FAQ

AdGuard Home - FAQ

Questions:

• After installing AdGuard Home, how to change dashboard interface's address?
• How to configure AdGuard Home to run together with pixelsrv-tls?
• Are there any known limitations?
• Why am I getting "bind: address already in use" error when trying to install on Ubuntu?
• How to configure a reverse proxy server for AdGuard Home?

Answers:

After installing AdGuard Home, how to change dashboard interface's address?

1. Open AdGuardHome.yaml in the text editor

2. Modify bind_host: value to set a new network interface, e.g.:

   • 0.0.0.0: listen on all network interfaces
   • 127.0.0.1: listen on localhost only

3. Modify bind_port: value to set a new port

4. Restart AdGuard Home:

   ./AdGuardHome -s restart

How to configure AdGuard Home to run together with pixelsrv-tls?

1. Open dashboard
2. Go to Settings -> DNS settings
3. Scroll to DNS server configuration section
4. For Blocking mode setting select Custom IP radio button and enter the IP address of pixelsrv-tls instance running.
5. Click Save

Are there any known limitations?

Here are some examples of what cannot be blocked by a DNS-level blocker:

YouTube, Twitch ads
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram sponsored posts

Essentially, any advertising that shares a domain with content cannot be blocked by a DNS-level blocker.

Is there a chance to handle this in the future?

DNS will never be enough to do this. Our only option is to use a content blocking proxy like what we do in the standalone AdGuard applications. We're going to bring this feature support to AdGuard Home in the future. Unfortunately, even in this case, there still will be cases when this won't be enough or would require quite complicated configuration.

Why am I getting "bind: address already in use" error when trying to install on Ubuntu?

Because 127.0.0.1:53 which is used for DNS is already occupied by another program.

The easiest solution would be simply to choose a different network interface and bind it to your external IP (for instance, your Wi-Fi IP).

If for some reason you really want to bind to 127.0.0.1, read the explanation below.

Ubuntu comes with a local DNS server by default - "systemd-resolved" which uses 53 port and thus prevents AdGuard Home from binding to it. To fix this, you should disable "systemd-resolved" daemon. Luckily, AdGuard Home can detect such configurations and disable "systemd-resolved" for you if you press "Fix" button which is shown near to "address already in use" message.

But if you're using AdGuard Home with docker or snap, you need to do it yourself.

Follow these steps:

1. Deactivate DNSStubListener and update DNS server address. Create a new file: /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/adguardhome.conf (create a /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d directory if necessary):

   [Resolve]
   DNS=127.0.0.1
   DNSStubListener=no
   

2. Specifying 127.0.0.1 as DNS server address is necessary because otherwise the nameserver will be 127.0.0.53 which doesn't work without DNSStubListener.

3. Activate another resolv.conf file:

   sudo mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.backup
   ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
   

4. Restart DNSStubListener:

   systemctl reload-or-restart systemd-resolved
   

How to configure a reverse proxy server for AdGuard Home?

If you're running a web server already and you want to access AdGuard Home dashboard UI from an URL like http://YOUR_SERVER/aghome/ you can use this configuration for your web server:

nginx

location /aghome/ {
    proxy_pass http://AGH_IP:AGH_PORT/;
    proxy_redirect / /aghome/;
    proxy_cookie_path / /aghome/;
}

caddy

:80/aghome/* {
    route {
        uri strip_prefix /aghome
        reverse_proxy AGH_IP:AGH_PORT
    }
}