Help! Pi-hole is pooped

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johno1234

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#315596 29-Jul-2024 08:55

Hi all, at about 4am something happened and it started blocking almost everything:

Most queries are getting blocked with "Database is busy" status:

If I disable pi-hole blocking then DNS is working OK and everything works.... but with ads.

As soon as I enable blocking then most queries are blocked again.

I turned off blocking and updated Gravity successfully, then turned blocking back on but almost everything still blocked.

Next I would run a self-repair "sudo pihole reconfigure" but that is failing on an apt-get update:

This seems to be the bigger issue? Something about lists? Couldn't find anything straightforward on Google to get past this.

Any advice, please?

johno1234

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#3265756 29-Jul-2024 09:27

Typical. Right after posting that I found this advice:

dpkg --clear-avail

rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* --force

After which apt is working again.

Now pihole -r does stuff without error.

Pi-hole blocking re-enabled and appears to be working normally. Thank goodness - I'd forgotten how many ads it blocks!

michaelmurfy

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#3265764 29-Jul-2024 09:37

But just remember smaller sites like Geekzone are also reliant on ads to stay up so where you can, always support those sites worth it to you. Geekzone offers a subscription tier which is pretty cheap and stops ads site wide.

Just saying this as with a PiHole you can’t whitelist individual sites 😊

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Gurezaemon

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#3265821 29-Jul-2024 12:36

michaelmurfy:

But just remember smaller sites like Geekzone are also reliant on ads to stay up so where you can, always support those sites worth it to you. Geekzone offers a subscription tier which is pretty cheap and stops ads site wide.

Just saying this as with a PiHole you can’t whitelist individual sites 😊

Um... Unless I'm misunderstanding something, Pihole has supported whitelisting for years now.

There's even a snazzy extension to do so as well.

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michaelmurfy

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#3265831 29-Jul-2024 13:32

@Gurezaemon whitelisting for domains only. It has no idea you’re visiting Geekzone for example and to whitelist adlists there. It’s a DNS based blocker, and not like a browser ad blocking extension.

This is where locally run ad blockers have an edge as you can whitelist sites. I personally run PiHole mainly for blocking malware.

rb99

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#3265842 29-Jul-2024 13:39

Am hoping to add Pi-hole soon, assuming I can follow the video's, but anyway, should I expect it to have any effect on work from home at all (however working from home is done securely) ?

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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johno1234

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#3265864 29-Jul-2024 15:05

rb99:

Am hoping to add Pi-hole soon, assuming I can follow the video's, but anyway, should I expect it to have any effect on work from home at all (however working from home is done securely) ?

Should have no effect for WFH. It doesn't for me.

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Aaroona

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#3265991 29-Jul-2024 17:38

johno1234:

I'd forgotten how many ads it blocks!
 

Me too. I was out the other day and loaded up a site on my mobile connection... holy heck did I regret it. Immediately connected to my VPN back home and benefited from the PiHole instance I have there. I get between a 14-17% block rate. Beyond the rate, the actual invasive-ness of the ads on some sites is insane.

johno1234

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#3290136 2-Oct-2024 16:51

My old pi3 with pihole and homebridge died (or perhaps the sd card died). Unused p4 in the box of stuff so set it up and away it goes. However with the default StevenBlack adlist it hardly blocks any ads and I can't remember what adlists I had on the old setup.

Does anyone have a good list of blocklists to recommend?

[update] I found a teleporter backup from the old pihole and all I had was the StevenBlack list ... ?

Gurezaemon

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#3290163 2-Oct-2024 18:19

This is what I use, and it seems to work fine.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_tracking.txt
https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_ad.txt
https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/lists/ads-and-tracking-extended.txt
https://adaway.org/hosts.txt
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/AdguardDNS.txt
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Admiral.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anudeepND/blacklist/master/adservers.txt
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Easylist.txt
https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&amp;showintro=0&amp;mimetype=plaintext
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FadeMind/hosts.extras/master/UncheckyAds/hosts
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bigdargon/hostsVN/master/hosts
https://oisd.nl/downloads?ref=blog.torguard.net
https://github.com/EnergizedProtection/EnergizedBlu?ref=blog.torguard.net
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anudeepND/adac7982307fec6ee23605e281a57f1a/raw/5b8582b906a9497624c3f3187a49ebc23a9cf2fb/Test.txt

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johno1234

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#3290196 2-Oct-2024 19:20

That's a lot! But if that's what it takes...

Cheers

johno1234

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#3290197 2-Oct-2024 19:25

Still some ads but better thanks. No longer seeing half-naked, fat, bearded, tattooed men advertising chair exercises. Worth it!