Mini Home Server

Description

In order to gain experience with computer networking and Linux system administration, I decided to start with a Raspberry Pi for my home server. In order for Pi-Hole to function as an ad-blocker, it acts as a DNS sinkhole. Because of this, I had to reconfigure my router settings to point to the Pi as the DNS. I also took steps to secure the server such as ensuring there was no port forwarding, no weak passwords, limiting ports and IPs with a firewall, etc. The Pi automatically caches some DNS requests and uses Cloudflare as an upstream for others. Pi-Hole provides an admin dashboard that lets me see which DNS requests are permitted and blocked, and it's really interesting to see how many requests are made and getting an idea of what they're doing.

My next goal is to turn it into a recursive DNS that can connect directly to root DNS servers by setting up the open-source tool 'Unbound'. I use Linux Mint as my main OS on my desktop PC to gain more experience with Linux, and set up a Kali Linux VM to practice penetration testing on Hack The Box and other platforms.