Arch Linux ARM Install Pi-Hole On A Raspberry Pi¶

Note

Pi-Hole is not officially supported on the Arch Linux operating system.

Prerequisites¶

Installed and configured Arch Linux Arm operating system
Set a static IP address via DHCP or statically on the device
Installed Arch Linux Install Aur Helper

Note

Required to install package "pi-hole-server".

Environment¶

Tested on to a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
Using Nginx to serve Pi-Hole's web interface
Using pi-hole-server package for local area network (LAN)

Install Pi-Hole¶

Install required packages.
```
# pikaur -Syu pi-hole-server nginx-mainline php-fpm php-sqlite inetutils
```
Info

Pi-Hole Chronometer (pihole -c) utilizes the command "hostname" and therefore the package "inetutils" is required.
Set Pi-Hole web interface administrator password.
```
# pihole -a -p
```

Enable PHP required extensions.

# nano /etc/php/php.ini

extension=curl
extension=pdo_sqlite
extension=sockets
extension=sqlite3

Set PHP read permissions.

With the use of PHP v7.0 or newer, the PHP open_basedir directive defaults to empty. This means that PHP can therefore access every directory and file that can be read by the web server's user ID. For best security practice, the open_basedir directive will be intentionally set for the Pi-hole administrative web interface.

$ nano /etc/php/php.ini

open_basedir = /srv/http/pihole:/run/pihole-ftl/pihole-FTL.port:/run/log/pihole/pihole.log:/run/log/pihole-ftl/pihole-FTL.log:/etc/pihole:/etc/hosts:/etc/hostname:/etc/dnsmasq.d/02-pihole-dhcp.conf:/etc/dnsmasq.d/03-pihole-wildcard.conf:/etc/dnsmasq.d/04-pihole-static-dhcp.conf:/var/log/lighttpd/error-pihole.log:/proc/loadavg:/proc/meminfo:/proc/cpuinfo:/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp:/tmp

1. Create Nginx directory for site config.

# mkdir /etc/nginx/conf.d

1. Set Nginx general settings.

# nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

worker_processes  1;
events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include             mime.types;
    default_type        application/octet-stream;
    sendfile            on;
    keepalive_timeout   65;
    gzip                on;
    gzip_min_length     1000;
    gzip_proxied        expired no-cache no-store private auth;
    gzip_types          text/plain application/xml application/json application/javascript application/octet-stream text/css;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

1. Create Nginx site config.

# cp /usr/share/pihole/configs/nginx.example.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/pi-hole.conf

1. Edit Nginx site config and change fastcgi_pass.

# nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/pi-hole.conf

fastcgi_pass  unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;

1. Set system hosts correctly.

# nano /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1              localhost
ip.address.of.pihole   pi.hole myhostname

1. Stop and disable "systemd-resolved.service".

# systemctl stop systemd-resolved.service
# systemctl disable systemd-resolved.service

Note

This is done because port 53 is used by "systemd-resolved.service" which will conflict with "pihole-FTL.service" port 53.

Set php-fpm.service overrides.

# systemctl edit php-fpm.service

### Anything between here and the comment below will become the new contents of the file

[Service]
ReadWritePaths = /srv/http/pihole
ReadWritePaths = /run/pihole-ftl/pihole-FTL.port
ReadWritePaths = /run/log/pihole/pihole.log
ReadWritePaths = /run/log/pihole-ftl/pihole-FTL.log
ReadWritePaths = /etc/pihole
ReadWritePaths = /etc/hosts
ReadWritePaths = /etc/hostname
ReadWritePaths = /etc/dnsmasq.d/01-pihole.conf
ReadWritePaths = /proc/meminfo
ReadWritePaths = /proc/cpuinfo
ReadWritePaths = /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
ReadWritePaths = /tmp

### Lines below this comment will be discarded

Note

This step is required to grant Pi-Hole web interface access to the necessary files/directories.

Enable web services.

# systemctl enable nginx.service
# systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Start web services.

# systemctl start nginx.service
# systemctl start php-fpm.service

Start Pi-hole services.
```
$ pihole restartdns
```

External Links¶

Last update: September 21, 2023