These are the simplified instructions to install a Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi device. You will need any Raspberry Pi with an ethernet adapter and a high-endurance microSD card. If ever you Pi-Hole device begins to freeze up, it is because your microSD card is bad or you need to use a legacy version of Pi OS.

  1. Download and install the Pi imager at https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/. This will make it easy to install any Raspberry Pi operating system version.
  2. If you do not have a SSH program, I recommend PuTTY.
  3. Connect your microSD card to the computer.
  4. Run the Pi imager. It will ask you to choose an operating system. I recommend choosing the Pi OS other option and then choosing a lite version. If you have an older Pi, be sure to choose a legacy lite version.
  5. Choose your microSD card in the storage option.
  6. Be sure to click the gear button icon below write before you click write. In that page, check the box to enable SSH, set a username and password, and uncheck enable telemetry. You may or may not want to change to timezone from UTC. US Eastern time is US/Eastern.
  7. Once the imager finishes, boot the Pi and then use your SSH program to connect to it. You will likely need to get into your router to find the IP address, which you need to change later.
  8. Run these commands: (These are case-sensitive)
    1. sudo apt-get update
    2. sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
    3. wget -O basic-install.sh https://install.pi-hole.net
    4. sudo bash basic-install.sh
  9. Then follow the on-screen instructions to finish. A reboot will be necessary.
    1. sudo reboot
  10. To change the default pi-hole password, type the following command in ssh:
    1. pihole -a -p
  11. After rebooting again, you are good to go. Log in to your Pi-hole web console to finish the process and change your router’s DNS server to the static IP of the Pi. Be sure both IP addresses are the same.
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