client hostnames appear when I use, on a separate VM/Docker, the Docker run script you're referencing to. As you're here for cracking the hard part ;-) ... could you look into this?

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! Glad it was helpful! Do you plan on letting Pi-Hole do DHCP or just DNS?

[@coertdeneve7567]

@@TechnoTim Just DNS filter. I have my Netgate Pfsense to do the DHCP and DNS Resolv (incl hosts in local domain). I'm happy with the feature that hostnames by DHCP leases are registered in the DNS resolver.

[@Feerab]

thank you for the instructive tutorial. Could you post a video on installing Nextcloud and Pi-hole on the same machine?

[@TechnoTim]

Hi! Check out my Docker, Rancher, Kubernetes video. That will explain how to set each one up! kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXqvlGOvrKmJis0

[@tektech440]

Man i wish i watched this a week ago before i blasted my entire k3s cluster hahaha. looking forward to setting it up again once i get my internet turned up at my new house and my new startech rack shipped and set up. so excited.

[@TechnoTim]

You can do it!

[@xilem891]

Done and success... Thanks Tim!

[@ricardo-sf]

if you decide to do a followup to this guide -- adding a metallb service to host the pihole on a load balanced IP woud be a good addition ..

[@TechnoTim]

Nice!

[@ztech-consulting]

Tim!!!! You're a GODSEND!!

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you!!!

[@angrynerd2103]

Adding the unbound docker container to this setup looks like it would be pretty good. Would this allow you to easily create two or more piholes from the same image for redundancy?

[@TechnoTim]

I don’t see why not

[@majorgear1021]

I was thinking along these lines, but a little differently. What if you had 2 rancher managers and agents, each on a different proxmon node, and you set pihole instances to 1? Then if you shutdown a node or even if pihole crashes, rancher will spin another one up automatically. the challenge is storing the configuration - blocklists, etc - someplace where rancher can always get to it to apply it to the pihole container. So , not on the rancher agent.

[@DevinCuevas]

I'm wasting my life away on every one of your videos! Awesome man, keep it up! Next up, Plex! And kuddos to the comments section, all my questions answered here lol

[@andrewm659]

Have you updated these instructions somewhere to reflect Rancher 2.x in a cluster set up? I am using this an example but having some difficulties getting access to the pihole admin site using an nginx ingress.

[@oliortiz4140]

The interface of Rancher 2.6 is different. When adding ports its asking for a host IP but not in the old version. Do I just put in my machine's local ip address? Also, the environment variables now has a drop down menu for different types.

[@johnphilippi644]

Hi Tim, I get lost here. Rancher version 2.6 is on parts different from the one you use in the video. Especially in the port assignment and volume part. Could you help dummies like me how to continue the pihole installation within rancher? Would it be an idea to make a new movie? Many thanks, John

[@julianlai342]

for the ubuntu fix, I had to restart my ubuntu VM before the changes to /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head were applied

[@erickortiz5054]

life saver.

[@sreejith5966]

Disable resolvd and manually edit nameserver to the dnd ip It will work

[@alemaodownhill]

Hey Tim what´s up? I´ve been following your channel for some time now, and thanks to you now I have a pretty cool homelab going. Can you please make a video on how to deploy Netdata on Rancher? I´ve been trying for some time and it is a no go. I´m missing something. I don´t know if it is related to my pfsense, if my configs are off, or (most likely) because I don´t know what I´m doing! hahahaha I could use some help. Thanks a lot for everything! Cheers!

[@TechnoTim]

Thanks for the ideas!

[@thomasschneider5983]

Hi, thanks for this tutorial. You created another tutorial explaining the setup of HA Pi-hole running 2 Pi-hole instances + Gravity Sync. Question: How can I setup Pi-hole HA in K8S?

[@TechnoTim]

Almost the same way but it's a little tougher because you'll need a load balancer in place.

[@olinaish3644]

Hey Tim Do you mind in sharing the yaml of the pihole manifest? I do not use Rancher and don't know how the fields in the UI map to standard k8s manifest. At the moment I've got the issue that the status is"DNS service not running": FTL failed to start due to failed to create listening socket for port 53: Address already in use. I use longhorn for pvc but that is not the issue.

[@j0nwms]

The only way I could get my nameserver addition to show up in /etc/resolv.conf was to reboot. Stoping and starting the service never worked for me. Even after the reboot, that got the first entry, stoping/starting didn't let me add a new entry.

[@TechnoTim]

glad you got it working! thanks for sharing!

[@23Midway23]

Same here! This works, thanks:)

[@syrialyze7654]

Same here! Reboot worked like a charm.

