A useful combination for travellers and safety online - OpenVPN and Pihole together - to quickly protect you and your data from unwanted surveillance and unexpected malware domains, all of which is especially useful while traveling and on public wifi.

To use your new OpenVPN + Pihole server, you'll need to collect your OpenVPN config one time. Do this by logging into your new 1-Click App Droplet via ssh root@your_Droplet_IP with your SSH key or one-time password. You'll then see and follow this MOTD:

hiya! (ن╹◡╹)੭” NB: OpenVPN and Pi-hole can take several minutes after first boot to be fully setup and configured. Once initial setup is complete, your client config can be found at: /root/client.ovpn Securely copy your config to your device and import it into your client app. To create an additional client configuration run: /root/create-client-config.sh client2 NOTE: Certs are only valid for 90 days, so you will need to delete your droplet and create a new one at least once every 3 months. This helps ensure you're running the latest software. To access the Pi-hole dashboard, connect to the VPN and visit: pi.hole/admin. To set / reset the admin password run: pihole -a -p # Command available after first boot setup is complete ヾ(^_^) Happy travels Road Warrior, and if you like this tool, consider donating to the authors from which this work is derived: https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install#donations https://pi-hole.net/donate/

You can also check out this short demo of configuring and setting everything up from an Android device.

To spin up and tear down your VPN server on demand so that you only pay for the compute resources when you are using them, check out the example client scripts in the source repo that can be executed directly from a terminal emulator like Termux on your mobile device.