AdBlocker, General, RaspberryPi, Ubuntu

AdGuard Home is a network-wide software for blocking ads & tracking. After you set it up, it’ll cover ALL your home devices, and you don’t need any client-side software for that. With the rise of Internet-Of-Things and connected devices, it becomes more and more important to be able to control your whole network..

After going through this article you will be able install and setup the adblocker Adguard Home on your Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu Server.

When you set up Adguard Home, all the devices that you do not want to show ads or porn will be cleared of this, so that your children won’t see any inappropriate content like porn, adult videos anymore. Also, your browsing experience will be much cleaner when you browse the internet with your web browser because you will only see the content that is important to you and you will not be bothered by advertisements anymore,

Prerequisites

• An always ON machine/server
  • If you are using Raspberry Pi then Raspbian OS Desktop or Lite version installed / Imaged on SD card.
  • If you are using Linux Ubuntu or any other debian distribution, OS should be installed and up and running.
• Static IP address for the server [YOUR IP ADDRESS]
• SSH enabled and working.

Procedure

Through another machine, terminal try to ping the static IP address of the server to see if it’s alive and responding

Make sure that you replace “[YOUR IP ADDRESS]” with the correct IP

ping -t [YOUR IP ADDRESS]

Now go to your Raspberry PI or Ubuntu Server, open a terminal and update and upgrade your server

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing AdGuard Home to your RPi / Ubuntu Server

Download AdGuard Home

Now let’s download the Adguard Home on the server, type the following command in the terminal

cd /tmp
wget https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_linux_arm.tar.gz

Now extract the zip file

tar -xvf AdGuardHome_linux_arm.tar.gz /home/$user

Go to your home and AdGuard directory

cd /home/$user/AdGuardHome

Install AdGuard Home

Now Install the AdGuard Software using the command below

By running this command, the software will get installed on the device, and it will be set up as a service that will automatically start at boot

sudo ./AdGuardHome -s install

Once the install process has been completed, you will see a message appear in your command line.

You should see two URLs provided in this message: the localhost IP and the local network IP address.

The second address is the one you will be using for accessing the web interface from another device

Initial Configuration of AdGuard Home

Now that we have successfully installed AdGuard Home to our Raspberry Pi, we can now use its web interface.

When you first load up the AdGuard home web interface, you will need to go through some initial setup steps

Accessing the Web Interface

Before we can configure AdGuard, we need to load up its web interface.

Accessing the web interface only requires you to access a web browser on the same network as your Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu Server

To access the AdGuard Home web interface, you will need to know your Server’s static IP address

You can either use the address that was provided at the end of the previous section. Alternatively, you can use the following command to retrieve the local IP address

hostname -I

Once you know your Raspberry Pi’s IP address, you can now access the web interface.

To open the AdGuard Home web interface, go to the following address in your web browser.

Make sure that you replace “[YOUR IP ADDRESS]” with the correct IP

http://[YOUR IP ADDRESS]:3000

Running the Initial Configuration Steps

When you first launch the web interface for AdGuard Home on your Raspberry Pi, you will need to follow some initial setup steps.

The first step will welcome you to the AdGuard Home software.

To proceed with the initial setup steps, click the “Get Started” button.

Next, you will be asked if you want to configure the ports and interfaces you want AdGuard Home to operate on with your Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu Server

Most people will be able to skip the settings on this page. However, if you are using another program that will be using port 80, you can change this using the provided textbox.

Once you are happy with all of your settings, click the “Next” button to proceed

We can now create an administrator user for accessing the web interface.

You can set the username to whatever you would like it to be. However, for the password, make sure you set something that is secure and not easily guessable.

Even if your network is not accessible from the outside world, it will help ensure that no one on the local network can mess with your settings.

Once you have set a username and password, click the “Next” button to proceed with the setup

This following screen tells you the steps you can follow to use your new Raspberry Pi AdGuard Home as your DNS server.

To get the benefits of AdGuard Home, you have to either change your router’s DNS to point to the Raspberry Pi / Ubuntu Server or modify the settings of each device.

Once you have configured your devices to point at the Raspberry Pi’s / Ubuntu Server’s IP address, you can click the “Next” button to proceed.

You have now completed the initial setup steps for the AdGuard Home software.

You can now proceed to the dashboard by clicking the “Open Dashboard” button

At this point, you can now proceed to use the web interface.

Accessing the AdGuard Home Dashboard

You can access the AdGuard Home dashboard by going to the following address in your web browser.

Make sure that you swap out “[YOUR IP ADDRESS]” with the IP of your server

http://[YOUR IP ADDRESS]

Please note that if you are not using the default port that AdGuard tries to use, you will need to add it to the address.

For example, if you set it to use port 8080 for the web interface, you will need to go to the following address instead.

http://[YOUR IP ADDRESS]:8080

Upon going to the dashboard, you will be forced to log in.

To login to AdGuard Home, you will need to enter the username and password you set when going through the initial setup steps.

Once you have entered your details, click the “Sign in” button to proceed.

You will now have full access to the AdGuard Home dashboard and all of its settings.

Dashboard Options

If you have already configured one of your devices to use AdGuard Home, you should already see some statistics here.

At the top of the screen, you will notice five different menu options that you can use.

1 – The first is the dashboard. The dashboard is the current screen you are using and provides you with a brief overview of what AdGuard is doing.

2 – The second option is the settings menu. If you want to change the behavior of AdGuard, this is where you need to look.

You can also use this menu to enable extra functionality. For example, you can enable HTTPS support or change the upstream DNS server.

3 – The third menu option is where all the settings for your filters exist.

You can use these options to configure your DNS blocklists, whitelists, and also rewrites.

By default, the only filter that is enabled is the AdGuard DNS Filter.

4 – The fourth menu option takes you to the query log screen.

On this screen, you can see all the DNS requests that are being made by your devices. This allows you to keep track of what websites users on your network might be accessing.

If you would prefer AdGuard Home not to keep track of these, you can modify this behavior within the “Logs Configuration” section of the “General Settings“.

5 – The fifth and final menu option will take you to the setup guide.

The setup guide provides steps for configuring devices to make use of the AdGuard Homes filtered DNS.

Hopefully, at this stage, you will have a good idea of using AdGuard and finding all of its settings.

You will quickly find that AdGuard is very straightforward to configure, with most settings being clear and concise.

Configuration Backup

To take backup of the configuration and settings simply copy the following file in a safe place

/home/$user/AdguardHome/AdguardHome.yaml

To retrieve your configurations and settings in a new installation or a corrupt configuration, simply copy the above file in the AdGuardHome directory.

Conclusion

You should now have the AdGuard Home software up and running on your Raspberry Pi with devices using its DNS server.

Using AdGuard Home is a relatively straightforward process, and you will quickly see that it is relatively effective at blocking ads from loading.

It’s ease of use, and it’s simple settings allows AdGuard to be an excellent alternative to the Pi-Hole software.

If you have run into any issues with getting the AdGuard Home software to work on your Raspberry Pi or Ubuntu , feel free to leave a comment below.

Refer similar articles on my blog page