[@marmao78]

Hi Tim, I would like to suggest a vídeo. I think if you create a vídeo presenting how your network is organized (witch cables go where and witch software communicate to witch device) will be fantastic? I´m not an expert in the network, so I find it very difficult to understand if NAS has a specific lane to connect with the ProxMox server or if everything is connected in the switch? Same as what is the sequence of software connections? Like, internet, firewall, router, gateway, proxy, DNS, Cache, Servers, NAS, database, backups, etc. Maybe having a graphical view will help other people with low network knowledge like me to understand. Thank you for your great content.

[@marcovanwoudenberg5337]

This video was amazing I setup my PiHole while watching a soccer match :)

[@graemehall2617]

Thanks for the guide mate, I noticed in the current script on Github that they removed port 443 (internal and external), is there a reason for this or should I just add it back in when I modify the script?

[@TechnoTim]

Which script are you referring to?

[@MegaJugganot]

I don't get the problem...wouldn't you want to fully set up pihole THEN point your other systems to it? Running multiple DHCP servers would be one thing, but an extra DNS server (pihole) sitting around with no one sending requests to it isn't going to break anything...

[@TechnoTim]

Nope, I don't run DHCP on Pi Hole, only DNS. This is what I did, set up pi hole and then point my clients to it.

[@CristianHeredia0]

Thanks, I ran into all the same issues.

[@yevhenbryukhov]

How to sync pihole configuration (blocklists, etc.) on other Kubernetes nodes in the cluster?

[@stepankotyk8823]

This video made me to subscribe :) keep it up

[@TechnoTim]

Awesome, thank you!

[@imtoast4630]

dosent this create a problem since rancher needs DNS to spin up pihole so basically your network will be bricked once you do this?

[@hareesh2581]

Hello @Techno Tim, I having some issues with the environment pass for ServerIP, I am trying to pass 192.168.0.X I double verified syntax re-deployed again, however it seems to always deploy on 172.17.0.X, not able to understand why this is happening, FYI I am running this on a VM inside an ESXi , VM IP range is same as 192.168.0.X

[@itsathejoey]

When you are binding the volumes to the pods, do you have to create the directory on each node or just the master?

[@marmao78]

Hi Tim, Fantastic videos, for sure I will setup a home lab in my house. Do you know if PIHole can work as a local DNS? Instead of typing ip number I would like to type the name of the service I want to use. If is it possble I would like to suggest a video with it.

[@TechnoTim]

Yes you can! That's exactly how I use it, created 5 entries today!

[@camerontgore]

Hey @Technotim, what should I do to prevent my pihole password from resetting every time the docker container scales down then back up again? When I had to go back and fix the privileged setting in Rancher I noticed that the Password that I had set had been changed back to a randomly generated one by pihole.

[@TechnoTim]

This means you may not be mapping the volume correctly.

[@camerontgore]

@@TechnoTim Thanks @TechnoTim I think that I left the last '/' off of the volume mappings. Regardless I just blow away the Ubuntu VM and started the whole process over again and everything works great! Now I just need to pay for Minecraft to test out my container :D

[@liadnoam9929]

For some reason I can't manage to connect through the browser to anything on rancher. I can connect to the rancher web interface but not to the sites running on dockers (say pihole or heimdall)

[@PraetorGames]

Same here. Port forwarding doesn't seem to work as instructed. Been over the video several times to see if I missed anything.

[@n.a.n1990]

I want to run Pi-hole in my Kubernetes cluster (one of your videos). I didn't get where to install resolv.conf since i am using a cluster of master and worker nodes in Kubernetes.

[@yevhenbryukhov]

Is the default password change permanent as it's done in the video? Is it saved on the volume?

[@robertumbres8711]

is this working in raspberry pi 4 aswell? i want to run a raspberry cluster with kubernetes and i want pihole running in kubernetes cluster

[@erickortiz5054]

Thanks for the guide. I have been trouble shooting this deployment and I am getting a bit snagged up. I played around with the dns settings and now when I edit the configuration of the Pihole pod (and another deployment), I get "Network Error" when I try to save the configuration. Any advice?

[@erickortiz5054]

I am running promox. I create a vm from there with an image of ubuntu server. I run rancher from there in a single node configuration.

[@erickortiz5054]

Maybe it was an intermittent issue. The images are pulling correctly now.

[@mf1315]

Hi - how do I set up a load balancer in front of pihole so I can have it fail over to different nodes, etc.? Do I need to set up an ingress load balancer? Persistent volumes?

[@j.r._7416]

Any reason why you prefer Pi-hole over pfBlocker?

