Pi-hole

Pi-hole at a glance

Pi-hole is a popular open-source network-wide ad and tracker blocker that acts as a DNS sink, common in homelabs and small networks. Pi-hole ships regular releases across its components plus security fixes; as a DNS server the whole network relies on, keeping it current and access-controlled matters.

For admins updates run through the built-in updater (pihole -up), covering the core, web interface and FTL resolver together. The admin web interface must not be exposed to the internet — keep it on the internal network behind authentication. Because Pi-hole sits in the DNS path for every device, an outage or compromise affects everything — treat it as infrastructure, keep a fallback resolver, and back up the configuration. After updating, verify that DNS resolution and blocking still work. Track releases so component fixes aren't missed; patchletter surfaces new Pi-hole versions.