Pihole & Docker FTW!

I'd been planning to mess with Pihole but didn't want to mess with a Rasberry Pi.  I did some research and found that I'd the option to install Pihole on a running Linux system.  While looking at what that entailed, I also found that I could easily do it with Docker, too.

I've been running a Ubuntu system for a while now.  It is mainly a box I set up for use with NextCloud.  I hate NextCloud and stopped using it and the Ubuntu system.  The system was pretty much idle until I decided to set up a Wordpress instance in Docker for development of my Wordpress site that's on my Linode instance.  Whenever I'm trying something new in Wordpress, I test it on my Dockerized Wordpress instance first.  Eventually I'll work on replacing the Wordpress instance on my Linode host with a Dockerized instance.

Since I already have Docker set up on the Ubuntu box, I decided to give Pihole a spin in Docker.

I used this website to set up Pihole in Docker.  The whole setup was quick and painless.  In fact, my Wordpress setup uses three different Docker containers, and with Pihole now running, I'm now using four containers on that Ubuntu host.  None of them are consuming resources (thus far).

I'm now testing Pihole.  I'm totally unfamiliar with it but it doesn't appear to be a high maintenance setup.  At some point, I'll want to back up the Pihole configs, though, so I won't have to spend a lot of time setting it up again (when/if I end up blowing away the instance).

I've several hosts on my LAN using the Pihole setup and my daughter is trying it, as well.  She had a Rasberry Pi and was planning ot install Pihole on it, but I told her that this is far simpler - she should use the Pi for something else, IMO.

I've added some ad lists (block lists and some whitelisting), as well.

The biggest pain as far as adware goes is Youtube, and I don't think Pihole is going to be able to block Youtube ads when using the Youtube app.  I've had some luck blocking Youtube ads on my Macbook, but I view videos on the browser when using that notebook (and I've the uBlock Origin browser extension installed in MS Edge).