[@TechnoTim]

Great question. I hand select the best tool for the job. While pfBlocker does a great job, I feel like pi-hole is best in class.

[@michaelventarola7100]

do you have updates for Rancher 2.6. NodePort does not exist in the interface

[@user-zr7kz4vs7c]

Would you mind comparing pi hole with AdGuard Home and NextDNS?

[@markmacherey4744]

so I currently run pihole in docker, what's the advantage of running it with rancher on kuberneties on docker..?

[@d4v1ds]

What are the factors that led him to using Rancher?

[@MadChristianX]

how do you sync your kubernetes pihole with the others? i'm using pihole-cloudsync to sync the container "master" pihole with the backup pihole on a raspberry pi zero w. but i'm confused how to get the cluster pihole synced, especially the custim DNS name entries.

[@TechnoTim]

I use gravity-sync. I had to move most instances out of k8s because I need DNS to startit!

[@aneelysis]

Great tutorial! Thanks for all the work you did with this. I got my pihole working with ease :)

[@TechnoTim]

Glad it helped!

[@MrSuttonmann]

Hey Tim, I followed your guide to the letter, but when spinning up pihole, it says "DNS resolution is currently unavailable" and won't get any further. I'm running on Debian, and I am able to run pihole in docker using portainer, but I can't get it to work with Rancher. I have DNS1 and DNS2 set, I have the DNS flags set in the container config, I have given the container NET_ADMIN perms, and I have an external nameserver set through resolveconf. Any ideas?

[@TechnoTim]

I have the fix in this video, it's the reason why I titled it "I almost gave up".

[@MrSuttonmann]

@@TechnoTim It seems I have a bigger DNS issue with Rancher/Kubernetes. Even with a working DNS server my containers can't resolve addresses. I actually did give up.

[@christophevandingelen]

Hi Tim, maybe you can be of some assistance. I had, via your guide pi-hole running on docker, wich was running in linux (ZorinOS). For some reason, it stopped working. I tried reïnstalling the container, no help, now it even doesn't see any dns queries. Since it is just a test server, I removed the linux from proxmox, and tried doing it all over again, this time with Ubuntu. Still no queries. Thinking it maybe was pi-hole, I tried adguard instead, same situation, no dns queries. And (off course), when I change my dns (on my windows test pc), no internet anymore (or maybe, no dns anymore, is a better way of saying). Also updated proxmox to version 7, still the same. What could be the problem here? Do you have any idea?

[@TechnoTim]

are you using resolved ?

[@christophevandingelen]

@@TechnoTim Uhm, don't know what you mean by that, so I guess not

[@AndreaFlorio]

do you have actual kubernetes manifests or helm chart?

[@TechnoTim]

Yes, in my github repo called launchpad

[@fellipeaugustodasilva9408]

Any ideas on how to solve the Unknown problem in a portainer installation?

[@TechnoTim]

You should be able to do the same to your resolv.conf

[@willowithink]

When I try to connect to the Pi-Hole dashboard, it returns a "Refused to connect" error, not sure what I did wrong.

[@TechnoTim]

Sounds like port mapping! Check your ports.

[@Arokhantos]

Just give your pihole its own ip then it can use 80 no problem just setup a macvlan without ip range to only gateway and subnet so it can use every ip, then set a fixed mac and ip when deploying pihole

[@4polelowpass]

Do you have to install resolvconf or can you do the same with systemd-resolve?

[@TechnoTim]

Anything that will persist your settings on reboot will work!

[@robertwestinghouse4098]

Hi Can you do a simple version for Docker on Windows no Raspberry Pi??? Please??. I keep getting lost after - docker pull pihole/pihole...then it goes all I have no idea. I am idiot on windows.

[@Anthrixas]

Is it possible to use different ip address for pihole instead using same as rancher. Similar to macvlan in portainer? Where rancher and pihole have two different ip address. Thanks.

[@TechnoTim]

Yes you can! See my SSL tutorial and look for MetalLB

[@JohnWeland]

Any reason to or not to have more than 1 replica specifically?

[@TechnoTim]

Pi hole doesn’t scale because it keeps it’s data with the service. You’d have to run 2 separate instances vs scale of 2

[@cptbrncls7050]

where do I create /etc-pihole & /etc-dnsmasq directories?

[@camerontgore]

Do you know if kubernetes can be run on CentOS? Ubuntu is fine but I have found that CentOS is more reliable.

[@TechnoTim]

I think rancher requires an ubuntu install

[@sirsirae343]

@cameron kube can run on any distribution it just depends on the version you choose (there is ton of them) if you go for instance with k3s you can run it on centos

[@mivoe99]

Which version of Ubuntu did you use for the (docker) install?

