So one thing I was interested in was taking some control over my DNS. I could go with Bind but I heard about Pi-Hole and thought it would be interesting to check out.

Verify Prerequisites

So looking through the prerequisites it looks like the only item of concern is for the servers to have static IP addresses. Easy enough.

Create Virtual Machines

So I have three Hyper-V hosts in my humble little home lab. I'm going to set up two virtual machines to run Pi-Hole on. Then perhaps later I'll look into setting up some sort of high availability on the third host.

On the HV-01 host I set up a virtual machine running Debian named PH-01. Then on the HV-02 host I set up a virtual machine running Debian named PH-02. From here on out I can mirror the steps I perform on PH-01 with PH-02.

Configure Operating System

Configure Sudo

Steps performed on PH-01 and PH-02

• apt update
• apt install sudo
• /sbin/adduser david sudo
  • Adding user 'david' to group 'sudo' ...
  • Done.

Configure Network

I went to configure the IP address with ifconfig but I get an error message that it is being depreciated. Holy cow I am rusty aren't I?
Steps performed on PH-01 and PH-02

• nano /etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# Interface eth0 static configuration
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 10.10.10.XXX
        gateway 10.10.10.254
        netmask 255.255.255.0

• systemctl restart networking
• reboot

Configure Firewall

Steps performed on PH-01 and PH-02

• sudo apt install ufw
• sudo ufw enable
• sudo ufw allow ssh
• sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
• sudo ufw allow 53/tcp
• sudo ufw allow 53/udp
• sudo ufw allow 67/tcp
• sudo ufw allow 67/udp

Configure SSH Keys

So I'm wanting to practice with Windows Terminal and move away from PUTTY so it's time to set up an SSH key to PH-01 and PH-02.
Steps performed on desktop via Windows Terminal

• ssh-keygen -t ed25519
• Move-Item -Path c:\Users\david\filename* -Destination c:\Users\david\.ssh -Force
  Then I open "Settings" from Windows Terminal, and then open the JSON file and add the following:

            {
                "colorScheme": "Ubuntu-ColorScheme",
                "commandline": "ssh -i \"~/.ssh/ph-01\" [email protected]",
                "experimental.retroTerminalEffect": false,
                "font": 
                {
                    "face": "Cascadia Code"
                },
                "guid": "{0caa0dad-35be-5f56-a8ff-XXXXXXXXXXXX}",
                "hidden": false,
                "name": "PH-01",
                "tabTitle": "PH-01"
            },

making sure the guid is unique. This gives me a nice shortcut inside terminal to connect to this server.

Configure SSH

Now that I have my keys set up I'll need to configure them on PH-01 and PH-02.
Steps performed on PH-01 and PH-02

• mkdir ~/.ssh
• nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
• And I paste in the public key I generated above, then save the file.
• chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
• sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
• I modify the following lines:

PermitRootLogin no
PubkeyAuthentication yes
PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes ssh-ed25519
PasswordAuthentication no
AuthorizedKeyFiles /home/david/.ssh/authorized_keys

• sudo sshd -t
• sudo systemctl restart ssh

Installing Pi-Hole

• wget -O basic-install.sh https://install.pi-hole.net
• sudo bash basic-install.sh
• sudo reboot

Configure Pi-Hole

Updating Lists

Now I can browse to http://10.10.10.XXX in Firefox and I see the login page. Once logged in I can go to Tools>Update Gravity>Update to update the default gravity list.

Test DNS Queries

From Windows Terminal I can run nslookup.

PS C:\Users\david> nslookup
Default Server:  pi.hole
Address:  10.10.10.XXX

> yahoo.com
Server:  pi.hole
Address:  10.10.10.XXX

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    yahoo.com
Addresses:  2001:4998:44:3507::8000
          2001:4998:44:3507::8001
          2001:4998:124:1507::f000
          2001:4998:24:120d::1:1
          2001:4998:24:120d::1:0
          2001:4998:124:1507::f001
          74.6.143.26
          74.6.231.21
          74.6.143.25
          98.137.11.163
          74.6.231.20
          98.137.11.164

> exit

Super cool! I have to functioning DNS servers now. All I need to do now is update my DHCP server to point to PH-01 and PH-02 and I'm all done here!