FAQ

AdGuard Home - FAQ

Warning

This article is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

• Why AdGuard Home doesn't block ads?
• Where can I inspect the logs?
• How to configure AdGuard Home to write verbose-level logs?
• How to show a custom block page?
• How to change dashboard interface's address?
• How to set up AdGuard Home as default DNS server?
• Are there any known limitations?
• Why am I getting bind: address already in use error when trying to install on Ubuntu?
• How to configure a reverse proxy server for AdGuard Home?
• How to fix permission denied errors on Fedora?
• How to fix incompatible file system errors?
• How to update AdGuard Home manually?
• How to uninstall AdGuard Home?

Why AdGuard Home doesn't block ads?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

Suppose that AdGuard Home must block somebadsite.com but for some reason it doesn't. Let's try to resolve this issue.

Most likely you didn't configure your device to use AdGuard Home as its default DNS server. To check if you're using AdGuard Home as the default DNS server:

1. On Windows, open a Terminal window (Start → Run → cmd.exe). On other systems, open your Terminal application.

2. Execute nslookup example.org. It will print something like this:

   Server:         192.168.0.1
   Address:        192.168.0.1#53
   
   Non-authoritative answer:
   Name:   example.org
   Address: <IPv4>
   Name:   example.org
   Address: <IPv6>
   

3. Check if the Server IP address is the one on which AdGuard Home is running. If not, you need to configure your device, see below.

4. Ensure that your request to example.org appears in the AdGuard Home UI on the Query Log page. If not, you need to configure AdGuard Home to listen on the specified network interface. The most straightforward way to do so is to reinstall AdGuard Home with default settings.

If you are sure that your device uses AdGuard Home as its default DNS server, but the problem persists, it might have something to do with an AdGuard Home misconfiguration. Please check and ensure that:

1. You have the “Block domains using filters and hosts files” setting enabled on the “Settings → General settings” page.

2. You have the appropriate safety mechanisms, such as Parental Control, enabled on the “Settings → General settings”.

3. You have the appropriate filters enabled on the “Filters → DNS blocklists” page.

4. You don't have any exception rule lists that may allow the requests enabled on the “Filters → DNS allowlists” page.

5. You don't have any DNS rewrites that may interfere with the “Filters → DNS rewrites” page.

6. You don't have any custom filtering rules that may interfere with the “Filters → Custom filtering rules” page.

Where can I inspect the logs?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

The default location of the plain-text logs (not to be confused with the query logs) depends on the operating system and installation mode:

• OpenWrt Linux: use the logread -e AdGuardHome command.

• Linux systems with systemd and other Unix systems with SysV-style init: /var/log/AdGuardHome.err.

• macOS: /var/log/AdGuardHome.stderr.log.

• Linux systems with Snapcraft use the snap logs adguard-home command.

• FreeBSD: /var/log/daemon.log (since v0.108.0-b.4). Before v0.108.0-b.4 no logs are written by default.

• OpenBSD: /var/log/daemon (since v0.108.0-b.4). Before v0.108.0-b.4 no logs are written by default.

• On Windows: the Windows Event Log is used.

How to configure AdGuard Home to write verbose-level logs?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

To troubleshoot a complicated issue, the verbose-level logging is sometimes required. Here's how to enable it:

1. Stop AdGuard Home:

   ./AdGuardHome -s stop

2. Configure AdGuard Home to write verbose-level logs:

   1. Open AdGuardHome.yaml in your editor.
   2. Set log.file to the desired path of the log file, for example /tmp/aghlog.txt. Note that the directory must exist.
   3. Set log.verbose to true.

   NOTE: Before v0.107.34 use verbose and log_file properties.

3. Restart AdGuard Home and reproduce the issue:

   ./AdGuardHome -s start

How to show a custom block page?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

A note about HTTPS

Before doing any of this, please note that modern browsers are set up to use HTTPS, so they validate the authenticity of the web server certificate. That means that using any of these will result in warning screens.

There are a couple of proposed extensions that, when they become reasonably well supported by clients, would allow for a better user experience, including the RFC 8914 Extended DNS Error codes and the DNS Access Denied Error Page RFC draft. We'll implement them when browsers actually start to support them.

Prerequisites

To use any of these ways to show a custom block page, you'll need an HTTP server running on some IP address and serving the page in question on all routes. Something like pixelserv-tls.

Custom block page for Parental Control and Safe Browsing filters

There is currently no way to set these parameters from the UI, so you'll need to edit the configuration file manually:

1. Stop AdGuard Home:

   ./AdGuardHome -s stop

2. Open AdGuardHome.yaml in your editor.

3. Set the dns.parental_block_host or dns.safebrowsing_block_host settings to the IP address of the server (in this example, 192.168.123.45):

   # …
   dns:
     # …
   
     # NOTE: Change to the actual IP address of your server.
     parental_block_host: 192.168.123.45
     safebrowsing_block_host: 192.168.123.45

4. Restart AdGuard Home:

   ./AdGuardHome -s start

Custom block page for other filters

1. Open the web UI.

2. Open the “Settings → DNS settings” page.

3. In the “DNS server configuration” section, select the “Custom IP” radio button in the “Blocking mode” selector and enter the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of the server.

