Unbound Makes Pi-hole WAY Better (and more private) | Unbound + Pi-hole Setup Tutorial

Set up Unbound to act as a recursive DNS server to use with Pi-hole for a complete private, ad-blocking experience!

DISCLAIMER: The information in this video has been self-taught through years of technical tinkering. While we do our best to provide accurate, useful information, we make no guarantee that our viewers will achieve the same level of success. WunderTech does not assume liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to damage caused directly or indirectly from its content or associated media. Use at your own risk.

WunderTech is a trade name of WunderTech, LLC.

0:00 Intro
0:11 What is Unbound?
1:53 How to Configure Pi-hole and Unbound in Docker
5:33 Configuring a Macvlan Network Interface
8:12 Editing the Unbound Configuration File
10:05 Confirming Unbound is Working
11:04 Accessing Pi-hole Admin Interface
11:39 Changing Default DNS Server on DHCP Server
12:24 Final Thoughts

#pihole #dns #docker

[QuikTechSolutions]

Awesome video Frank. I now have a clearer understanding about what Unbound actually is. Never really fully understood it. But now thanks to you I do! Have a great day.

[vitorbritesvitor]

Great video and I've installed and uninstalled pihole and unbound from Casaos a thousand times because it never worked, I always thought that pihole had to have one IP and unbound another IP but no one ever said that. First video that gives a different IP for each one, I'll test it.

[TechMeOut]

Excellent video Frank! This is really taking DNS based privacy to the next level.

[CedroCron]

Another great video Frank, thank you!

[Sappengold]

Hello, great video and very clear instructions. I did this on a NUC. Had do to few steps differenlty, but pretty similar.
But I'm facing an another "problem" my router has IPV6 and I can not turn it off and its seems to prefer the traffic over Ipv6. I have no idea how to enable this configuration to include IPv6. Do you happen to know any methods?

[reyskidude]

another way to check is to run an online dns leak test... if unbound is working, it should report your own IP address as the DNS

[reyskidude]

also, there will be sites or devices that uses hardcoded DNS... you can monitor this by setting up firewall rules on your router (mine's Synology) to deny traffic to Google DNS on port 53 and see the hits pile up over time... to counter this, first setup an allow rule for your pihole/unbound servers to port 53, then setup a deny rule below to all traffic to port 53... at this moment, I see 14% of hits are denied DNS traffic to Google

[wojtek-]

Just a couple things not mentioned. If you using pfsense or opnsense, you can just configure Unbound on your router. And you should never run one instance of pihole. Always run two and the second one should be on another device, like a raspberry pi or in an lxc in proxmox. Setting up only one on Synology, if you reboot your synology or a network issue, then your whole network loses internet access.

[synlergeider]

For what are the LOCAL + FOWRARD ZONE Settings +files?

[Dethawk]

After deployment container manager's UI would give me errors that the ports configured were duplicated and wouldn't allow me to set the container to auto-start/restart. I went ahead and set this via command line on the nas:

$ sudo docker update pihole --restart=always
$ sudo docker update unbound --restart=always

@WunderTech - do you see any issue with this configuration? Did you omit auto-restart for a reason?

[KrazyMO]

Just FYI, I had to watch an earlier video where you mentioned it, but if you're trying to get this to work and you are using bond0 on the NAS it won't work. I had to reset my network settings so I could get this to work. Thanks for the video and if you're bored how do we keep this updated?

[TazzSmk]

nice!
I wonder, how would you configure redundant setup with such NAS, plus opnsense/pfsense?
I think unbound is on by default on opnsense/pfsense itself, so just create another pihole instance on another device and point it there?
or would it make more sense to configure both pihole instances to point on both unbound instances?

[Maulana_rhodes]

Hello after setting it on one memory card will it work if I insert it into another pi

[BrenWaves-bz]

Great vid! So far so good on the setup steps, until after editing the unbound.config and removing the bottom section that you recommended. I then started the container again, both pihole and unbound started, but then unbound stopped, started, stopped, etc (off / on every minute or so). WHat do I do now, as I thought you said the edit corrected the issue? Thanks in advance.

[solodagci]

I wish you also did a tutorial on Raspberry Pi (not on docker)

[EddieBogart]

Frank, would it even be more private or secure by adding Stubby to the mix?

[bradvosburg]

"Error response from daemon: Bind mount failed"😥 my Synology volume is "Volume 1"....so I changed compose file to reflect that. Tried "Volume 1" and Volume1" and the lowercase variants of those. Error suggests it a path problem but don't know how to resolve it.

[ronald]

i need unbound with adguard home. can't make it work

[kevinoconnor]

When you talk about encrypting DNS queries with Unbound do you mean between Pi-Hole and Unbound? I don't believe that recursive queries are able to be encrypted to the root and authorative DNS servers.

[lilchinito]

@WunderTech So I'm trying to understand this setup but it looks like to me this is installing both pihole and unbound. If I already have pihole installed and working; what am I exactly needing to add to get unbound to work properly with what I have already with Pihole?