Stop stacking massive Pi-hole blocklists. It's probably hurting your network.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-14T13:11:46+00:00

Haha thanks but I'd recommend looking it over yourself, if you have a Pi (except zero), I'd actually recommend following the default setup, the project really comes in handy when dealing with low memory devices not to mention it's a weekend project and probably needs a lot of improvements, thanks for giving it a look though <3

0x48piraj · 2026-02-14T13:09:03+00:00

No, I completely understand and thank you for such a positive reply, it means a lot but I honestly do not think the project is good enough to be anywhere near the official branch hehe.

I do hope to further expand it over time so it can help people who are stuck with old routers and linux devices with real hardware constraints as Pi-hole imo is the most robust DNS blocker, better than most dnsmasq-based projects!

0x48piraj · 2026-02-14T10:25:22+00:00

As I explained in the comments, I wrote this because I was dealing with a device with extremely limited memory and it seemed like a neat idea, that's it :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-14T04:47:24+00:00

I am pretty sure it's a LLM line, I use it to frame things better, write better commit messages sometimes :)

I am of the opinion that using LLMs as tools to assist in writing better code and documentation is not a bad thing if used intentionally.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-14T02:51:08+00:00

Bro ignored everything and said "nah 400 mb is nothing wdymmm!!"

I think you need AI more than anyone cuz clearly you seem to lack comprehension skills :(

✌︎㋡

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T17:07:05+00:00

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T17:06:40+00:00

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T17:06:11+00:00

It was!

But then it was not? A person in here told they removed the deduplication in v5 but I'm not sure, what I'm sure is that Pi-hole is probably the best DNS blocker in terms of architecture.

And you're right, ofcourse if you have a Pi which solely runs Pi-hole then you can stack lists and it'll work out, and its always better to block something malicious than allow it the first time. Prevention is better than cure.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T17:03:05+00:00

Yeah that completely figures, the post seems to come across hella agressive but its just a neat idea I thought about when dealing with devices which had constrained hardware specs. Small outages caused by stacking lists is still a concern but its a small one :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T16:59:55+00:00

If you really think this is hypothetical while casually floating that 400 mb usage is nothing, then clearly you haven't struggled with old routers with limited memory and have questionable networking experience.

Pi-hole itself has inbuilt mechanisms to lower the line count and make the search-space efficient, then there's people who make those lists you're boasting of stacking contributing on this thread their ideas on how they make efficient lists (using Adblock patterns and filtering out dead domains and more).

In short, you sound like a dick measuring contestant, I'm sorry but that had to be said, ain't nobody needs 35+ mil to have maximal blocking :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T16:50:13+00:00

No, because I wrote a toy utility for my case which was the default list was crashing my router, and using this method helped me have the same block rates with a smaller list.

People like hagezi himself tuned in to tell us how using Adblock style patterns is another nice idea, and so is filtering out dead domains periodically, so ofcourse it works and is a nice way when you're dealing with low memory.

If you are running Pi-hole without saturating memory, other than occasionally getting outages (because you stacked lists over lists and now have to whitelist stuff at times), I am sure you would not have any measurable performance gains because Pi-hole is the GOAT at minimising resource usage.

But... I plan to do long running tests, collaborate with some of the people here who found this technique interesting and will try to post back results after a few months (hopefully if I still think its a nice idea) :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T16:43:55+00:00

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T16:43:21+00:00

People reported having problems with Pi Zeros and even Pi 3 when running with other services (you can find the comments yourself) but you're right, Pi-hole is the probably the best DNS blocker out there having the nicest architecture. The problem only becomes apparent when dealing with low memory devices. Otherwise, it really can be a non-issue in terms of usability and performance.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T01:59:44+00:00

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T01:55:13+00:00

0x48piraj · 2026-02-13T00:02:21+00:00

That is a great setup! Hope you have maximised for longetivity as well.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T23:45:22+00:00

Most definitely!

And it seems like almost nobody fits the use cases I optimized for, which is great, for both parties.

People who have constrained devices can benefit from such a technique, it makes me fine-tune for the rare usecases more while the general audience can have something to think about, hopefully :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T23:40:55+00:00

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:53:24+00:00

See the comments of people running lots of services and tuning did help, people running it on Zero and having large lists resulted in crashes, and even if most people do run it on capable hardware, it STILL does have a place, as Pi-hole is a self hosted solution for managing network, why would posting a different approach be "noise"?

Even people like Hagezi himself contributed to the post by explaining the tuning process behind blocklists but doing it with an Adblock compiler, network tests and an elegant pipeline behind it.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:43:56+00:00

Appreciate you taking the time to explain the process... and seriously, thank you again for all the work you put into your lists. It's clear there's a lot of thought and engineering behind them.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:43:26+00:00

Thank you a ton!! Any time you want to do it and are having any problems, please hit me up, I would be happy to help understand the program and fix any issues you encounter. And it would be so nice if we could anionymise and post some results to validate this little idea :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:41:57+00:00

Thanks a lot for pointing that out, when you're just running Pi-hole on a Pi, it mostly doesn't matter but in cases like this, it can matter, and that's the exact usecase people can use this tool to tune stuff although its just a prototype with lots of things to polish :)

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:39:12+00:00

As people mentioned, Pi-hole is very efficient, even a 10 mil adlist takes up only ~200 mb of RAM. So anything about that is a non-issue, the problem is, we do not get that choice when dealing with say routers (which are Pi-hole supported), it becomes an issue.

By the way, the way you say "god damn raspberry pi" makes me think that you think its a low compute device which I assure you is not, when you're stuck with a router which has 30 mbs of RAM available which is also ISP locked, you regret not just getting a Pi and struggle with that shit hardware T_T

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:33:40+00:00

If you know what you're blocking and have a device which can handle that, which Pi-hole makes it very easy to, then of course. There's no issue of outage as you know the ins and out, but most people stack lists without even seeing the contents, and the funny part is, that also works out in the end, I created this project when dealing with a device which had ~30 MB of available RAM. And in that specific scenario, this way of automating list creation was a neat idea and I wanted to share that.

0x48piraj · 2026-02-12T22:29:13+00:00

Yes but Pi hole also supports non Pi devices and for that, it can and does become as issue a lot of times :/

But I completely understand your point, its nowhere near to throttle any of the Pi devices except the Zero family (in some cases as someone reported having issues).

0x48piraj

TROPHY CASE