[@TechnoTim]

Hi! I used 18.04 LTS because Rancher 2 requires it. Hoping they support 20.04 LTS soon!

[@mivoe99]

@@TechnoTim Yeah I tried setting up PiHole using 20.4 but I always run into a lighttpd issue I cannot resolve...

[@hanamynetwork]

@@TechnoTim Weird as I am using Ubuntu 20.04 right now, I have no problem installing Rancher on Docker as in your tutorial

[@lelandclayton5462]

I get stuck with the DNS resolution is currently unavailable when it spins up. I followed your guide to the T and even tried to tweak a few things and I still get the error. I also noticed it's trying to run chown and chmod but it doesn't state where or what it's trying to modify permissions to.

[@TechnoTim]

did you do the step to configure resolv.conf?

[@lelandclayton5462]

@@TechnoTim Yep I ended up using pf-blocker on my pfSense box.

[@xXfzmusicXx]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but when i manually set DNS on any computer on my network to the pihole it can't resolve DNS. The only differences I have is that it's a 10.0.0.0/24 network, no subnets or anything funky like that. The only two clients connected to pihole is itself and kubernetes, any suggestions?

[@xXfzmusicXx]

So I've tried this 3 times now, every time following your guide, but every time when I get to testing with the pihole as the DNS set manually I get no internet.

[@TechnoTim]

Check out my docs for this in github, copy pasta there

[@xXfzmusicXx]

@@TechnoTim Thank you :)

[@megagreen1000]

I'm having some sort of issue. I did the deploy right in certain details which wont matter. but when i launch the container the rancher says it active and all good but when i go tap on the link to the pihole site that it has generated i get nothing. it take 2 minute pin wheeling. i have re-watch the instructions on missing cases but everything is fine. Im complexed right now.

[@TechnoTim]

Are you sure you exposed the right ports?

[@megagreen1000]

@@TechnoTim I am positive i have even created other containers with rancher and the same issue has happened. I came to the fact uninstalling rancher and docker then rebuilding them to the same state and same result of rancher having it green active and clicking on the port and nothing has came through to minecraft or plex or pi-hole.

[@KyleRassweiler]

@@megagreen1000 Did you ever figure this out? I'm having similar issues in a debian vm.

[@royboivin]

simple to install with the helm chart.

[@TechnoTim]

Good call! Thank you!

[@dustinkrejci6142]

Like bruh... thank you!!!

[@TechnoTim]

[@matthiashupfer2659]

great!

[@codermonk7552]

I don't get rancher... I keep skipping through those parts of the videos now. It's like an extra thing to install, it involves clicking a lot... adds serious complexity for no gain.

[@ejkeebler]

i wonder the same thing, but I think rancher gives you a graphical way to manage your containers. And when spinning them up, it seems a little easier to customize your containers?

[@codermonk7552]

@@ejkeebler graphical is nice at first, but then you can't really automate it... I prefer having a docker-compose.yml which I keep in a git repo

[@sesshoumarusama7397]

Can you make a video on installing phpMyAdmin on Rancher? I just can't get it to work :/

[@TechnoTim]

possibly!

[@cvazquez743]

How do I get the documentation? I'm on the Discord dashboard.

[@TechnoTim]

It’s in the free tutorials channel or free code channel. Otherwise in my GitHub org

[@cvazquez743]

Thank you Tim!! And I really appreciate your videos and keep up the good work!

[@ozrahman126]

I can set it up using azure?

[@TechnoTim]

I don't see why not.

[@LarsKniep]

I prefer adguardhome over pihole

[@dustinkrejci6142]

Bruh... I got a project I need help with for DNS level stuff. I’m not skilled how to work with DNS stuff. On top of that I need help with Kubernetes for production use, pi hole, dns and Internet CDN caching server with a user vip list. VIP customer get cached content and ads blocked and VPN while non-vip dont not get any of that. Bruh I’m willing to pay for this a solution. I have been banging my head for over a year on this for Kubernetes for use in production. A decentralized cashing database would be perfect for my solution. A user database is needed for my project as well and I haven’t even mastered that either. (Cringe and shutters)

[@TechnoTim]

Just take it one step at a time!

[@philipphellmich7644]

Blocky is another tool which runs fine in k8s out of the box without privileged rights...

[@TechnoTim]

Good call!

[@dustinkrejci6142]

Bruh!

[@TechnoTim]

[@dustinkrejci6142]

Techno Tim

[@dustinkrejci6142]

Bruh....

[@TechnoTim]

[@alqods80]

If there no benefits to run it in kubernetes then its waste of time