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Pi-hole + Wireguard on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with Google Cloud's free tier, via cloud-init

The goal of this project is to enable you to safely and privately use the Internet on your phones, tablets, and computers with a self-run VPN Server on Google Cloud's free tier. This will cost $0 to use anywhere in the world, except for data egress fees when connecting to the VPN from China and Australia. This software shields you from intrusive advertisements in apps and websites on any connected device and computer. It blocks your ISP, cell phone company, public WiFi hotspot provider, and apps or websites from gaining insight into your usage activity.

Both Full Tunnel (all traffic) and Split Tunnel (DNS traffic only) VPN connections provide DNS based ad-blocking over an encrypted connection to the cloud. The differences are:

  • A Split Tunnel VPN allows direct interaction with devices on your Local Network (such as a Chromecast or Roku), but blocks DNS based discovery of local devices.
  • A Full Tunnel VPN can help bypass misconfigured proxies on corporate WiFi networks, protects you from Man-In-The-Middle SSL proxies, and obfuscates IP address based geolocation by making the device appear like it is located where the VPN server is running.
Tunnel Type Data Usage Server CPU Load Security Ad Blocking
full +10% overhead for vpn low 100% encryption yes
split just kilobytes per day very low dns encryption only yes

Install and configure the gcloud CLI

This guide assumes you are running the following commands in a Linux environment. Windows or macOS users can get an instant Linux virtual machine on their computer with Multipass.

  1. Install the gcloud CLI

    sudo snap install google-cloud-cli --classic

  2. Connect gcloud CLI with your Google Cloud account

    gcloud init
    1. Enter Y when prompted with Would you like to log in (Y/n)?
    2. Visit the authentication link which starts with https://accounts.google.com/
    3. Sign in with a Google account
    4. Click Allow to grant access to the Google Cloud SDK
    5. Click Copy to copy the verification code
    6. Paste the verification code into the terminal window where the gcloud init process is running

    If you complete the gcloud init process successfully, you will receive the following output:

    You are now logged in as [[email protected]].
Your current project is [None].  You can change this setting by running:
$ gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

Provision resources and deploy

  1. List the projects that are in your account:

    gcloud projects list

    You’ll receive output similar to:

    PROJECT_ID        NAME              PROJECT_NUMBER
project-id        project-name      12345678910

  2. Set your Project ID to the PROJECT_ID environment variable. Replace project-id with your personal Project ID from the previous output:

    PROJECT_ID=project-id

    This step isn’t required, but it’s recommended because the PROJECT_ID variable is used often.

  3. Associate gcloud CLI to this PROJECT_ID:

    gcloud config set project $PROJECT_ID

    This is where the adblocker virtual machine (VM) will be launched.

  4. List the available cloud zones and cloud regions where VMs can be run:

    gcloud compute zones list

    You’ll receive output similar to:

    NAME                       REGION                   STATUS  NEXT_MAINTENANCE  TURNDOWN_DATE
us-east1-b                 us-east1                 UP

  5. Only us-west1, us-central1, and us-east regions qualify for Google Cloud's free tier. Set the ZONE and REGION environment variables by replacing us-east1-b and us-east1 in the example commands below, with your desired zone and region:

    ZONE=us-east1-b
REGION=us-east1

  6. Reserve a static IP address and label it "pihole-external-ip":

    gcloud compute addresses create pihole-external-ip --region=$REGION

  7. Use curl to download the cloud-init YAML.

    sudo apt install -y curl
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rajannpatel/Pi-Hole-on-Google-Compute-Engine-Free-Tier-with-Full-Tunnel-and-Split-Tunnel-Wireguard-VPN-Configs/master/cloud-init.yaml -o cloud-init.yaml

  8. Open the file in an editor to change configurations specified between lines 4 and 36. The default values that have been provided will work, but changing the value for WEBPASSWORD from pAs5word to another alphanumeric string is recommended. Setting TOKEN with an Ubuntu Pro token is strongly recommended, and results in Livepatch being successfully enabled.

    # SET OUR VARIABLES
# =================

# TIME TO REBOOT FOR SECURITY AND BUGFIX PATCHES IN XX:XX FORMAT
SECURITY_REBOOT_TIME = "03:00"

# TIME TO UPDATE AND UPGRADE PIHOLE IN XX:XX:XX FORMAT
PIHOLE_UPDATE_TIME = "05:00:00"

# ALPHANUMERIC PIHOLE WEB ADMIN PASSWORD
{% set WEBPASSWORD = 'pAs5word' %}

# UBUNTU PRO TOKEN FROM https://ubuntu.com/pro/dashboard
# leave blank when using Ubuntu Pro instances on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud
{% set TOKEN = '' %}

# WIREGUARD CONFIGURATIONS
{% set SERVER_WG_NIC = 'wg0' %}
{% set SERVER_WG_IPV4 = '10.66.66.1' %}
{% set SERVER_WG_IPV6 = 'fd42:42:42::1' %}
{% set SERVER_PORT = '51515' %}

# TIMEZONE: as represented in /usr/share/zoneinfo. An empty string ('') will result in UTC time being used.
{% set TIMEZONE = 'America/New_York' %}

