TOC

• Why Orange Pi Zero 3
• Things didn't go well
• Installing CH340 driver
• First login
• WLAN connection and static IP address
• Install Pi-hole
• Restoring backup
• UPD 24.02.2025
• Useful links

Why Orange Pi Zero 3

As for today, Pi-hole hardware requirements are 4GB of disk space and 512MB RAM which makes a 1GB version of the OPi Zero 3 a perfect candidate.

Things didn't go well

All my disappointment may be described by one single picture. Orange Pi Zero 3 uses a Micro-HDMI port that is soldered too close to the Type-C Power supply port. It means you can't use Micro-HDMI to HDMI adapters you probably have at home - they won't fit together. The easiest solution to this problem could be buying a recommended cable.

But have a USD TTL converter laying in my storage box for quite a long time and waiting to be used. It's based on the CH340G chip which should be supported my Mac OS since a few years, but unfortunately didn't in my case on an M1 Pro series MacBook.

OPi Zero 3 has a Debug TTL UART pins so it should be super easy to access a serial console though any terminal program.

Installing CH340 driver

CH340 is one the 2 most popular USB drivers used for various Arduino and ESP devices. Mac os drivers are not that obvious to find. One could be downloaded from the repo https://github.com/adrianmihalko/ch340g-ch34g-ch34x-mac-os-x-driver, but it turns out that someone has already created a cask for Brew.

$ brew search ch34x
==> Casks
wch-ch34x-usb-serial-driver

$ brew install wch-ch34x-usb-serial-driver

$ ls /dev/tty.wch*
/dev/tty.wchusbserial110

First login

Connect to the OPi using a Baud Rate 115200:

screen /dev/tty.wchusbserial110 115200

As stated in the armbian docs, default user and password are root:1234.

On the initial logic it's required to setup the system creating a root password and a second user that will be added to the sudo group automatically.

Once the setup process will be done, a welcome screen will be shown.

WLAN connection and static IP address

I plan to connect my OPi using a patch cord, but in order to install Pi-hole and restore a backup from RPi it's more convenient to setup a WIFI connection. You may use a LAN cable and skip this step.

root@orangepizero3:~# iw dev
phy#0
        Interface wlan0
        ...

Create a netplan configuration file. A separate config is recommended for WIFI:

sudo nano /etc/netplan/30-wifis-dhcp.yaml

Edit SSID and password:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  wifis:
    wlan0:
      dhcp4: true
      dhcp6: true
      access-points:
        'Your-SSID':
          password: 'your-password'

Update config permissions, test and start the network:

sudo chmod 600 /etc/netplan/*.yaml
sudo netplan try
sudo netplan apply

If everything is setup correctly, no syntax errors in the yaml network should be reachable.

As soon as connection is up, I prefer to switch from tty to ssh, since it's a pain to work with interactive console and files. Add ssh key and connect to the OPi using SSH:

echo "<ssh_public_key>" > ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Setting a static IP is a Pi-hole requirement, since it warks a DNS server. Although it's possible to set IP address using netplan configuration, I prefer to control them directly from the router.

From now on I'll assume that 192.168.0.2 is the address assigned to our Orange Pi.

Install Pi-hole

Armbian OS is an officially supported operating system and installation is quite straightforward with the official Pi-hole docs.

First, update the system you know it's outdated. Mine was:

apt update
apt upgrade
apt install vim

Start the Pi-hole installation:

$ curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

Once everything is done, run pihole -a -p to set the admin web interface password.

Restoring backup

1. Backup lists and configuration with pihole -a -t. This creates a *.tar.gz archive.
2. Download it and restore though the web admin interface Settings -> Teleporter -> Restore.

$ scp admin@192.168.0.3:/home/admin/pi-hole-pihole-teleporter_2024-12-30_11-52-51.tar.gz .
pi-hole-pihole-teleporter_2024-12-30_11-52-51.tar.gz                                              100% 2589   412.8KB/s   00:00

You may also want to migrate queries log to preserve historical Pi-hole query log data.

1. Install sqlite3: apt install sqlite3
2. Stop FTL service: sudo service pihole-FTL stop
3. Create a backup: sqlite3 /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.db ".backup /home/<user_name>/pihole-FTL.db.backup"
4. Move backup file to another host
5. Stop FTL service on that host
6. Replace the existing /etc/pihol/pihole-FTL.db with the backup
7. Start FTL service again

UPD 24.02.2025

It's almost 2 months since the migration is completed, and it works like a charm with no issues or downtime.

Useful links

• Orange Pi Zero 3 Wiki
• WCH CH340 Driver and Manual
• USB TTL converter on AliExpress