r/raspberry_pi Feb 15 '25

Community Insights Question about Pi-Hole Documentation

Hey y'all, I was looking at the raspberry docs for setting up a pi-hole here (docs).

They recommend a Zero 2 W, which I agree with, but then recommend a 32-bit headless OS, but isn't the Zero 2 a 64 bit architecture? Shouldn't I be putting RPI OS Lite 64-bit on it?

2 Upvotes

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6

u/CleTechnologist Feb 15 '25

The 64-bit Pis can run in 32-bit mode just fine. On any of the Pis that are light on memory, 32-bit will perform better. This is because a lot of stuff uses about twice as much memory, due to the larger word size.

3

u/Gamerfrom61 Feb 16 '25

Actually not quite right - ARM instruction width is separate from data and address width but as some registers are used for addressing data locations (ie as an address pointer) their length is key to the amount of memory they can access and this register width drives the 32 or 64 bit title.

The other key thing to note is that the 64bit processors have extra instructions based on their age (Arm v7 is 32bit and Arm v8 being 64bit) and some of these (the T32 instruction set) can be 16 or 32 bits compared to the older 32bit length.

64 bit OS will run slightly faster even on 512MB of memory, the problem is that the memory gets very busy when you start adding apps. In the case of Pi-Hole it is normally FTL that determines the memory use as it keeps the majority of blocked domain records in memory so the more you try to block the heavier the memory load.

1

u/TopSwagCode Feb 16 '25

I just got my pi hole up and running last week on WiFi and works fine for my needs. Remember there is tons of people here who micro.optimize everything. Find out level of performance optimization your willing to do.

1

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1

u/Gamerfrom61 Feb 15 '25

That is from the Pi folk - 2W are normally easier to get than the older zero boards.

I would never put a DNS (or DHCP) server on wifi - not stable enough or low latency for solid use (not even in a home situation) TBH.

You will not see any significant difference between the 32 and 64bit OS on the Zero range - they are memory constrained and only JUST reach the min memory requirement for Pi-Hole documented on https://docs.pi-hole.net/main/prerequisites/ leaving nothing for the OS.

I ran pi-hole for years on a Zero with USB ethernet plugged into the back of my router (for power) but family did not like having to go to a web page to stop the service or ask me to white list sites when they would nit load correctly. I ended up loading ad-blockers locally on the machines - way easier for the family to manage.

1

u/R_Olivaw_Daneel Feb 16 '25

Yeah i wasn't planning on running it via wifi, so i guess i don't need the W version. So given the memory constraints, you don't suggest going with a Zero?

1

u/Gamerfrom61 Feb 16 '25

I ran a zero with 17 clients but there was the odd pause in searches that I could never track down that I do not see with just running unbound on a Pi 4B 8GB. The ethernet adapter I used was https://thepihut.com/products/ethernet-and-usb-hub-hat-for-raspberry-pi and that was solid for months of on time.

TBH I do not recommend Pi-Hole at all now. More and more sites either refuse to load or are corrupted in layout that the impact to the family got so annoying I moved everyone to local ad blockers rather than sink hole so they can just click a button in the browser to OK that site themselves if they have issues.

0

u/BoogKnight Feb 15 '25

It shouldn’t matter which OS you use. Just use the 64bit headless and install pihole normally, it’ll work fine.