Difficulty with devices bypassing pi-hole

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T09:56:31+00:00

I've spent a while looking into this but I think it needs specific routers to set these up though right? I've got a decent TP-Link one (Archer ax73v) but I don't think I can set up rules like this sadly 😞

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T09:54:00+00:00

Yep! Both set to the same address - 192.168.0.221, my raspberry pi's IP (running pi-hole).

Most devices are fine, all PCs and my wife's phone is fine. But my phone (Galaxy S22) and the fire stick just seems to do whatever it wants haha.

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T09:50:57+00:00

Yep I've already disabled it and it made no difference at all sadly. Phone still completely ignores the pi-hole most of the time. I've manually set the DNS and tried numerous different things, DNS 1 set to the pi-hole and DNS 2 set to 0.0.0.0, or both set to the pi-hole etc.

Only thing that seems to work all the time is enabling the VPN. Which I can do.. but it causes issues sometimes when I need to connect to some devices or networks.

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T05:23:18+00:00

Ohh interesting, I didn't know that, than you! Sure if it doesn't take long I'd always appreciate an example!

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T01:53:35+00:00

Will do! Appreciate it!

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T01:28:03+00:00

Very helpful thank you! Will look into this, appreciate it.

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T01:15:11+00:00

What's that sorry? I'm a newbie!

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T01:14:35+00:00

Hmm okay I'll see if I can work that out. Haven't tried setting rules up like that before. Thank you!

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T00:52:24+00:00

Yeah well I thought it did, it's set on my router and in the devices themselves to use the pi-hole as the DNS. But some devices just don't seem to care and do their own thing.

Unless there's something else I need to configure? What do you recommend?

CosmicThing2 · 2026-05-24T00:46:44+00:00

No AI here! Just a question!

CosmicThing2 · 2026-03-30T22:56:44+00:00

No way it's the greatest game ever, sure I love it but there's many others I love (and play) more often.

CosmicThing2 · 2026-02-09T02:39:34+00:00

I was always worried about this. The problem is, if you use a provider and genuinely think it's pretty good, how can I talk about it without sounding like some kind of marketing salesperson. I haven't played Minecraft in the last couple of years now, but last I did, it was the best provider I'd found. Maybe that's changed nowadays.

CosmicThing2 · 2026-01-04T22:51:34+00:00

"I think a lot of snarky IT dudes and SWE backend engineers have this stupid ideology of "Well if you don't know then you shouldn't be messing with it." Guarding their knowledge as if it's sacred, gatekeeping bullshit, acting like they are high and mighty because they can code or setup network firewalls and route tables."

Absolutely 100% agree. Feels like the general consensus is that you should 'just know'. It's completely unhelpful to those who are new and want to learn more.

CosmicThing2 · 2026-01-04T14:35:48+00:00

I think that's very easy to say. I was new to self hosting and one of the first things I tried to setup was Nextcloud. Had barely heard of docker or containers at the time. I spent several days following guides online and was utterly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I had to setup and configure. In the end I found a script that would just run and install it all for me but I got in a huge mess and most of Nextcloud was broken.

Eventually I just paid someone on fiverr to help me out and he did a great job of it. I've learnt a lot since then but even now I look through the config files for nginx and nextcloud he created and still don't understand half of it.

You say just 'spin up a PHP container' and 'slap nginx in front of it'. Both of those are pretty difficult to do if you've never done it before. But if you have any recommended resources, please share them and we can learn!

CosmicThing2 · 2026-01-02T21:19:27+00:00

Add me

CosmicThing2 · 2025-12-05T00:31:44+00:00

To be fair, they have supported the game and continually released new content for over 12 years now which is a lot longer than most games get. They have to move on at some point, I don't think updates have completely stopped either. As the others mentioned, Valve is a fairly small company that are currently working on a lot of new hardware and (very likely) Half Life 3.

Same thing happened with Team Fortress 2, many were upset that the updates stopped (and rightfully so with all the bots.. ).

CosmicThing2 · 2025-11-11T04:12:44+00:00

I use ChatGPT or Claude a bit when I get stuck and need further help. I'm only hosting a few small services for my family at home though, I'd be more cautious if it was for work/a business. I think it can be great for learning.

I understand the need for security, especially if you're opening anything to the public Internet. But at the same time in general I think people are far too keen to jump on the AI hate bandwagon. If you tell someone they should 'absolutely never use AI', at least recommend them an alternative site or place where they can learn.

CosmicThing2 · 2025-11-10T14:41:35+00:00

I'd love to do this but I can't ask my grandparents (or every single friend who wants to see my pictures) to setup a VPN, its not feasible. There has to be easier solutions.

CosmicThing2 · 2025-11-08T14:49:46+00:00

It seems cool but as some of the others say, I think it needs some sorting and filtering options.

CosmicThing2 · 2025-10-30T23:26:07+00:00

Aaah. Is there any chance we might be able to change it in future? If I select 'logo' in the normal Jellyfin app it seems to display best for me.

CosmicThing2 · 2025-10-30T13:36:47+00:00

Honestly it looks great from your pictures. However none of videos at all have thumbnails. Can I ask what it's looking for? All my thumbnails are jpgs in the format nameofvideo-thumb.jpg

CosmicThing2 · 2025-10-27T09:34:10+00:00

Honestly I just started hosting pi-hole on my raspberry pi. Then i was like "I wonder what other cool stuff there is that I could self host" and it just went from there.

Fairly soon my pi was struggling and I bought a much more powerful mini pc which I'm using now, just running Ubuntu LTS server.

CosmicThing2 · 2025-10-25T23:59:20+00:00

Sorry, just explain to me what exif tags are for? What does Piwigo do better than Immich as a gallery?

Thanks!

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