In a previous post, I explained how to run Pi-hole in Docker and use it to manage the Domain Name System (DNS) for an entire home network–for example at home, work, or school. It’s a great tool for taking control over your DNS and blocking trackers and ads across the whole network. Once the network’s DHCP1 server is configured, every machine on the network will begin sending its DNS queries to the Pi-hole container. But what about Docker containers that share the same Pi-hole host–what I’m calling “neighboring Docker containers”? Can they also use the Pi-hole container on that host for DNS?
Standard Notes is an open-source note taking application available on desktop and mobile platforms that offers end-to-end encrypted synchronization. In other words, all data are encrypted on device before they’re sent to the server to propagate to other devices. I think it’s one of the best open-source note taking products out there with a free plan, at the time of this writing.
That being said, their introductory free tier leaves a lot of be desired. It could work for users with basic note taking needs but if you want to organize your notes in nested folders, use multiple editors like Markdown and Rich text, switch between a variety of themes, or schedule regular backups, you have to go with a premium plan. At $12/month, or $5/month if billed yearly, their cheapest plan is definitely at the higher end of the spectrum, especially that the service isn’t complex enough to warrant the hefty subscription fee in my view. It should come at no surprise if a Standard Notes subscription is considered a quite hard expense to justify by regular users who don’t fiddle with notes on a daily basis, or heavily rely on note taking in a professional capacity.
There’s a saying that goes: “Show me your friends, I’ll tell you who you are”. A slight variation of this is: “Show me the websites you visit, I’ll tell you who you are”. A lot can be learned about an individual just by examining the websites they visit, the search queries they run, and the apps they use on a regular basis. A trove of information about a user’s online activity can be gleaned from their DNS traffic. Have you ever wondered why practically all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) pre-configure consumer routers with their own DNS servers?
Bitwarden is a password manager that allows users to generate and store strong passwords. It also handles other types of data like secure notes and credit card information. At the time of this writing, it is one of the best password managers out there because in addition to offering strong and zero-knowledge encryption, the codebase is open source. This means that anyone can inspect the code and run it for their personal use. In this article, we’ll go over the steps to build a fully functioning Bitwarden instance that anyone can run on a server at home.
Pihole is a great tool to protect your home network from trackers and annoying ads. It can be deployed either directly on a server or in a Docker container. I personally lean toward using Docker whenever possible for the flexibility and isolation it provides. Services deployed in Docker containers are significantly easier to migrate than raw installations and Pihole is no exception.
Running Pihole on Docker is pretty straightforward, but things start to get a bit complicated when it comes to enabling DHCP - using Pihole to serve DHCP requests. With Docker’s default bridge network mode, we can’t use Pihole as a DHCP server. So we have two options: (1) use the host network mode, or (2) run a DHCP relay (more on this later).
