Tiny HomeLab: Setup pihole with docker

If you already have a raspberry pi (Or any home server) with linux and docker installed, setting up pihole is quite simple. I prefer using docker-compose files to manage the services on my raspberry-pi instead of using docker run commands, since the configuration is at one place and managing the service is one “docker-compose up/down”command away.

To Setup

• Create an empty folder:

    mkdir pihole
  

• Crete a file named docker-compose.yaml file in the directory pihole.

    touch  pihole/docker-compose.yaml
  

• Here is what the docker-compose.yaml should look like

    version: "3"
    # More info at https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole/ and https://docs.pi-hole.net/
    services:
    pihole:
        container_name: pihole
        image: pihole/pihole:latest
        # For DHCP it is recommended to remove these ports and instead add: network_mode: "host"
        ports:
        - "53:53/tcp"
        - "53:53/udp"
        - "67:67/udp" # Only required if you are using Pi-hole as your DHCP server
        - "8080:80/tcp"
        environment:
        TZ: 'Asia/Calcutta'
        WEBPASSWORD: 'password' # This is the password for the web UI.
        # Volumes store your data between container upgrades
        volumes:
        - './etc-pihole:/etc/pihole'
        - './etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d'    
        #   https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole#note-on-capabilities
        cap_add:
        - NET_ADMIN # Recommended but not required (DHCP needs NET_ADMIN)      
        restart: always
  
  

• Start the docker with following command, this will download the images and start the container

    docker compose up -d
  

• Once the container is ready, web UI is available at

    http://<your-pihole-ip>/admin
  

• Once configured you would need to change the DNS IP of your home router to the pihole IP.

To stop the service

• use following command

    docker compose down
  

To Update

• Update using following command

    docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
  

• Prune the unused old images

    docker image prune