Building a Self-Hosted DNS Server To Streamline My Workflow

3.2 Workflow / DNS Segmentation

This was what gave me the initial spark to use Pi-Hole—as it lets me tailor my blacklists according to what I'm doing, focused on, & grants me the ability to automate them according to custom rules as well.

These are my custom groups:

• Work - Blocks distracting sites & made to enforce that I stay on task throughout the day
• Study - Similar to Work, but tweaked independently according to what I'm focused on & wanting to study
• Leisure - Blacklists any sites that I don't want to spend my free-time on (Like work-related sites)
• Baseline - Always on. Provides ad-blocking and privacy protection. I have 600,000+ domains blocked currently
• Unrestricted (Rarely used)

3.3 SSH & Custom Scripts

To streamline management, I developed a set of custom shell scripts that sit on the Pi-hole server & client-side scripts that stay synced to my Linux devices. They are configured to be executed over SSH.

Workflow selection script

Updater script interface

DNS statistics checker

The source-code for these are all hosted on my GitHub repository.

These allow me to not need to jump between devices constantly & perform maintenance tasks on Pi-hole straight from SSH.

I wanted to take advantage of git when I initially began this project. I thought it would make sense to try and keep my configurations & home lab services synced through an open-source repository, albeit while maintaining privacy & not leaking sensitive info (Because of this, a majority of my repositories remain private). This also allows me to share these projects publicly & open for use.

Which is why I now have this repo: roman-dns-stack

The repo contains all of my scripts, blocklists, unbound, some screenshots and a few txt & markdown documents.

Example - baseline.txt

4.1 Staying On Task (Why do this anyways?)

Before every work session, I make sure that I run my workflow script to set my group to "Work" along with pacman -Syu to synchronize my arch packages. I can then use piholeupdate to sync my pihole settings (officially applying them) and start the session.

Whenever I'm in this mode, the process is pretty self-explanatory: Anytime I'm distracted, I'm quickly reminded of the restrictions I put in place, and can't access any distracting sites.

This helps not only with not using blacklisted sites but also enforces:

• Not falling into algorithmic pipelines & feedback loops, even if I'm using said site for one singular purpose.
• Forces me into starting work faster & getting into flow as soon as I begin.

Another particularly unique part about this setup is the advantage of being able to implement some of the standard features of already existing programs like Cold Turkey (a website blocker for productivity) integrated into my very network infrastructure. This keeps my tools self-hosted and allows them to blends seamlessly into other DNS & network rules. An interesting aspect to this is it grants me the ability to use:

• Cron jobs - Schedule times of the day to perform functions
• Platform agnostic - I can use my server on any device regardless of OS
• Use VLANs to isolate devices with custom rules
• Block traffic by port & protocol - target apps that use nonstandard domains like Discord

Because I can segment traffic as well, this allows for extendable network experimentation & means my setup won't get in the way of other clients and users on the network. It transforms it into an engaging way to learn home labbing & apply my networking knowledge to minimize relying on external programs. It also helps to not be tied to things like subscriptions.

4.2 Leisure Time + Media Consumption

In the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, he outlines a concept he calls high-quality leisure: activities that are satisfying, mentally engaging, and valuable to your life. He contrasts high quality leisure with digital activities that shorten your attention and encourage passive consumption (like: doomscrolling).

The goal in achieving high-quality-leisure is pretty simple: to reclaim time, attention, and mental energy within our free time—and create space for more fulfilling and purposeful experiences.

This was the motivation behind my "Leisure" blocklist. Rather than being outright unrestricted during my free-time, I can in the same way as Work & Study, "force" myself to immediately have the focus of high-quality-leisure in mind, and to not accidentally let my mind slip into work mode nor spend my free-time doomscrolling.

This plays into why I decided to start using Jellyfin + Kodi as well. Not only is it a highly customizable ecosystem that can be catered towards my preferences and experience, but allows me to jump right into whatever content, movies, and TV shows I'd like to enjoy without ads & being connected to the internet.

Additionally, I've got into the habit of writing notes and journaling themes, quotes, etc that I've extracted while watching new movies or TV shows. I also write down sentences & timestamps for learning new words in foreign languages through sentence mining . This approach has brought watching media in a useful and engaging way to another level.

4.3 Conclusion

This project was a simple, neat & fun way to try and make use of scripting, networking & DNS in day-to-day life. This is also the first blog post I've written where I detail my home lab. If you want to learn more about how my home lab works with my daily routine, I plan to go into further detail here. If you took the time to read/and or learned anything useful, thank you!

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