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Pi-Hole-Unbound Pi-Hole-Unbound

Container

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A Linux network-level advertisement and Internet tracker blocking application which acts as a DNS sinkhole. This version has Ubound software installed on it so you don't need to rely on external DNS providers. When the installation is complete, navigate to your.ip.goes.here:1010/admin. Follow the article here

Image details

Pulls: 2.4M
Architecture: amd64, arm64, arm/v7
Image size: 122 MB
Latest: 2024.03.2
User: cbcrowe
Created: Dec 31, 2020
Updated: 2 years ago
Status: active

Configuration

Type
Container
Platform
linux
Image
cbcrowe/pihole-unbound:latest
Ports
53:53/tcp53:53/udp1010:80/tcp4443:443/tcp
Volumes
/etc/pihole : /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/PiHole-Unbound/etc/dnsmasq.d : /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/PiHole-Unbound/DNS
Env vars
ServerIP=192.168.0.XTZ=Europe\LondonDNSSEC=trueDNS1=127.0.0.1#5335DNS2=127.0.0.1#5335
Restart
unless-stopped

Template by novaspirit

Notes

Template created by Pi-Hosted Series
Check our Github page: https://github.com/pi-hosted/pi-hosted

Official Webpage: https://pi-hole.net/
Official Docker Documentation: https://github.com/chriscrowe/docker-pihole-unbound/tree/master/one-container

Pi-Hosted dedicated documentation: pi-hole.md




When the installation is complete, navigate to your.ip.goes.here:1010/admin. Follow the article here if you run into issues binding to port 53. For extra information on this container visit the mainteiner GitHub Page. You can add ports: 5335 to access Ubound externally; 22 to enable SSH; 67 to use DHCP Server. Add those ports in Show advanced options. if you run into issues binding to port 53. If you like to use Pi-Hole's built in DHCP-Server change the Network type to host and open advance options and scroll to Labels and add: NET_ADMIN with the value True. When you do so, specify a port is no more needed, navigate to your.ip.goes.here/admin.

Standalone Install

Select an install method, to see config/commands for deploying Pi-Hole-Unbound

Installation method

Install on Portainer

Import all app templates into your Portainer instance, for easy 1-click deploys

  1. Ensure both Docker and Portainer are installed, and up-to-date
  2. Log into your Portainer web UI
  3. Under Settings → App Templates, paste the below URL
  4. Head to Home → App Templates, and the list of apps will show up
  5. Select Pi-Hole-Unbound, fill in any config options, and hit Deploy

Template Import URL

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lissy93/portainer-templates/main/templates.json
Show Me demo

More install options in our documentation.

Pi-Hole + Unbound on Docker

Use Docker to run Pi-Hole with an upstream Unbound resolver.

Changing this repo to support 2 different docker-compose configurations now:
  • one-container (new) - Install Unbound directly into the Pi-Hole container
- This configuration contacts the DNS root servers directly, please read the Pi-Hole docs on Pi-hole as All-Around DNS Solution to understand what this means. - With this approach, we can also simply our networking since macvlan is no longer necessary.
  • two-container (legacy) - Use separate containers for Pi-Hole and Unbound
- This configuration uses MatthewVance's unbound-docker container to implement encrypted DNS to third party DNS resolvers (eg Cloudflare). This is arguably less privacy-friendly since you're handing your DNS queries to those 3rd party providers.

Serve Pi-Hole-Unbound on your own domain behind Caddy, Nginx or Traefik. Fill in your domain and copy the result. It's a starting point, some apps need their own base URL or extra headers set too.

Proxying pi-hole-unbound.example.com to http://pihole-unbound:80

Add this to your Caddyfile

pi-hole-unbound.example.com {
	reverse_proxy http://pihole-unbound:80
}

Check the logs first

Nine times out of ten the logs tell you exactly what went wrong.

  • In Portainer, go to Containers, click the container, then Logs. Or run docker logs pihole-unbound
  • Exit codes help too: 137 means killed, usually out of memory. 126 or 127 means the command inside the image is broken.

Port already in use

If deployment fails with "Bind for 0.0.0.0:53 failed: port is already allocated", something else on your server is using that port.

  • Find what's using it: sudo ss -tlnp | grep :53
  • Stop the other service, or pick a different host port. In 53:53 only the left number is yours to change, the right one belongs to the app.

Running but the page won't load

The container is up but nothing appears in your browser.

