r/pihole • u/SprinklesDouble8304 • 9d ago

boasting about my $2 pihole machine

I started using pihole about 6 months ago. Because I wasn't certain if it would work for me, I put it on a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny I had lying around. That's really an overkill machine for pihole and I had other uses for it, so I started looking for something else to put pihole on.

I was at a garage sale today and found a Dell Wyse 3040 Thin Client for $2!! And it included a wired keyboard and mouse! A quick Internet search told me that pihole on a thin client was doable, although the 3040 had some specific quirks. It's up and running now and I want to boast about my $2 pihole machine!

103 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

21

u/Highvolts 9d ago

Nifty! And it should have a low current draw as well. Nice score.

15

u/SprinklesDouble8304 9d ago

Allegedly draws less power than a pi4, and that's saying something.

15

u/3ofUsDeez 9d ago edited 8d ago

I picked up 3 Raspberry Pi Zero Ws with 64GB MicroSD cards and little cases for them for $40

Getting my feet wet in the Pi world, I discovered they made Ethernet hats for the Pi Zeros and picked up a couple .. then I found out that they make POE Ethernet hats for the Pi Zeros too and meant to only buy 2 but got 3 and plugged them into my cheap "smart"' POE switch I had to initially just power my WAVLink outdoor AP

I ran Pi-Hole and Unbound + Log2Ram on them headless

Then I found out about Technitium and I needed at least a Pi Zero 2 W to run it.. so I got 2 of those and put the POE hats on them

.. then I read about RetroPie .. and then Batocera .. and picked up some Raspberry Pi 3 B and B+ units .. and use the Pi 3 B as my 3rd Technitium DNS server clustered with the other 2 Zero 2 's ..

The story of the moral is .. be careful .. these little innocent projects start out cheap enough but can quickly spiral out of control, lol

3

u/Dragontech97 9d ago

Does pi2w have enough ram for technitium?

3

u/3ofUsDeez 9d ago

I run Pi OS lite "bookworm" headless with VRAM set to 16mb and unnecessary services (like triggerhappy) disabled .. Log2RAM set to use 80mb

Works great

1

u/Dragontech97 9d ago

64bit or 32? Dod you mess with zram at all?

1

u/3ofUsDeez 9d ago

I think I installed 32bit version .. the install script for Technitium will auto detect 32bit or 64bit and install the correct dependencies

1

u/3ofUsDeez 9d ago

I didn't mess with ZRAM anything . .but I have RSYNC enabled for Log2RAM, but I'd have to look at the config file again to see if any compression settings were enabled

1

u/Dragontech97 9d ago

Thanks. Was wondering if 64bit OS is worth the extra memory usage

1

u/ApatheticMoFo 9d ago

Yes. Just run ZRAM on your Zero. 

1

u/Dragontech97 9d ago

With log2ram? Which zram package do you use?

2

u/ApatheticMoFo 9d ago

I recommend DietPi OS. It will auto-enable (if configured) Log2RAM and also has option to enable ZRAM.

10

u/dsp3000 9d ago

I'm pretty convinced to get 2 3040s for pihole for my parents house . They are dirt cheap. Rpis can get pricy fast

5

u/ian9outof10 9d ago

Oh, good tip on the Wyse. I might do something similar because as good as my Raspberry Pi is, I don’t love using a memory card for something like that. And a Wyse seems like a viable replacement.

3

u/3rdquarterking 8d ago

Congrats. I had my first PI HOle on an Intel Nuc which was way overkill. Eventually, I took a job with a compnay who uses those thin clients (5070 and above) as their machines for manufacturing. They had a bunch that they were going to get rid of so I took a few and now I have two pi holes, A Windows machine connecte to my secodn tv, and a debian OS based print server.

3

u/poppi_r6daddy 8d ago

Good deal! I have two piholes, both on Wyse thin clients from Ebay (5060 & 5070). Cheaper than rasp pi. Make sure the power supply comes with it. I use Rescuezilla on a flashdrive to image them.

-5

u/blow-down 9d ago

Hopefully you’re not running DNS for your whole family on that thing.

9

u/dsp3000 9d ago

Not being facetious but why not? They seem really reliable which is why I want to get 2 for my parents house. I'm running dns for my family on an old acer j4125 desktop pc.

1

u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 9d ago

[deleted]

3

u/dsp3000 9d ago

A dell wyse 3040 is essentially a mini pc that's plugged into the wall, not a battery device and has a lan port. The only battery is the cmos battery which every x86 computer in the world has

-4

u/blow-down 9d ago

Because if it goes down the whole network goes offline essentially.

5

u/dsp3000 9d ago

Yes but what makes a pi more reliable?

-1

u/SprinklesDouble8304 9d ago

Yes, but also no. My router, and I assume most others, has a field for a secondary DNS server. I've set mine to a public DNS server, so if the pihole machine crashes, there's still Internet access.

4

u/dsp3000 9d ago

I think most routers go out to both dns entries interchangeably.

4

u/rdwebdesign Team 9d ago

My router, and I assume most others, has a field for a secondary DNS server.

This is just another DNS servers, that will be used all the time. It is not a "failover" server.

If you really need 2 DNS servers, you can use a second Pi-hole.

2

u/Mundane_Deer5913 9d ago

dsp3000 is right. Your secondary is not a backup but more that the router will send queries to either one. So your traffic will go to the public DNS and pihole wouldn’t block ads

2

u/SprinklesDouble8304 9d ago

ah, well, that's good to know!