How to install AdGuard Home in Docker

Advertising and trackers can follow you. In most cases, advertising may be inappropriate. Thanks to trackers, your personal information will be used to determine the most effective way to sell you any product. Both banner ads and trackers slow down the browser, interfere with, and degrade the online experience.

AdGuard Home is software that provides security for your network and blocks ads and trackers. In this article, we will look at how to install it in a Docker container, also using docker-compose.

Let's install Docker.

Update the OS packages.

apt update

We will install the necessary packages and add a new repository:

apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg-agent software-properties-common

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"

We will update the packages with the new repository:

apt update

Now let's install Docker.

apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Let's check the version:

docker --version

Let's check the status:

systemctl status docker

If it hasn't started, we start it:

systemctl start docker

And add it to autostart.

systemctl enable docker

Let's install Docker-Compose

For this project, version 1.25 will be sufficient.

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.25.5/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

We set the execution permissions.

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Let's check how Docker-Compose was installed:

docker-compose --version

Add the Linux user to the docker group:

usermod -aG docker $USER

Let's create a *.yaml file for Docker-Compose.

To keep track of what we have installed in the future, let's create a separate folder for this project in the /home directory and navigate to it.

mkdir /home/adguardhome && cd /home/adguardhome

You can also use another directory to place this and other projects.

Let's use the repository to create the docker-compose.yaml file at the link https://hub.docker.com/r/adguard/adguardhome

Create the file docker-compose.yaml or docker-compose.yml,

vim docker-compose.yaml

And add the following code to it:

version: '3.3'
services:
    adguardhome:
        image: adguard/adguardhome
        container_name: adguardhome
        volumes:
            - /opt/adguardhome/work:/opt/adguardhome/work
            - /opt/adguardhome/conf:/opt/adguardhome/conf
        ports:
            - 53:53/tcp
            - 53:53/udp
            - 67:67/udp
            - 68:68/udp
            - 80:80/tcp
            - 443:443/tcp
            - 443:443/udp
            - 3000:3000/tcp
            - 853:853/tcp
            - 784:784/udp
            - 853:853/udp
            - 8853:8853/udp
            - 5443:5443/tcp
            - 5443:5443/udp
        restart: always

Where:

container_name: the name of your container;
In the volumes block, specify the paths where the configuration files will be available;
In the ports block, the ports that need to be forwarded to the container are specified.

Run the script (to do this, you need to be in the directory where our file was created. In this case, it is /home/adguardhome/):

docker-compose up -d

Wait for the images to download and deploy.

Check:

docker-compose ps

Or:

docker ps

You can also install adguardhome with a single command without using docker compose.

docker run --name adguardhome\\
    --restart unless-stopped\\
    -v /my/own/workdir:/opt/adguardhome/work\\
    -v /my/own/confdir:/opt/adguardhome/conf\\
    -p 53:53/tcp -p 53:53/udp\\
    -p 67:67/udp -p 68:68/udp\\
    -p 80:80/tcp -p 443:443/tcp -p 443:443/udp -p 3000:3000/tcp\\
    -p 853:853/tcp\\
    -p 784:784/udp -p 853:853/udp -p 8853:8853/udp\\
    -p 5443:5443/tcp -p 5443:5443/udp\\
    -d adguard/adguardhome

Now, to access the administration panel, you need to disable DNSStubListener on the server. To do this, create a directory and a new file:

mkdir -p  /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d

vim /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/adguardhome.conf

And add the following code to it:

[Resolve]
DNS=127.0.0.1
DNSStubListener=no

To activate resolve.conf, execute the following commands:

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

Update DNSStubListener:

systemctl reload-or-restart systemd-resolved

Now we can use our IP to connect to adguardhome and complete the installation. After that, you can log in with the credentials you entered during installation.

You will see a picture similar to this in your personal account.

To make adguardhome start blocking ads, enter the server IP where adguardhome is located in the DNS field. This can be done both in the router and on your personal PC.

Happy surfing without trackers and ads.