Installation

You can choose one of the following installation options:

• Run as standalone binary
• Run as docker container
• Kubernetes with helm chart

Prepare your configuration

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

Simple configuration file, which enables only basic features:

upstream:
  default:
    - 46.182.19.48
    - 80.241.218.68
    - tcp-tls:fdns1.dismail.de:853
    - https://dns.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/dns-query
blocking:
  blackLists:
    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 or run with root privileges (running as root is 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

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 whitelists directories are mounted as volume. You can create own black or whitelists in these directories and define the path like '/app/whitelists/whitelist.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
      # write query logs in this volume
      - queryLogs:/logs
      # put your custom white and blacklists in these directories
      - ./blacklists:/app/blacklists/
      - ./whitelists:/app/whitelists/

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 a directive (e.g. upstream) is repeated in multiple files, the configuration will not load and start will fail.

Other installation types

Warning

These projects are maintained by other people.

Web UI

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

Run with helm chart on Kubernetes

See this repo, the documentation and the configuration instructions for details about running blocky via helm in kubernetes.

Run as an App for TrueNAS SCALE

You can find the App in the TrueCharts App Catalog or read the documentation and configuration instructions for details about running blocky as a native TrueNAS SCALE App.

AUR package for Arch Linux

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

Package for Alpine Linux

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

Installation script for CentOS/Fedora

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

Package for FreeBSD

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

Homebrew package for MacOS

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