4. Click “Save”.

How to change dashboard interface's address?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

1. Stop AdGuard Home:

   ./AdGuardHome -s stop

2. Open AdGuardHome.yaml in your editor.

3. Set the http.address setting to a new network interface. For example:

   • 0.0.0.0:0 to listen on all network interfaces.

   • 0.0.0.0:8080 to listen on all network interfaces with port 8080.

   • 127.0.0.1:0 to listen on the local loopback interface only.

4. Restart AdGuard Home:

   ./AdGuardHome -s start

How to set up AdGuard Home as default DNS server?

See the “Configuring Devices” section on the “Getting Started” page in the Knowledge Base.

Are there any known limitations?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

Here are some examples of what cannot be blocked by a DNS-level blocker:

• YouTube, Twitch ads.

• Facebook, Twitter, Instagram sponsored posts.

Essentially, any advertising that shares a domain with content cannot be blocked by a DNS-level blocker.

Is there a chance to handle this in the future?

DNS will never be enough to do this. Your only option is to use a content blocking proxy like what we do in the standalone AdGuard applications. We're going to bring this feature support to AdGuard Home in the future. Unfortunately, even in this case, there still will be cases when this won't be enough or would require quite complicated configuration.

Why am I getting bind: address already in use error when trying to install on Ubuntu?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

This happens because the port 53 on localhost, which is used for DNS, is already taken by another program. Ubuntu comes with a local DNS called systemd-resolved, which uses the address 127.0.0.53:53 and thus prevents AdGuard Home from binding to 127.0.0.1:53. You can see that by running:

sudo lsof -i :53

The output should be similar to:

COMMAND     PID            USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
systemd-r 14542 systemd-resolve   13u  IPv4  86178      0t0  UDP 127.0.0.53:domain
systemd-r 14542 systemd-resolve   14u  IPv4  86179      0t0  TCP 127.0.0.53:domain

To fix this, you need to either disable the systemd-resolved daemon or choose a different network interface and bind to an accessible IP address on it, for instance, the IP address of your router inside your network. But if you do need to listen on localhost, there are several solutions.

Firstly, AdGuard Home can detect such configurations and disable systemd-resolved for you if you press the “Fix” button, which is shown near the address already in use message on the installation screen.

Secondly, if that doesn't work, follow the guide below. Note that if you're using AdGuard Home with docker or snap, you'll have to do it yourself.

1. Create the /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d directory, if necessary:

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

2. Deactivate DNSStubListener and update DNS server address. To do that, create a new file, /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/adguardhome.conf, with the following content:

   [Resolve]
   DNS=127.0.0.1
   DNSStubListener=no

   Specifying 127.0.0.1 as DNS server address is necessary because otherwise the nameserver will be 127.0.0.53 which doesn't work without DNSStubListener.

3. Activate another resolv.conf file:

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

4. Restart DNSStubListener:

   sudo systemctl reload-or-restart systemd-resolved

After that, systemd-resolved shouldn't be shown in the output of lsof, and AdGuard Home should be able to bind to 127.0.0.1:53.

How to configure a reverse proxy server for AdGuard Home?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

If you're already running a web server and want to access the AdGuard Home dashboard UI from a URL like http://YOUR_SERVER/aghome/, you can use this configuration for your web server:

nginx

location /aghome/ {
    proxy_cookie_path / /aghome/;
    proxy_pass http://AGH_IP:AGH_PORT/;
    proxy_redirect / /aghome/;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
}

caddy

:80/aghome/* {
    route {
        uri strip_prefix /aghome
        reverse_proxy AGH_IP:AGH_PORT
    }
}

Or, if you just want to serve AdGuard Home with automatic TLS, use a configuration similar to the example shown below:

DOMAIN {
    encode gzip zstd
    tls YOUR_EMAIL@DOMAIN
    reverse_proxy AGH_IP:AGH_PORT
}

Disable DoH encryption on AdGuard Home

When you use TLS on your reverse proxy server, there's no need to use TLS on AdGuard Home. Set allow_unencrypted_doh: true in AdGuardHome.yaml to allow AdGuard Home respond to DoH requests without TLS encryption.

Real IP addresses of clients

Since v0.107.0, you can set the parameter trusted_proxies to the IP address(es) of your HTTP proxy to make AdGuard Home take the headers containing the real client IP address into account. See the configuration and encryption pages for more information.

How to fix permission denied errors on Fedora?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

1. Move the AdGuardHome binary to /usr/local/bin.

2. As root, execute the following command to change the security context of the file:

   chcon -t bin_t /usr/local/bin/AdGuardHome

3. Add the required firewall rules in order to make it reachable through the network. For example:

   firewall-cmd --new-zone=adguard --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=adguard --add-source=192.168.0.14/24 --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=adguard --add-port=3000/tcp --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=adguard --add-port=53/udp --permanent
   firewall-cmd --zone=adguard --add-port=80/tcp --permanent
   firewall-cmd --reload

If you are still getting code=exited status=203/EXEC or similar errors from systemctl, try uninstalling AdGuard Home and installing directly into /usr/local/bin by using the -o option of the install script:

curl -s -S -L 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome/master/scripts/install.sh' | sh -s -- -o '/usr/local/bin' -v

See issue 765 and issue 3281.

