Asus RT-AX58U v2 Merlin: Route all traffic to Pi-hole (running directly on router itself)

[hamensman]

Wanted to run Pi-hole directly on the Asus RT-AX58U v2 running Merlin so I don't have to hook up a Raspberry Pi to it. I found this which does exactly what I want - install Pi-hole as an Entware package directly onto the router.

The readme shows how to add the repo. And the wiki shows how to have Pi-hole set up and web UI accessible.

I'm not sure how to route all the router's traffic to pi-hole in this case (since pi-hole is not running on a separate Pi), and was pointed to SNBForums by the owner of the repo.

I'm a newb to both Asuswrt generally and Pi-hole.

 

[ColinTaylor]

You haven't followed the instructions in the wiki.

I've done that section. In my case, changed 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.1.160 and lan to eth0.

Why?

The wiki says:

Change 192.168.1.0/24 to match your LAN network and lan to match your LAN domain name.

For DNS director see the Merlin wiki:

DNS Director

Third party firmware for Asus routers (newer codebase) - RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng

github.com

 

[hamensman]

You haven't followed the instructions in the wiki.

Why?

The wiki says:



For DNS director see the Merlin wiki:

DNS Director

Third party firmware for Asus routers (newer codebase) - RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng

github.com

I thought I do that by ssh-ing into the router and type ifconfig? This shows details for archer, br0, eth0, eth1, eth2 and eth3. Was I supposed to use the br0 details?

 

[ColinTaylor]

What is the information shown on the router's LAN > LAN IP page?

 

[hamensman]

Had a look. So it's the br0... Because those match. I'm an idiot!!

"RT-AX58U's Domain Name" is empty.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Had a look. So it's the br0... Because those match. I'm an idiot!!

"RT-AX58U's Domain Name" is empty.

You don't need to know the interface name.

You need the network address, subnet mask and domain name.

Specify a valid local domain name. I suggest home.lan or home.arpa

 

[hamensman]

IP Address is 192.168.50.1. Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. Now set domain name to home.lan

 

[ColinTaylor]

IP Address is 192.168.50.1. Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. Now set domain name to home.lan

So according to Jack's instructions that config line should be:

  revServers = [
    "true,192.168.50.0/24,127.0.0.1#8053,home.lan"
  ]

 

[hamensman]

Ok. Made the change

Also, just noticed on Pi-hole ui under "Status" says "DNS server failure". Was probably there already...

 

[bidh]

Why not using Adguard home on amtm instead of Pihole ?

 

[Tech9]

Why not using Adguard home on amtm instead of Pihole ?

This router has 512MB RAM only with under 150MB available after boot. Both on-router Pi-hole or AdGuard Home will be limited.

 

[jacklul]

This router has 512MB RAM only with under 150MB available after boot. Both on-router Pi-hole or AdGuard Home will be limited.

I'm seeing 250-300 when not using TrendMicro services here.
I run Entware on /tmp which takes around 100MB as tmpfs and I'm still sitting at ~200MB free, enough to run Pi-hole with heavier lists.

 

[bidh]

I am testing Merlin 3004.388.8_2-gnuton1 on a RT-AX58U v2.
With Trendmicro services, Skynet and now using Adguard Home with the default AdGuard DNS filter and the OISD Blocklist Big.

I only have 1 PC connected on the router but I get this:

user@RTAX58U:/tmp/home/root# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        508188     338076     170112       3092      15068      89736
-/+ buffers/cache:     233272     274916
Swap:      5242876          0    5242876