  • Use your server's real IP: http://your-server-ip:1010. The 0.0.0.0 link Portainer shows isn't a real address.
  • Give it a minute after first deploy, pihole-unbound can take a while to initialise.
  • Make sure your firewall allows the port, e.g. sudo ufw allow 1010

Permission denied on volumes

If the logs show "permission denied", the app can't write to its data folder on the host.

  • Fix the ownership: sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/PiHole-Unbound (and the same for the other mapped folders)

Image won't pull

Test the pull directly on the host: docker pull cbcrowe/pihole-unbound:latest

  • "manifest unknown" means the tag no longer exists. This template uses latest, so try pinning a specific version instead.
  • "toomanyrequests" is the Docker Hub rate limit. Log in with docker login to raise it.
  • "no space left on device" means a full disk. Reclaim space with docker system prune

"exec format error"

This means the image was built for a different CPU architecture than your server.

  • This image supports: amd64, arm64, arm/v7
  • Check yours with uname -m: x86_64 is amd64, aarch64 is arm64. Raspberry Pi and other ARM boards are the usual culprits.

Container keeps restarting

The unless-stopped restart policy relaunches the app after every crash, so the real error can scroll past.

  • Check the logs right after a restart, the last few lines before it died are the useful ones.
  • Get the exit code with docker inspect pihole-unbound --format '{{.State.ExitCode}}'
  • Still stuck? Redeploy once with the restart policy set to no so the failure stays visible.

Raise an issue

Found something which isn't working as it should? Here's how to report it.

A single container

Pi-Hole-Unbound runs as one container, the simplest kind of app here. Just the one image to pull and nothing else wired up alongside it.

The app image

An image is the app packed up ready to go, everything Pi-Hole-Unbound needs bundled into one download. This template pulls cbcrowe/pihole-unbound:latest, which Docker fetches once (about 122 MB) and then starts your own copy from.

Where the image comes from

Docker pulls its images from registries, public libraries of ready-built apps. Pi-Hole-Unbound's comes from Docker Hub, published by cbcrowe.

Version tags

The bit after the colon in the image name is the version tag. Here it's latest, which always points at the newest build, so a redeploy can bump you to a newer release without you asking. Newest right now is 2024.03.2. Pin a specific tag if you would rather stay on one version.

Which machines it runs on

Every image is built for particular CPU types. This one ships for amd64, arm64, arm/v7, so it runs on both regular x86 servers and ARM boards like a Raspberry Pi.

Ports

A port is the door the app answers on. A mapping like 53:53 means it's reachable on port 53 of your server, where the left number is yours to change and the right one belongs to the app. Once it's running, open http://your-server-ip:1010 in a browser. It opens:

  • 53:53
  • 53:53 over UDP
  • 1010:80, likely the web interface
  • 4443:443, likely the web interface

Volumes

A volume is where Pi-Hole-Unbound keeps its files so they survive an update or a restart. Without one, anything it saves would sit inside the container and vanish the moment it's recreated. This template mounts:

  • /etc/pihole from /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/PiHole-Unbound on the host
  • /etc/dnsmasq.d from /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/PiHole-Unbound/DNS on the host

Environment variables

Environment variables are the settings you hand over when you deploy, things like a password or a timezone. Pi-Hole-Unbound takes 5 of them, all with defaults you can leave alone or tweak:

  • ServerIP, defaults to 192.168.0.X. Insert the Raspberry Pi IP here
  • TZ, defaults to Europe\London
  • DNSSEC, pick one of true, false
  • DNS1, defaults to 127.0.0.1#5335
  • DNS2, defaults to 127.0.0.1#5335

Restart policy

The restart policy here is unless-stopped, so Docker restarts Pi-Hole-Unbound after a crash or reboot, but leaves it off when you stop it on purpose. You can change this on the deploy screen. The choices are no (never restart), on-failure (only after a crash), unless-stopped (restart unless you stop it), and always (bring it back no matter what).

Networking

Nothing custom is set, so Pi-Hole-Unbound sits on Docker's default bridge network: its own private space that reaches the outside world only through the ports it publishes.

Container name

Once it's deployed, Portainer names the container pihole-unbound. That's what you'll spot in the containers list and use in commands like docker logs pihole-unbound.

Platform

The platform is linux, the kind of system the container is built to run on. Docker and Portainer handle this on a normal Linux server.

Portainer app templates

Zooming out, this whole page comes from a Portainer app template: a short recipe telling Portainer how to set Pi-Hole-Unbound up. Add the template list to Portainer once, then deploying Pi-Hole-Unbound is a click rather than a wall of config.