How to fix incompatible file system errors?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

You should move your AdGuard Home installation or working directory to another location. See the limitations section on the “Getting Started” page.

How to update AdGuard Home manually?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

In case the button isn't shown or an automatic update has failed, you can update manually. In the examples below, we'll use AdGuard Home releases for Linux and Windows for AMD64 CPUs.

Unix (Linux, macOS, BSD)

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

1. Download the new AdGuard Home package from the releases page. If you want to perform this step from the command line:

   curl -L -S -o '/tmp/AdGuardHome_linux_amd64.tar.gz' -s\
       'https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_linux_amd64.tar.gz'

   Or, with wget:

   wget -O '/tmp/AdGuardHome_linux_amd64.tar.gz'\
       'https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_linux_amd64.tar.gz'

2. Navigate to the directory where AdGuard Home was installed. On most Unix systems the default directory is /opt/AdGuardHome, but on macOS it's /Applications/AdGuardHome.

3. Stop AdGuard Home:

   sudo ./AdGuardHome -s stop

   (On OpenBSD you probably want to use doas instead of sudo.)

4. Backup your data. That is, your configuration file and the data directory (AdGuardHome.yaml and data/ by default). For example, to backup your data to a new directory called ~/my-agh-backup:

   mkdir -p ~/my-agh-backup
   cp -r ./AdGuardHome.yaml ./data ~/my-agh-backup/

5. Unpack the AdGuard Home archive to a temporary directory. For example, if you downloaded the archive to your ~/Downloads directory and want to unpack it to /tmp/:

   tar -C /tmp/ -f ~/Downloads/AdGuardHome_linux_amd64.tar.gz -x -v -z

   On macOS, something like:

   unzip -d /tmp/ ~/Downloads/AdGuardHome_darwin_amd64.zip

6. Replace the old AdGuard Home executable file with the new one. On most Unix systems the command would look something like:

   sudo cp /tmp/AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome /opt/AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome

   On macOS, something like:

   sudo cp /tmp/AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome /Applications/AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome

   You may also want to copy the documentation parts of the package, such as the change log (CHANGELOG.md), the README file (README.md), and the license (LICENSE.txt).

   You can now remove the temporary directory.

7. Restart AdGuard Home:

   sudo ./AdGuardHome -s start

   (On OpenBSD you probably want to use doas instead of sudo.)

Windows (Using PowerShell)

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

In all examples below, the PowerShell must be run as Administrator.

1. Download the new AdGuard Home package from the releases page. If you want to perform this step from the command line:

   $outFile = Join-Path -Path $Env:USERPROFILE -ChildPath 'Downloads\AdGuardHome_windows_amd64.zip'
   $aghUri = 'https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_windows_amd64.zip'
   Invoke-WebRequest -OutFile "$outFile" -Uri "$aghUri"

2. Navigate to the directory where AdGuard Home was installed. In the examples below, we'll use C:\Program Files\AdGuardHome.

3. Stop AdGuard Home:

   .\AdGuardHome.exe -s stop

4. Backup your data. That is, your configuration file and the data directory (AdGuardHome.yaml and data/ by default). For example, to backup your data to a new directory called my-agh-backup:

   $newDir = Join-Path -Path $Env:USERPROFILE -ChildPath 'my-agh-backup'
   New-Item -Path $newDir -ItemType Directory
   Copy-Item -Path .\AdGuardHome.yaml, .\data -Destination $newDir -Recurse

5. Unpack the AdGuard Home archive to a temporary directory. For example, if you downloaded the archive to your Downloads directory and want to unpack it to a temporary directory:

   $outFile = Join-Path -Path $Env:USERPROFILE -ChildPath 'Downloads\AdGuardHome_windows_amd64.zip'
   Expand-Archive -Path "$outFile" -DestinationPath $Env:TEMP

6. Replace the old AdGuard Home executable file with the new one. For example:

   $aghExe = Join-Path -Path $Env:TEMP -ChildPath 'AdGuardHome\AdGuardHome.exe'
   Copy-Item -Path "$aghExe" -Destination .\AdGuardHome.exe

   You may also want to copy the documentation parts of the package, such as the change log (CHANGELOG.md), the README file (README.md), and the license (LICENSE.txt).

   You can now remove the temporary directory.

7. Restart AdGuard Home:

   .\AdGuardHome.exe -s start

How to uninstall AdGuard Home?

Warning

This section is outdated. See the up-to-date version in our Knowledge Base.

The way to uninstall AdGuard Home depends on how you installed it.

IMPORTANT: After uninstalling AdGuard Home, don't forget to change your devices configuration and point them to a different DNS server.

Regular installation

In this case you need to do the following:

• Unregister AdGuard Home service: ./AdGuardHome -s uninstall.

• Remove the AdGuard Home directory.

Docker

Simply stop and remove the image.

Snap Store

snap remove adguard-home