Hi - I’m on 4.2 snapshot on my GL-SFT1200. I installed AdGuard Home from Applications - but don’t see any way to access it. It’s not on the applications menu.
Is this because snapshot is unstable, or something else?
AdGuard is not supported due to Opal’s very limited memory of 128MB.
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Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately that means I’ll have to return and look for another device.
What’s the lowest cost GL-Inet device that would support Ad-Guard?
This is meant to support my IoT devices - to block DNS and Internet access to selected devices.
Thanks.
I agree with the GL.Inet staff that the Opal (or any router with <256MB of memory) do not run large blocklists at all.
For example, on my RPI 3b+ I ran the Hagezi-Ultimate list with > 900k entries and would spike memory usage to over 900MB when updating and processing. Once settled, it runs between 300MB to 400MB.
When I was testing 4.x firmwares on my Opal, I just did a manual install and accessed AGH from http://<Router IP>:3000 without stats or icons from the GL GUI.
mkdir /opt/
mkdir /opt/AdGuardHome
cd /opt/AdGuardHome
curl -s -S -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/master/scripts/install.sh | sh -s -- -v
I’ve found on the 3.x and 4.x firmwares that I can run several smaller lists that have under 50k entries and cumulatively run a total of several hundred thousand entries on the Opal but do not have the resources/swap needed to run a larger single list like Neodev that has >200k entries without the router crashing shortly after booting.
YMMV, but I can run a combination of smaller blocklists (a thousand entries to 30k/40k entries) and have enough resources to process each list successfully with no frequent crashes or having load averages spike for an extended period (On a side note, did you notice that the Opal showed as a quad core instead of dual core for the CPU in the 4.x GUI?). I usually only run my Opal for up to 8 hours at a time using LTE, so I can run with 90MB of memory used with VPN running and have extra RAM to spare. You may have to run fewer total entries if you use your Opal for a main router 24/7, so it has enough free memory to process updates (or schedule/cron an overnight reboot every evening).
If you have time to optimize AGH, you may find a balance of running 100k-300k+ entries from smaller blocklists that may satisfy your requirements without needing to replace the convenience of the Opal. Here are a few of the smaller lists from the defaults (as of 3/12/23)
Adway -7357
Dan Pollock's List - 11405
Peter Lowe's Blocklist - 3758
Dandelion Sprout Game Console Adblock - 62
Perflyst and Dandelion - 256
The Big List of Hacked Sites - 13822
Dandelion Sprout Anti-Malware Full - 11044
NoCoin Filter List - 724
Scam Blocklist by DurableNapkin - 475
And many of the AdGuard blocklists have under 1000 entries.
It will not be company policy to run AGH on an Opal, but it can be done with the 4.x firmwares with a little optimization.
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I have uploaded the ipk, please install gl-sdk4-ui-adguardhome directly.
note:
After the installation is complete, please reboot the router to make it work properly.
Opal’s memory running adguardhome might be a bit of a struggle, but you can give it a try.
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Slate Plus is a better choice supporting Adguard considering cost and performance.
If you need block device internet access, maybe no need of Adguard. There is Block WAN function at Clients page.
Thank @Bitty_Bytes and @dengxinfa for correcting me it’s possible to support AdGuard on Opal.
This is Amazing - Thank you.
Hi - how do you install directly? right from the applications menu on the device?
Thanks - I’m wondering if GL-MT1300 (Beryl) can handle this better than Opal? I have one at home now. I see that 4.2 hasn’t made it from Snapshot to Beta yet.
I can buy newer Beryl for travel.
Yes, download and install it directly from the applications menu
GL-MT1300 only has 32MB flash which limits Adguard to be built in.
Just to mention, I use extroot on my 16/128 Spitz and installed AGH to mainly use custom filters (regex) and the DNS facilities. It is too CPU limited to run blocklists, but handles banIP and ipsets much better.
The mt1300 with extroot would run AGH with a little finessing just fine.
Thanks - found it and it seems to work OK.
For some strange reason these particular IoT devices go into a zombie mode when WAN is blocked. I was thinking of just blocking all DNS queries from the devices.
But with my IoT network, I’d want general ad blocking anyway - things like Roku make lots of chatter.
Interesting - I’m not familiar with extroot - but can look into that.
Opal seems to run this somewhat OK …
Does anyone know if Beryl would have better performance?
OR … what cheaper option from GL Inet would work?
IMO, AGH likes as much memory as you can give it. Most routers (thus far in 2023) are not even at the 1GB threshold for onboard memory.
I’m used to running low powered x86 boxes as a home router (Supermicro X7 SPA was a fave for years) and have always thrown RAM at snort, suricata, ad-block, etc.
Most AGH blocklists are just a collection of many smaller blocklists, so approaching an Opal or other limited RAM devices with looking at the larger blocklists to see what blocklists they are comprised of and customizing your own custom blocklist set seemed intuitive.
The Beryl with 256MB of memory will run more blocklists than an Opal (and the 512MB routers even more), but depending on your adblocking needs and network performance needs, you may only see incremental improvements with AGH as you upgrade from 128MB to 256MB to 512MB devices.
Another adblocking package for OpenWrt (aptly called adblock) has a chart with several blocklists and breaks down the memory footprint into S/M/L/XL/XXL/VAR that may give a better visual cue of how much memory is needed for you adblocking needs. The other features with AGH make that package more feature-rich though.
Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail.
I’m wondering if I should just hand this task over to my existing Beryl and get the v2 or Slate version for travel.