Pi-hole with speedtest | In other words you can speedtest your Turris every hour and look at graphs

Hi.
I want to share this article I recently found about tweaks to Pi-hole. That is possible to be run in LXC
I have good experience with Ubuntu Yaketty LXC.

THIS IS THE WAY TO HAVE REGULAR BANDWIDTH TESTS ON TURRIS NOW

Prerequisites: Installed and working Pi-hole.

https://blog.arevindh.com/2017/07/13/add-speedtest-to-pihole-webui/

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I have tried this and it’s working thanks for a tip!

Hmmm, a lot of learning here. pihole looks neat.

Care to summarise our experience?

Does this replace the Knot Resolver as DNS? DO you run it on the Omnia, or on another box (they seem to recommend a pile of OSs but not OpenWRT listed and I have a Pi on the LAN already acting a a webserver so it could actr as a DNS too I guess? But the Omnia could do this?Just curious about fiddling with the resolver. Knot serves my .lan names very well for example and I like that.

How does it compare with alternative Adblocking options?

Does PiHole actually kill Youtube ads? Just curious.

Loads of questions :wink:

I’m using Pihole in LXC container with Debian. So it’s running on Omnia (hardware) but virtualy. About Knot … I’m not sure. After you install it you must uncheck the option “Use DNS servers advertised by peer” (in network-interfaces-wan-second window) and to the new line you must write the IP of Pihole. The advantage of Pihole is functionality - adblocking, you can do parental control (DNS blocking), now speedtest and probably more and it runs as a virtual machine so you can always turn it off without losing the real hardware.

The ad blocking is as good as your block list - so you must add some lists from forums for good functionality. In my case it isn’t 100/% working (but I’m lazy and using adblock in internet browser too, so when Pihole can’t block it adblock on browser has it and sometimes its reversed - adblock in browser can’t block it but Pihole can). There’s YouTube blocking lists on forumsso yes it blocks YouTube ads. I like the whole functionality of Pihole - not just adblocking and the good thing is that it works (with LXC) on Omnia in one device so there’s no need to connect another device.

Wowsers. Isn’t running a whole virtual Debian system on the Omnia not major overkill? I’m puzzled as I’d be disinclined to load up my gateway router with such. I mean it’s an openWRT router in the first instance, not a Debian machine for a reason surely?

Just curious. Maybe I have something to learn here.

Perhaps you could or someone else describe exactly the steps we would need to do to pi-hole as a DNS with or with LXC and the pros and cons to replacing Knot as a DNS? Think is I expect many folk like me, don’t want to take risks with our gateway router. Get it wrong, or overload it it affects our access to the internet.

Part of me is more inclined to run a real Pi next to the Omnia to act as a DNS ;-). They are dirt cheap and low power consumers. And if something went wrong would be isolated to the Pi not on the primary gateway?

LXC’s are run directly on your kernel. So you are not wasting resources at all. LXC’s are just not full and tougher virtualization. You cant virtualize win 10 on turris.

Overload can affect your’s access to the internet that’s true.
We’re talking here about Omnia. It’s really powerful router.
Pi-hole won’t overload it.

In my case I use Turris 1.1 and how can I overload it?

  • downloading 200 Mbits
  • tvheadend / transfering data in LAN
    that’s sometimes enough for Turris 1.1 it can and it would handle better, but probes, which collects data for CZ.NIC are really heavy. That’s not case about Omnia at all.

######btw I was the only guy, who complained about it by official way. Don’t forget there was some other guys who complained about it, but respond was HW could handle around 800 Mbits, but probes are limit us to max 300 Mb/s and I didnt test it, but official respond was to turn off majordomo, because probe lcollect wasn’t well optimalized, if I understand it correctly) Source in Czech: https://twitter.com/BKPepe/status/833439658549866498 and ticket number: #789922
But that’s just example, how you can use your router. Don’t forget that it really depends (better word I think: rely) on services, which are running on your router.
It also really depends on your network speed and how are you using it. According to my stats on Turris.cz, where you can find graphs e.g. bandwidth utilization I realized that I would be satisfied with <100 Mbits. :slight_smile:

and it’s not new that I have unique issues all the time :smiley: :smiley:

Some old and cheap routers are mostly culprit in network(s)

Anyway here is short FAQ for LXC in Turris doc (it was long, but I decided to rewrite it and it’s not finished, yet):
https://www.turris.cz/doc/en/public/lxc_for_beginners

If you have any other questions, please, tell me. I will add them as well.

BTW:
RPi? C’mon. You deserve something better. :wink:
RPi has the best community and support, but that’s all. Look for example at Odroid C2, Pine A64, Rock64.
Their price is same as RPi.

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Hi, I have some (maybe) useful info. When I have intalled it I set to show 7 days with 1 hour tests. This was a mistake because there was simply so many data and it was unwatchable after that week. In the settings I can’t change it so I found the config file: /srv/lxc/LXC_NAME/rootfs/etc/pihole/setupVars.conf and there you can change the days and hours to show (you must save it and it works).