VPS

To run AdGuard DNS on a VPS, you need a server with Debian 8 or 9, x64 or x32.

Initial installation

First let's ensure that your VPS has neccessary minimal requirements, run this as root:

apt-get install sudo nano bind9-host

Go to AdGuard DNS page and download binaries for your architecture (64-bit Linux in this example).

As of time of writing, latest version is v0.1

To download AdGuard DNS and unpack it execute following commands:

wget https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardDNS/releases/download/v0.1/AdguardDNS_0.1_linux_amd64.tar.gz
tar xvf AdguardDNS_0.1_linux_amd64.tar.gz

You can find out the directory where you've unpacked it to by running these commands:

cd AdguardDNS
pwd

In this example it is /root/AdguardDNS, now let's make it run on VPS boot:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/adguard-dns.service

A file will be opened, fill the file contents with this text:

[Unit]
Description=AdGuard DNS
After=syslog.target
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
Group=root
WorkingDirectory=/root/AdguardDNS
ExecStart=/root/AdguardDNS/AdguardDNS --host 0.0.0.0
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note that I've used /root/AdguardDNS in that file, replace both instances with your own values there. Write to the file and close it.

After you're done with that, let's enable and start AdGuard DNS:

sudo systemctl enable adguard-dns
sudo systemctl start adguard-dns

You can verify that it's working properly by running this command:

host doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1

If everything works correctly, you will get this output:

Using domain server:
Name: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
Aliases:

Host doubleclick.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

Visit the web interface

You can access your AdGuard DNS web interface on port 3000 by typing this in your browser — http://1.2.3.4:3000/

Replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address of your VPS.

Configure your devices to use your AdGuard DNS

Now, once you've established that AdGuard DNS works on your VPS, you can use it on your machine by changing system DNS settings to use your VPS's public IP address.

(optional) Password-protect web interface

You have an option to password-protect your AdGuard DNS's web interace so only you can access it.

To do so, stop it first:

sudo systemctl stop adguard-dns

Then edit /root/AdguardDNS/AdguardDNS.yaml (substitute this path with your own as appropriate):

sudo nano /root/AdguardDNS/AdguardDNS.yaml

Find lines containing auth_name: "" and auth_pass: "" and replace them with username and password:

auth_name: "your-secret-name"
auth_pass: "your-secret-password"

Substitute name and password with your own, of course.

After you're done editing, save the file and start your AdGuard DNS again:

sudo systemctl start adguard-dns

After that, visiting web interface in browser will require entering username and password.