Pi Hole on k3s cluster

March 7, 2020

Pi-hole is a fantastic tool that blocks DNS requests to ad servers. That means you can surf the web without looking at ads on every page.

Pi-Hole in Kubernetes

We are going to deploy a modified version of this pihole helm chart

Let’s start by cloning the repo.

git clone https://github.com/ChrisPhillips-cminion/pihole-helm.git
cd pihole-helm

We now need to make a few updates to the chart.

Update ServerIP with container host IP
Update image to v5.1.1 tag
Add WEB_PASSWORD, and TZ environment variables if needed
Update values.yaml accordingly

spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: {{ template "fullname" . }}
    spec:
      # hostNetwork: true
      hostAliases:
      - ip: 127.0.0.1
        hostnames:
        - pi.hole
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/hostname: randomstore
      containers:
      - name: {{ .Chart.Name }}
        image: pihole/pihole:v5.1.1
        imagePullPolicy: {{ .Values.image.pullPolicy }}
        stdin: true
        tty: true
        resources:
          limits:
            memory: 1Gi
        env:
        - name: 'ServerIP'
          value: '192.168.1.132'
        - name: 'DNS1'
          value: '8.8.8.8'
        - name: 'DNS2'
          value: '8.8.4.4'
    - name: TZ
      value: "America/New_York"
    - name: WEBPASSWORD
      value: "somepassword"

#values.yaml
configData: |-
  server=/local/192.168.1.1
  address=/.vikaspogu.com/192.168.1.132
ingress:
  host: pi-hole.vikaspogu.com

Install chart

Create a new namespace (optional)
Install chart in namespace

kubectl create ns pi-hole
helm install pi-hole.

Wait for pods

kubectl get pods
NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pi-hole-pihole-5bb56b5bd-b2wl7   1/1     Running   0          61m

Navigate to the ingress route in my case (pi-hole.vikaspogu.com) and log in with WEBPASSWORD used in the deployment

Pi-Hole UI

DNS Server

Configure Verizon FiOS router to use Pi-Hole as the DNS server:

On the top navigation menu
- Click My Network
On the left menu list
- Click Network Connections
Click Broadband Connection (Ethernet/Coax)>Settings
- Click the drop-down for DNS Server and select “Use The Following DNS Server Addresses”
- Type in the static IP Address of your pi (Or Pi-hole server)
- Click Apply

Last updated on August 26, 2025

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