# HOSTNAME: subdomain of FQDN (e.g. `server` for `server.yourdomain.com`)
{% set HOSTNAME = 'pihole' %}

# DOMAIN (e.g. `yourdomain.com`)
{% set DOMAIN = '' %}

# =========================
# END OF SETTING VARIABLES

  9. Run the following command to launch an e2-micro virtual machine named "adblocker":

    gcloud compute instances create adblocker \
    --zone=$ZONE \
    --machine-type=e2-micro \
    --address=pihole-external-ip \
    --tags=wireguard \
    --boot-disk-size=10 \
    --image-family=ubuntu-2404-lts-amd64 \
    --image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud \
    --metadata-from-file=user-data=cloud-init.yaml

  10. Allow your "adblocker" virtual machine to receive incoming UDP Wireguard VPN connections on Port 51515, as defined by SERVER_PORT in Step 8 above.

    gcloud compute firewall-rules create allow-udp-51515 \
    --direction=INGRESS \
    --action=ALLOW \
    --target-tags=wireguard \
    --source-ranges=0.0.0.0/0 \
    --rules=udp:51515 \
    --description="Allow UDP traffic on port 51515 for adblocker"

  11. Observe the progress of your installation by tailing the /var/log/cloud-init-output.log file on the virtual machine:

    gcloud compute ssh adblocker --zone $ZONE --command "tail -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log"

  12. If you are a first time gcloud CLI user, you’ll be prompted for a passphrase twice. This password can be left blank, press Enter twice to proceed:

    WARNING: The private SSH key file for gcloud does not exist.
WARNING: The public SSH key file for gcloud does not exist.
WARNING: You do not have an SSH key for gcloud.
WARNING: SSH keygen will be executed to generate a key.
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:

  13. A reboot may be required during the cloud-init process. If a reboot is required, you’ll receive the following output:

    2023-08-20 17:30:04,721 - cc_package_update_upgrade_install.py[WARNING]: Rebooting after upgrade or install per /var/run/reboot-required

    If the IMAGE_FAMILY specified earlier contained all the security patches, this reboot step may not occur.

  14. Repeat the following code if a reboot was necessary to continue observing the progress of the installation:

    gcloud compute ssh adblocker --zone $ZONE --command "tail -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log"

  15. Wait until the cloud-init process is complete. When it's complete, you’ll receive two lines similar to this:

    Cloud-init v. 24.1.3-0ubuntu3.3 finished at Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:53:16 +0000. Datasource DataSourceGCELocal.  Up 666.00 seconds

  16. Press CTRL + C to terminate the tail process in your terminal window.

Configure and test your Wireguard tunnels

  1. SSH into the adblocker instance, and run the wireguard command. Press 1 to create a VPN tunnel for a new user, and accept the default values for the wizard's prompts.

    sudo wireguard

  2. The generated .conf file will create a Split Tunnel VPN connection by default. This configuration will be reflected in the generated QR code, which can be scanned in the Wireguard mobile apps. The tunnel configuration can be edited from within the Wireguard mobile app, if you wish to have a full tunnel connection. Replace the contents of Allowed IPs with 0.0.0.0/0 to route all traffic through Google Cloud. If you edit the .conf file on the server, you will need to regenerate the QR code to reflect this configuration change. The command to regenerate the QR code is:

    qrencode -t ansiutf8 -l L <"~/wg0-client-name.conf"

  3. You can verify if your Full Tunnel VPN configuration is working by visting http://checkip.amazonaws.com from your device. If it shows the IP address of your Google Cloud virtual machine, then all traffic is routing through there.

  4. You can verify if your Pi-hole DNS settings are working visiting dnsleaktest.com and performing an Extended Test. It should only query DNS servers configured in your Pi-hole. It will use the closest Google DNS servers to your Google Cloud virtual machine, by default.

Configure Pi-hole

  1. Connect to your adblocker virtual machine with a newly created Wireguard tunnel. To configure your Pi-hole, visit http://10.66.66.1/admin from the VPN connected device.

How to delete everything, if you wish to start over

THE FOLLOWING STEPS WILL DELETE WHAT YOU HAVE CREATED, ABOVE

This is how to remove the "adblocker" VM, its static IP address, and its firewall rules.

  1. List all the addresses you’ve created:

    gcloud compute addresses list

  2. To delete the address named "pihole-external-ip" we created earlier:

    gcloud compute addresses delete pihole-external-ip --region=$REGION

  3. List all VMs in this project:

    gcloud compute instances list

  4. To delete the "adblocker" VM we created earlier:

    gcloud compute instances delete INSTANCE_NAME --zone $ZONE

  5. List all firewall rules in this project:

    gcloud compute firewall-rules list

  6. To delete the "allow-udp-51515" firewall rules we created earlier:

    gcloud compute firewall-rules delete allow-udp-51515

Contributions Welcome

If there is something that can be done better, or if this documentation can be improved in any way, please submit a Pull Request with your fixes or edits.

Contributors should be aware of REASONS.md, which explain the factors behind choices made throughout this guide.

Please review the Issues if you are in a position to help others, or participate in improving this project.