AdGuardHome AdGuard Home DNS Sinkhole Setup

[bluzfanmr1]

I have a blocked domain, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.cws.conviva.com, that can't phone home and therefore spams the logs with requests every 20 seconds. This obviously skews the AdGuard Home stats as well as the Unbound stats, where AdGuard sends all requests.

I know how to sinkhole a domain by adding address=/conviva.com/0.0.0.0 to /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.add on the router, then whitelisting that domain in Diversion. I've searched high and low and tested a few things but can't seem to find a way to accomplish this when using AdGuard Home. Does anyone know if this is possible or not? Is there a better way to deal with this that I haven't thought of?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Rajjco]

Have you checked DNS rewrites page In Adguard Home?

DNS rewrites​

Allows to easily configure custom DNS response for a specific domain name.

You can have *.conviva.com and set It's resolved ip to 0.0.0.0

 

[bluzfanmr1]

Have you checked DNS rewrites page In Adguard Home?

DNS rewrites​

Allows to easily configure custom DNS response for a specific domain name.

You can have *.conviva.com and set It's resolved ip to 0.0.0.0

I think I did try that, and am trying it again right now. It does not stop the requests every 20 seconds like it does when set up the other way on the router.

 

[Rajjco]

I think I did try that, and am trying it again right now. It does not stop the requests every 20 seconds like it does when set up the other way on the router.

You can hide it from the query log after setting the DNS rewrite
In the General page add the domain in Ignored domains field.
This way it won't be able to phone home and won't clutter your logs.

Ignored domains
Queries matching these rules are not written to the query log

 

[bluzfanmr1]

You can hide it from the query log after setting the DNS rewrite
In the General page add the domain in Ignored domains field.
This way it won't be able to phone home and won't clutter your logs.

Ignored domains
Queries matching these rules are not written to the query log

That does work, though I was hoping to find a way to make it work without hiding anything.

 

[Rajjco]

That does work, though I was hoping to find a way to make it work without hiding anything.

The requests are blocked though so your just hiding the messages.

Another way is to just edit the hosts file on the device or install some kind of filtering firewall on It.

Good luck.

 

[bluzfanmr1]

The requests are blocked though so your just hiding the messages.

Another way is to just edit the hosts file on the device or install some kind of filtering firewall on It.

Good luck.

Appreciate the help.

 

[bluzfanmr1]

For the record, I figured out how to do this and it seems to be working perfectly. I had forgot to mention that AdGuard Home on the router is forwarding everything to Unbound on the router. I was able to stop the every 20 second DNS requests that were skewing both the AdGuard Home stats and the Unbound stats. You have to whitelist *csw.conviva.com in AdGuard Home and add the following to your unbound.conf file:

local-zone: "cws.conviva.com" redirect
local-data: "cws.conviva.com A 0.0.0.0"

 

[SomeWhereOverTheRainBow]

For the record, I figured out how to do this and it seems to be working perfectly. I had forgot to mention that AdGuard Home on the router is forwarding everything to Unbound on the router. I was able to stop the every 20 second DNS requests that were skewing both the AdGuard Home stats and the Unbound stats. You have to whitelist *csw.conviva.com in AdGuard Home and add the following to your unbound.conf file:

local-zone: "cws.conviva.com" redirect
local-data: "cws.conviva.com A 0.0.0.0"

You could further simplify by using only:

local-zone: "cws.conviva.com." always_null

 

[bluzfanmr1]

You could further simplify by using only:

local-zone: "cws.conviva.com." always_null

@SomeWhereOverTheRainBow thank you for that tip. I hadn't had a chance to update this thread yet but had discovered your method after a deep dive into it. Appreciate the response.

 

[SomeWhereOverTheRainBow]

@SomeWhereOverTheRainBow thank you for that tip. I hadn't had a chance to update this thread yet but had discovered your method after a deep dive into it. Appreciate the response.

All the credit goes to unbound developers for that optimization, but I was happy to share.