Huh! I’m tired today i woke up @ 09:53 and procrastinate util 11:00 and started working on it pi hole. I know, I’m dumb AF basically, I run the pi hole docker container and i try accessing web UI but I was getting 403 Forbidden.

I tried removing and recreating container n no of times with n no of configuration

I didn’t watch any tutorial videos on YouTube, only reading official and unofficial docs Finally without liking I asked AI about the problem, it suggest that access restriction is a effect of misconfiguration of lighttpd server.

I did make the changes the AI said to lighttpd.conf still the error persist

and for your reference, Here is my docker-compose.yml file

services:
  pihole:
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    container_name: pihole
    environment:
      - TZ=Asia/Kolkata  # Change to your timezone
      - WEBPASSWORD=<Password>  # Set a password for the web interface
      - DNS1=8.8.8.8  # Primary DNS
      - DNS2=8.8.4.4  # Secondary DNS
    volumes:
      - ./etc-pihole/:/etc/pihole/
      - ./etc-dnsmasq.d/:/etc/dnsmasq.d/
    network_mode: "host"
    restart: unless-stopped
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

and command i used to run

docker compose up -d

Even AI can’t solve my problem. || Spoiler: Because there is no Problem ||

Finally this time i meant it, i watched pi hole setup tutorial video on YouTube by Network Chuck . I did everything correct and my pi hole was running correctly with one warning that’s not that critical Anyway Nobody is perfect so its not my problem.

The problem was, I was access a wrong URL we meant to access http://<pihole-ip>/admin for web UI but i was accessing http://<pihole-ip>/ .

Oh Shit! that’s it i was accessing wrong URL, I wasted half a day solving it.

If you think I’m done here you’re dumb because, I only wasted half a day I still have remaining half day.

I checked the warning I mention earlier, and it turns out to be nothing major. The issue was that I hadn’t configured the dnsmasq.d correctly — my Ethernet Adaptor name wasn’t name eth0 but enp1s0. Once I manually updated it, the error was fixed. What a nice fix, huh!

so, I try changing primary dns to point pi hole i realise that my ISP F*Ing JIO they did shit like vendor lock everything including

  • ONT/ROUTER ,
  • STB,
  • PHONE

I changed the Primary DNS to pi hole with help of the JIO user community, who created mod and gain root access to devices.

in the end, “After spending hours setting up Pi-hole, tweaking settings, and testing configurations, I finally faced the moment of truth—only to realise that YouTube, Hotstar, and other OTT platforms still pushed ads through. Turns out, Pi-hole isn’t as flawless as I had hoped.”

So, I decided to shift my focus to SIP trunk of jio after seeing someone else searching for about it and gain some information that may help me. This grows my interest in VoIP and spent my rest of my day.

To reverse-engineer the SIP trunk, I needed to gain root access to my ONT. To do this, i backed up my ONT configuration and decrypted it. I researched how openssl’s AES-128-CBC encryption works-while didn’t master everything, I learned how to encrypt and decrypt the file.

But I clearly failed to gain access, and as the clock struck 23:59, I did what any defeated person do —init 0 on my PC, and called it a day for both of us.