Installation

You can choose one of the following installation options:

• Run as standalone binary
• Run as docker container

Prepare your configuration

Blocky supports single or multiple YAML files as configuration. Create new config.yml with your configuration (see Configuration for more details and all configuration options).

Simple configuration file, which enables only basic features:

upstreams:
  groups:
    default:
      - 46.182.19.48
      - 80.241.218.68
      - tcp-tls:fdns1.dismail.de:853
      - https://dns.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/dns-query
blocking:
  denylists:
    ads:
      - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
  clientGroupsBlock:
    default:
      - ads
ports:
  dns: 53
  http: 4000

Run as standalone binary

Download the binary file from GitHub for your architecture and run ./blocky --config config.yml.

Warning

Please be aware, if you want to use port 53 or 953 on Linux you should add CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE capability to the binary with setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' ./blocky, or run as root (not recommended).

Run with docker

Alternative registry

Blocky docker images are deployed to DockerHub (spx01/blocky) and GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io/0xerr0r/blocky).

Parameters

You can define the location of the config file in the container with environment variable BLOCKY_CONFIG_FILE. Default value is /app/config.yml.

Docker from command line

Execute following command from the command line:

docker run --name blocky -v /path/to/config.yml:/app/config.yml -p 4000:4000 -p 53:53/udp spx01/blocky

Run with docker-compose

Create following docker-compose.yml file

version: "2.1"
services:
  blocky:
    image: spx01/blocky
    container_name: blocky
    restart: unless-stopped
    # Optional the instance hostname for logging purpose
    hostname: blocky-hostname
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "4000:4000/tcp"
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin # Optional to synchronize the log timestamp with host
    volumes:
      # Optional to synchronize the log timestamp with host
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      # config file
      - ./config.yml:/app/config.yml:ro

and start docker container with

docker-compose up -d

Advanced setup

Following example shows, how to run blocky in a docker container and store query logs on a SAMBA share. Local black and allowlists directories are mounted as volume. You can create own black or allowlists in these directories and define the path like '/app/allowlists/allowlist.txt' in the config file.

Example

version: "2.1"
services:
  blocky:
    image: spx01/blocky
    container_name: blocky
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "4000:4000/tcp" # Prometheus stats (if enabled)
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
    volumes:
      # config file
      - ./config.yml:/app/config.yml:ro
      # write query logs in this volume
      - queryLogs:/logs
      # put your custom allow/denylists in these directories
      - ./denylists:/app/denylists/
      - ./allowlists:/app/allowlists/

volumes:
  queryLogs:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: cifs
      o: username=USER,password=PASSWORD,rw
      device: //NAS_HOSTNAME/blocky  

Multiple configuration files

For complex setups, splitting the configuration between multiple YAML files might be desired. In this case, folder containing YAML files is passed on startup, Blocky will join all the files.

./blocky --config ./config/

Warning

Blocky simply joins the multiple YAML files. If an option (e.g. upstream) is present in multiple files, the configuration will not load and start will fail.

Other installation types

Warning

These projects are not associated with Blocky devs and are listed here for convenience.

Arch Linux via AUR

See https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/blocky/

Alpine Linux

See https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/edge/testing/x86/blocky

CentOS/Debian/Fedora install script

See https://github.com/m0zgen/blocky-installer

FreeBSD

See https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=blocky&stype=all

Gentoo

See the Gentoo Wiki to enable the GURU repository, then run emerge net-dns/blocky.

NixOS

As pkgs.blocky and a module:

services.blocky = {
  enable = true;

  settings = {
    # anything from config.yml
  };
};

macOS via Homebrew

See https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/blocky

TrueNAS SCALE via TrueCharts

See https://truecharts.org/charts/enterprise/blocky/
(TrueCharts is not an official TrueNAS project)

Companion projects

Warning

These projects are not associated with Blocky devs and are listed here for convenience.

Lists updater

Blocky lists updater updates list related configuration without restarting blocky DNS.

Web UI

Blocky Frontend provides a Web UI to control blocky. See linked project for installation instructions.