Ad blocker: Pi-hole v6 undergoes a slimming cure

Version 6 of the DNS-based advertising filter for the local network Pi-hole has been released. The developers have streamlined the software, which should take up less space and deliver more speed.

In the version announcement, the Pi-hole developers write that a web server and a REST API have now been moved directly into the pi-hole FTL binary file. This means that an external lighttpd web server and PHP are no longer required. lua has been part of pihole-FTL for some time, but the developers have now reprogrammed the web interface in it. They have completely overhauled it and split the settings into basic and expert settings, for example. The integrated web server natively supports HTTPS and offers options for using your certificates or automatically generated certificates (e.g., from Let's encrypt). Taken together, this makes the installation leaner and the system should be noticeably more intuitive.

Pi-hole: Blocked or allowed

Another new feature is allow lists, which work in the same way as the previous block lists, but allow access to domains. In Pi-hole, they are appropriately called Antigravity as a counterpart to the Gravity block lists.

Not only is the functional binary file installation leaner, the developers have also merged the configuration files. What was previously spread across several files is now contained in a consolidated .toml file. This makes it easier to manage and understand the settings. Anyone migrating from Pi-hole v5 does not need to do anything else, the configurations are automatically merged into the /etc/pihole/pihole.toml file.

There are several ways to change the configuration: direct editing of the .toml file, using a command line command, the Pi-hole developers cite “pihole-FTL --config dns.upstreams 8.8.8.8” as an example, via the API, via the web interface (which uses the API) and some environment variables. These should preferably be used for the configuration of the Docker variant.

Speaking of Docker. Here, too, the developers are “saving on calories”: instead of Debian, Alpine Linux is now the basis for the containers. This should greatly reduce the size of the images and improve future support. The detailed changelog for Pi-hole Docker lists numerous changes. If you want to update from Pi-hole v5 to the new v6 images, you will find a guide to the environment variables used in a separate migration guide –. Manual rework is required here to ensure correct configuration. Otherwise, the migration works as with the “bare metal” system and pulls the configuration files together into the new .toml file.

During installation, Pi-hole can now either deactivate lighttpd or, if the server is already needed elsewhere, switch to other ports itself (instead of 80 and 443, it then uses 8080 and only offers HTTP). During a brief test of the new version, the upstream DNS servers were not transferred to the GUI by the installation script, but they can be easily clicked on there. You can find out whether existing lighttpd servers are still running using sudo systemctl status lighttpd, where you should find “enabled” twice in the second line. If the autostart is “disabled” but desired, it can be reactivated with sudo systemctl enable lighttpd.

(dmk)