Dell Wyse 3040 and r/Homelab
A couple of weeks ago, I made the what some would consider, “near fatal” mistake of scrolling through Reddits r/Homelab. Fast forward to present day, I’m now the owner of a Dell Thin-client running an instance of Adguard-Home.
DNS server
After spending sometime reading through beginner homelab projects, I decided on a DNS server to run on my local network was the perfect first project.
With the ultimate goal of blocking most ads when browsing the web at home.
Weapon of choice
I wanted a light running and inexpensive machine for this project, the Dell Wyse 3040 was perfect.
After some Ebay lurking, I picked one up for £25. (approx. $30) Extemely cheap compared to it’s retail price of £200 on release in 2019.
The Specs
- Intel Cherry Trail x5 Z-8350 4 Cores
- 2GB RAM
- 8GB SSD
- 2.5 Watt idle draw (approx)
The Wyse 3040 comes pre-installed with ThinOS, the first thing I did was try to install Ubuntu 22.0, however the install would hang when configuring the keyboard, after some more attempts without success I knew I had to try another distro.
My next attempt was Manjaro, and (as expected, due to the hardware intensiveness of it) the install failed when creating the partition.
My last resort was Ubuntu Server, which installed first time without issue, and ended up becoming a great choice of OS for this project.
Network / WIFI
I naively (maybe stupidly) thought my Wyse 3040 would come with a WIFI card. It did not.
Unfortunately, the Wyse 3040’s M.2 slot for the wireless card only supports SDIO not PCIe, as seen on Parkytowers.
I would recommend purchasing a WIFI dongle or just using ethernet, I chose the latter.
Adguard Home
My choice of DNS server was Adguard Home oposed to PiHole, due to the positive comments online, easy to read documentation and smooth install process.
Once I had it installed and configured my settings via theAdguard web portal, I set my household devices DNS server’s to my Wyse 3040’s port 53 (xxx.xx.xxx.xx:53) and like magic, I can now manage my devices requests and block most ads on my home network.
Some people opt to change their routers DNS server, instead of each individual device, it’s up to you.
Blocklists
Adguard allows you to manually select different blocklists, most blocklists are regulary updated maintaining affectiveness when blocking ads.
My personal blocklist is:
- Adguard DNS filter
- AdAway Default Blocklist
- HaGeZi’s Pro++
- 1 Hosts (Lite)
- Dandelion Spout’s Anti Push Notifications
(configure blocklists under Filters/DNS blocklists setting)
Conclusion
Overall, I really enjoyed this project and found it was a great introduction to the world of homelabbing. It was a great way to improve both my understanding of DNS servers, ad blocking on the DNS level and my somewhat limited / non-existant Linux skillset.
For anyone looking to kick-off their homelab journey, running a DNS server on either a cheap or old unused machine would be a perfect start atleast it was for me.
You can certainly expect more posts about my homelab journey in the near future.