Another pi question

Can a pi do double duty?

I'm getting one to setup with octoprint for my 3d printer under the excuse I'll use it more if I can send files over Wi-Fi. Most likely Pi 3 B+. 

As I understand it, octoprint is more an OS than a program. Is that correct?

If it's just a program, can that same pi be used as a network wide ad blocking pihole? 

How good are those at stopping ads anyway? My main concerns are YouTube ads on my Xbox/smart tv/tablet. 

Given that a Raspberry Pi is a full-blown (albeit small) Linux computer, I don't see a reason why it couldn't pull double duty. You might want to get one of the latest ones for a bit more computer power.

I've built my own VPN for when I'm traveling and while I'm not using all of the same DNS blocklists that Pi-Hole does, I'm not sure if they'd stop the YouTube ads specifically. The ads/tracking blocker list I use doesn't. I think the Tube ads still make it through on pure DNS blocking, although I might be wrong on that.

I was going to say these Pi questions go on forever...

There's never enough Pi to go around.

Can confirm that YouTube ads still come through. That's because they just look like YouTube videos from a DNS standpoint. But if you do any other web browsing, you'll find the blockers work pretty darn well.

If Octoprint is something that runs on top of unix instead of fully replacing it, you should be able to have it do multiple duty. According to the Octoprint wiki page, it's written in Python so that should be no problem at all.

In reply to BoxheadTim :

I can confirm that YouTube ads make it through the PiHole. They changed the ad server 18 months ago or so to serve from the same DNS as the videos.

I'm using YouTube Vanced now on my phone and just cast YouTube to the Roku or Chromecast rather than using the native apps.

As for multitasking, sure, as long as you're not using a custom OS. I ran a Plex server off my PiHole for a while and I have a few other apps on it as well.

You won't be able to do that if you put OpenMedia Vault or OwnCloud on it though. (That's my next project now that I can get a 4 unit raid hat for the Pi4.)

Ad-blocking at the network level always seemed like a misguided idea. Better to do it in the browser. I use the Adblocker for YouTube and uMatrix Firefox addons, but uMatrix is a serious addon for experts that will break many websites. Something like Privacy Badger is a more noob-friendly substitute.

The problem with doing it at the browser is it's much higher maintenance since you have to install and maintain on every browser on every device. You're also still having to download the ads. As of right now, that's 13% of the DNS queries on my network and I've seen it run up into the high 20s. There's a noticeable difference in speed.

Ad block pro on my browsers and ad guard on my phones keeps most things at bay. I don't even mind some website ads. It's when I have YouTube on for music while I'm working and a 45 minute tv show or 15 minute kid playing with toys thing comes on pretending to be an ad that had me looking at locking down the network, as there aren't any are blockers available for my Xbox or TV.

More to the point, it looks like people are doing this with something called "docker". Flashing octoprint to the sd card first then sideloading the pihole with docker. And it seems to work as long as the dns lists aren't updating during a print, which wouldn't be too hard to prevent. 

Keith Tanner said:

The problem with doing it at the browser is it's much higher maintenance since you have to install and maintain on every browser on every device. You're also still having to download the ads. As of right now, that's 13% of the DNS queries on my network and I've seen it run up into the high 20s. There's a noticeable difference in speed.

Depends on exactly how you block ads at the browser level, many addons such as uMatrix prevent downloads and DNS lookups from running in the first place.

Network-based blocking is increasingly at odds with the trends of encrypted web traffic and distributed hosting, soon you may have to use HTTPS and DoT/DoH MITM to keep it working, which would again require per-browser configuration with a side of security risk.

I'll let you know if I run into problems! So far, the only thing that has broken are the shopping results on Google searches and I'm okay with that.

GameboyRMH said:

Network-based blocking is increasingly at odds with the trends of encrypted web traffic and distributed hosting, soon you may have to use HTTPS and DoT/DoH MITM to keep it working, which would again require per-browser configuration with a side of security risk.

While that is definitely true for blocking of the likes of HTTPS, unless you're using the abomination that is DNS over HTTPS, running a local DNS server with a well maintained block list really isn't affected by the other changes in networking.