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2024-06-29 13:31:50 -04:00

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<h1>OpenWRT &#43; Unbound &#43; adblock</h1>
<div class="title-header-date">
<time>Friday, February 5, 2021</time>
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<p>I decided to do some work on my Linksys WRT32X running OpenWRT to make it a
little more useful.</p>
<p><a href="https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/">Unbound</a> is a DNS
resolver which I like because it&rsquo;s recursive, meaning it directly queries the
root servers instead of relying on existing DNS servers run by Google,
Cloudflare, your ISP, or the like. I already have it running on several of my
servers and computers, but I figured it would be great if everything on my
network can use Unbound and be, well, <em>unbound</em> from all of those intermediary
DNS servers.</p>
<p>Luckily, OpenWRT already has Unbound packaged, and also has a useful LuCI app
that goes with it (LuCI is the graphical web interface that comes with OpenWRT).
All I had to do was install <code>luci-app-unbound</code>, which pulls in all of the
necessary dependencies to run unbound.</p>
<p><img src="/luci_software.png" alt="LuCI: Software"></p>
<p><img src="/luci_install.png" alt="LuCI: Install"></p>
<p>After that finished installing, I
refreshed LuCI/OpenWRT and went to &ldquo;Services&rdquo; on the top, and there it is!</p>
<p><img src="/luci_services.png" alt="LuCI: Services -&gt; Recursive DNS"></p>
<p>At this point, you&rsquo;ll have to get your hands dirty. You can either dig through
some LuCI menus or SSH in and make some edits. For reference, I&rsquo;m using
<a href="https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/openwrt-19.07/net/unbound/files/README.md#parallel-dnsmasq">&ldquo;Parallel dnsmasq&rdquo;</a> section from the README for unbound in the OpenWRT packages (which
has a lot of other useful information as well!). Essentially, I made the edits
to <code>/etc/config/unbound</code> and <code>/etc/config/dhcp</code> after SSH&rsquo;ing in. However, you
can make the same edits through LuCI.</p>
<p>For the <code>/etc/config/unbound</code> edits, you can make the edits to the file in
LuCI directly at &ldquo;Services -&gt; Recursive DNS -&gt; Files -&gt; Edit: UCI&rdquo;:</p>
<p><img src="/unbound_config.png" alt="LuCI: Edit /etc/config/unbound"></p>
<p>For the <code>/etc/config/dhcp</code> edits, you can make the edits by finding the same
fields under &ldquo;Network -&gt; DHCP and DNS&rdquo;:</p>
<p><img src="/dhcp_config.png" alt="LuCI: Edit DHCP and DNS Settings"></p>
<p>However, the field names are different from the lines in the config, so they
would need to be researched to determine which fields in LuCI map to which
lines in <code>/etc/config/dhcp</code>.</p>
<p>At this point (or maybe after restarting unbound and dnsmasq, which is a lot
easier using SSH and <code>/etc/init.d ... restart</code> as well), OpenWRT should now
be using unbound for resolving all DNS lookups, while dnsmasq is only used for
DHCP-DNS.</p>
<p>Bonus: you can also enable a nice status dashboard in LuCI under
&ldquo;Services -&gt; Recursive DNS -&gt; Status&rdquo;, but this requires installing several more
software packages: <code>unbound-control</code> and <code>unbound-control-setup</code>. You will also
need to change a line in <code>/etc/config/unbound</code>:</p>
<pre tabindex="0"><code>...
option unbound_control &#39;0&#39;
...
</code></pre><p>becomes</p>
<pre tabindex="0"><code>...
option unbound_control &#39;1&#39;
...
</code></pre><p>A word of warning: there is another section on &ldquo;Unbound and odhcpd&rdquo; which
tries to cut out dnsmasq completely. However, when I tried to set this up,
I got myself into a lot of trouble (had to reset OpenWRT, re-install any extra
software packages, and restore configuration from backup). It is also possible that if you mess up
the configuration for the &ldquo;Parallel dnsmasq&rdquo; method, you could end up in a
similar error state and have to start over. Please be careful when doing this
and don&rsquo;t change anything you&rsquo;re not supposed to.</p>
<p>Now, moving on to adblock, which should be <strong>much</strong> simpler to setup. First,
install <code>luci-app-adblock</code> and refresh. Navigate to &ldquo;Services -&gt; Adblock&rdquo;:</p>
<p><img src="/adblock.png" alt="Services -&gt; Adblock"></p>
<p>Check the settings at the bottom. The only thing you need to get going is
to go to the &ldquo;Blocklist Sources&rdquo; tab and choose your blocklists.</p>
<p><img src="/adblock_blocklist.png" alt="Adblock: Blacklist sources"></p>
<p>The
<a href="https://github.com/openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/adblock/files/README.md">adblock readme</a>
has some more info on what each list is. After that,
make sure &ldquo;Enabled&rdquo; is checked under the &ldquo;General Settings&rdquo; tab:</p>
<p><img src="/adblock_enable.png" alt="Adblock: enable"></p>
<p>and click the &ldquo;Refresh&rdquo; button above:</p>
<p><img src="/adblock_refresh.png" alt="Adblock: refresh"></p>
<p>Then you&rsquo;re good to go; adblock should work out of the box with unbound; cheers!</p>
<p>ADDENDUM: Another word of warning: once you&rsquo;ve setup adblock, it will download
the blocklists, merge them into a single file at <code>/var/lib/unbound/adb_list.overall</code>,
and try to restart unbound. I recommend not trying to view/interact with adblock
or unbound during this restart, which can take anywhere from 30 seconds - 2 minutes.
Just leave them alone in LuCI for a little bit&hellip;</p>
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