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README.md

Pi-Hole + Unbound - 2 Containers

(Synology-compatible!)

Description

Running Pi-Hole in Docker can be challenging due to networking requirements by Pi-Hole, this is especially true when the ports that Pi-Hole uses are shared by the host it's running on (this is true for Synology in the default configuration).

This project uses a macvlan Docker network to place your containers on your main network, with their own IP addresses and MAC addresses.

  • This docker-compose runs the following 2 containers
    • Pi-Hole (pihole/pihole) - Official from Pi-Hole
    • Unbound (mvance/unbound) - There are several choices here but I like this one the best

Pi-Hole uses Unbound as it's resolver, and Unbound uses Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and CleanBrowsing upstream in order to support DNSSEC and DNS-over-TLS. This is an important detail about this particular setup-- we are not making queries direct to the root servers as some of the Pi-Hole docs show in their examples. Here's a snippet from the Unbound config (v1.8.3 as of writing this doc) showing what's happening:

...
    forward-zone:
        # Forward all queries (except those in cache and local zone) to
        # upstream recursive servers
        name: "."
        
        # Queries to this forward zone use TLS
        forward-tls-upstream: yes
        
        # https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Test+Servers


        # Cloudflare
        forward-addr: 1.1.1.1@853#cloudflare-dns.com
        forward-addr: 1.0.0.1@853#cloudflare-dns.com

        # CleanBrowsing
        forward-addr: 185.228.168.9@853#security-filter-dns.cleanbrowsing.org
        forward-addr: 185.228.169.9@853#security-filter-dns.cleanbrowsing.org
...

If you want to change any of this Unbound config then you can fork MatthewVance's unbound-docker repo and modify his unbound.sh file.

Disclaimer

Using this type of configuration on a Synology NAS is somewhat of an advanced use-case, and it should come with some security/stability considerations:

  • Enabling SSH on your Synology NAS is non-default and should be done with care.
    • I would recommend (1) configuring SSH to not use default port 22 and (2) to never forward the SSH port outside of your home network.
  • Poking around in the Synology CLI can lead to bad things in your NAS if you you don't know what you're doing. As a rule of thumb I would not touch any files outside of the /volumeX/ folders unless you know what you're doing. These are the folders which are reflected to the user inside of File Station GUI.

Instructions

Hold your horses and configure some stuff first...

  • Update docker-compose.yaml to match your environment, eg. IP addresses/subnets.
    • Take note of the networks.home.driver_opts.parent value, the default value of ovs_eth1 is for using the 2nd ethernet port on a Synology NAS with Open vSwitch enabled (configured in Control Panel -> Network -> Network Interface -> Manage), if disabled use eth1 instead, or whichever other interface you might be using in your setup.
  • Add a .env file next to the docker-compose.yaml so you can pass in the ${WEBPASSWORD} - this is your Pi-Hole admin password. You can optionally leave this step out and set the password via CLI (pihole -a -p) after the Pi-Hole is running
  • Update the secondary/backup nameserver in the pihole/config/resolv.conf file, or remove it if you don't have a backup (would recommend having one!)
  • Lastly, optionally, you can provide some manual DNS entries in the pihole/config/dnsmasq.conf and/or pihole/config/hosts files

Run it!

Copy the files up to your Docker host (eg Synology)

Note: Synology does not support docker-compose via their GUI but the running containers that get created here will be visible there when you're done.

On client machine:

# Make sure the target directory exists first! 
#  Can use something like `mkdir -p /volume1/docker/pihole-unbound`

cd docker-pihole-unbound
scp -r ./* [email protected]:/volume1/docker/pihole-unbound/

On the Docker host (eg Synology)

cd /volume1/docker/pihole-unbound
sudo docker-compose up -d

Note: If you're using Synology, you'll need to scp these files to your NAS and run it from the CLI since docker-compose is not currently supported through their DSM GUI.

Test it!

Test your configuration with dig

Note: change the IP to your new Pi-Hole's IP

dig google.com @192.168.1.5
# Expecting "status: NOERROR"

You can also test for DNSSEC functionality:

dig sigfail.verteiltesysteme.net @192.168.1.5
# Expecting "status: SERVFAIL"

dig sigok.verteiltesysteme.net @192.168.1.5
# Expecting "status: NOERROR"

Serve it!

If all looks good, configure your router/DHCP server to serve your new Pi-Hole IP address (192.168.1.5) to your clients.

Note: it may take some time for the current DHCP leases to renew and for clients to get the new DNS service info -- generally the default is 24 hours or less.

Update it!

When updated container images are released you can execute these commands on your Docker host to pull them in and run them

cd /volume1/docker/pihole-unbound
sudo docker-compose pull
sudo docker-compose down
sudo docker-compose up -d

Acknowledgements