Raspberry π

Reading this, I couldn't remember why I didn't start using PiHole, but now I remember that it was a PITA to get into my router's settings. You need to TELNET(!) into it, and there's one guide online where a clever bloke holds your hand through the whole thing...

Yeah, I’m a bit unsure how to do it using the virgin super hub...

Edit: turns out Virgin don’t let you fuck about with DNS so you have to manually point all devices at the pi hole, which is what I did anyway...

Now I just have to figure out how to point my netgear range extender to it.

My router wouldn't let me change internal DNS settings and when I set pihole IP as WAN DNS it didn't work. Ended up switching DHCP off on my router and using Pihole for DHCP. Works a treat now.

Got my openmediavault pi3 up and running, but don't understand the finer points of it at all. Created a user account with read and write permissions, created a shared folder, log in from laptop but can't read or write to it. Also, why are terminal commands so unintuitive? Pi is my only involvement in Linux type stuff so far and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Next roadblock is getting the Netgear wifi extender working with it. I tried changing the DNS in the settings but it completely stopped working, which is annoying.

Ah do you still get the two channels for wifi?

Thinking of doing this to a bt smarthum and powering the pi from the usb slot on the router.

You mean the 2g/5g channels?

Yes sorry brain not working (as if it ever does)

Oh yeah, the WiFi is unaffected. The Pi just handles DNS.

OK, raspberry pi people, I need some help I think.

I bought a cheap 3.5" screen (with XPT2046 chip) off aliexpress for my RPi 3B, the idea was to use pihole's chronometer2 thing to output pihole stats via console to the little screen.

Initially I put Raspbian Stretch Lite on it and then stuck pihole on there.

I didn't like the idea of using some weird driver/image from a chinese site and looking around the internet it appears with newer versions of raspbian you don't need drivers etc anyway.

I tried a bunch of stuff but had some issues getting it working.

I followed this guy's instructions here: http://ozzmaker.com/piscreen-driver-install-instructions-2/

I can do steps 1-4 with no problem, including successfully downloading and displaying the 'test' picture on the piscreen in step 4.

When I try to carry out step 5, it couldn't find "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf" at all. I guess this is because I'd installed stretch lite, rather than the full desktop one so it didn't have any x11 stuff installed at all?

And this is where I got stuck originally.

I tried to carry on to this guide: http://ozzmaker.com/enable-console-on-piscreen/

But IIRC when I tried steps 1-3 (adding the extra bit to cmdline.txt) and rebooted, it wouldn't boot again.

So... I started afresh but with the full version of Raspbian Stretch this time. I then managed to get through all of the steps on the first link and after doing the first 3 on the 2nd link, it's working!

I also had to change the raspi-config to log straight in and go to CLI and then added 'pihole -c' to the end of config.txt or something and that seems to make it boot straight up and show the chronometer stuff.

However, I can't seem to rotate the screen by changing the number in this bit on cmdline.txt - fbcon=rotate:2 to 0. Any ideas?

Also, do I really need the full-fat version of Stretch installed to make this work or is there a way I don't know about to get it going with lite?

Obligatory screenshot...

1 Attachment

Nice!

I got my screen working, flipped and persistently on. Not managed it with stretch lite, though. And don't understand enough about it to work out whether it'll be possible.

That's a pain you had to use the full fat OS. It's probably just a case of finding and installing the needed packages for it to work on Lite but I wouldn't know where to start...

Looks great though. I'd quite line a tiny OLED display with a count of the blocked ads...

I'd recommend it. The screen was a tenner off aliexpress. I think there's a way of doing it on the lite version. I've also got a new plan.

2nd pi 3 on the way. I've got a Ubiquiti Unifi wireless AP. Apparently you can run the Unifi controller (for dicking about/monitoring) and pihole on the same pi (running stretch lite) with no ill effects or issues.

So, I'll try to set this all up on the the new one and get my pihole screen thing working. Basically a test and live environment so I don't break the one giving me Internet.

I'm not sure what I've become...

Running the unifi controller on a PI is great. You can then use the cool android app to log into it and control everything. I assume it is also available for iOs.

No reason not to run PiHole on it as well. I think I had it installed for a while but then my conscience got the better of me.

Why?

Because advertising is how the vast majority of content on the internet is funded.

If I choose to consume said content I should probably not steal it.

It’s not stealing. You can also whitelist websites if you want to support them.

A lot of online advertising is intrusive and resource heavy, some websites even have background crypto currency miners that run in your browser now.

I thought that might be the answer, but all the ads on the porno sites are really annoying.

It’s not stealing.

Legally maybe not. Ethically, I think it is.

You can also whitelist websites if you want to support them.

True. But, ummmm really? And even so, you are just picking what to have for free and what to pay for.

A lot of online advertising is intrusive and resource heavy

True, but what's your point?

some websites even have background crypto currency miners that run in your browser now.

True, again so what?

True. But, ummmm really? And even so, you are just picking what to have for free and what to pay for.

Don't you do that with everything?
I mean, BBC - pay licence fee. No ads. (well apart from for their own stuff)
Choose not to watch all the other things

Amazon Prime / Netflix / NowTV apps: pay fee, get their adverts

I know that arguing with you I'm going to lose.

I'm struggling to get hass.io* working on as Pi3 - anyone have any tips on configuring wifi networks on a headless unit by messing with wpa_supplicant directly on an SD card?

* A free (as in beer, and also as in speech) OS, being used to serve as a home hub instead of anything in the google / amazon / apple ecosystems. I'm probably guilty of theft for using it. And murder. Next up, genocide, because I'll be using it to serve a hosts file to my home network that blocks trackers and other unwelcome crap on my network.

I also fast forward through adverts, or even just walk out of the room when they are. Anarchy and lawlessness reigns in the TW household.

Doesn't something like this work?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md

(Caveat: I've never tried editing files on the SD card directly but have tended to connect to a Pi over ethernet via SSH to set up the WiFi configuration before then disconnecting it to run wireless.)

I still had a hass.io server running on a VM on my laptop, using the same IP as the Pi...

So it looks as though I have actually configured it correctly (probably more by luck than anything else though...)

I press mute or change channels when the adverts come on on TV. Is this unethical too?