How to Set up Local DNS
After 2 years of running PiHole on my RaspberryPI, I realized that I’ve been totally ignoring a massively beneficial (and easy-to-configure) feature that comes out of the box: Local DNS. Thankfully, I heard an episode of the Changelog Podcast that casually mentioned it, and it got me researching.
The setup is incredibly simple, and can be done entirely through the PiHole GUI.
- Log into your PiHole instance
- Click on the “Local DNS” navbar item on the left
- Select either “DNS Records” (for A records) or CNAME Records
- Create your entries
With those 4 little steps, I made it so much easier to SSH to different servers on my home network, as well as make browser-based navigation to my various services a lot less painful.
Also, as a reminder, you can backup your entire PiHole setup via Settings > Teleporter > Backup.