Wireguard AdBlocker, let’s take advantage of our VPN connection with Wireguard to use our local AdBlocker, like Pi-Hole, and keep our navigation Ad-free!
As I quickly showed in my previous BONUS TRACK, we could use Wireguard VPN to take advantage of all the features and customized configurations of our local AdBlocker.
After the publication, some of you, both from article's comments and Discord server, have raised interesting questions. So, in this Wireguard AdBlocker guide we'll take a few additional steps inside this configuration, in order to clarify all.
This article is focused on using Wireguard VPN to access our local AdBlocker on-the-go and it's taken for granted that all the necessary components, Wireguard for the VPN and Pi-Hole for the AdBlocker, have already been configured. Otherwise, the links for the tutorials needed to get it all done, are reported in this article.
For our configuration, I'm going to focus on a good old friend, that have been almost covered in past articles: Pi-Hole. Here's the link for the useful tutorial by anand and w3techie, if you need some configuration help:
Please support us by becoming a member to unlock the content. Join Now
version: "3.9"
services:
wireguard:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/wireguard:latest
container_name: Wireguard
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
environment:
- PUID=$PUID
- PGID=$PGID
- TZ=$TZ
- SERVERURL=<OUR PUBLIC IP>
- PEERS=Profile1,Profile2,OtherProfile
- PEERDNS=<OUR ADBLOCKER IP>
- INTERNAL_SUBNET=192.168.10.0/24
#
# SINGLE IP CONFIGURATION:
#
# Only the AdBlocker is reachable and used
# as DNS server
#
- ALLOWEDIPS=<OUR ADBLOCKER IP>
#
# MORE IPs CONFIGURATION:
#
# AdBlocker and other local devices
# are reachables
#
# - ALLOWEDIPS=<OUR ADBLOCKER IP>, 192.168.1.30, 192.168.1.55
#
# SUBNET CONFIGURATION:
#
# Assuming that our AdBlocker
# is on the subnet 192.168.1.0/24, we'll
# set the variable with the subnet only,
# otherwise we'll set the subnet and the
# AdBlocker IP
#
# - ALLOWEDIPS=192.168.1.0/24
# OR
# - ALLOWEDIPS=<OUR ADBLOCKER IP>, 192.168.1.0/24
#
- LOG_CONFS=false
volumes:
- $DOCKERDIR/appdata/wireguard:/config
ports:
- 51820:51820/udp
sysctls:
- net.ipv4.conf.all.src_valid_mark=1
restart: unless-stopped
For the purpose of this guide, the only IP that we need to allow is our AdBlocker's one.
3. Wireguard PiHole = AdBlocker Ready
Everything needed has been done, the last step is to turn on our Wireguard VPN and test if our AdBlocker is doing his job correctly.
I included it anyway to monitor the exposed ports of our Docker Compose Stack, other than the usual ones, from Traefik Dashboard, and because if someone wanted to try setting up a Spectrum application for using them customized domain name, it would only be necessary to add the appropriate Traefik HTTP router rules defining it.
I never configured a Spectrum application with Cloudflare, as it is for paid plans only, so I cannot guarantee that it would work.
How could I set a static IP to my Pi-Hole device/container?
Physical device (Debian Distro and based) set a static ip editing file /etc/network/interfaces:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address x.x.x.x # Static IP
netmask x.x.x.x
gateway x.x.x.x
Container we could use the same address of our Docker Compose Stack, coupled with a free port number, to reach our AdBlocker, setting the network mode to host, and environment variable WEB_PORT:
services:
pihole:
container_name: AdBlock
image: pihole/pihole:latest
network_mode: "host" # Configure this
[...]
environment:
[...]
WEB_PORT: '12345' # Configure this
[...]
We could also create a new network section, in the Docker Compose configuration, add a new subnet for AdBlocker and assign a static ip to it.
For the entire process, please refer to Anand's guide
This is too complex. Is there an all-in-one solution?
Yes of course. Our objective is to teach you. But there are some awesome self-contained all-in-one solutions that can achieve what is described in this guide. Take a look at the following projects:
GuardLlama - Open-Source VPN, Ad-blocker, and DNS Resolver
Concluding Remarks on Wireguard Adblocker
There are many approaches to achieving AdBlocking on the go. A combination of Wireguard PiHole is what we propose in this guide, which again can be achieved in multiple ways.
If you want to assign a dedicated device such as Raspberry Pi that is intended to do only one job, then a self-contained Wireguard AdBlocker such as PiVPN or GuardLlama might be the way to go.
On the other hand, if you prefer tinkering and having more control over how you setup applications in your infrastructure then manually setting up Wireguard as described in this guide might be the better route.
