Setting up sync for two AdGuard Home instances (worksheet)

Written By Chris Okamuro

THE TUTORIAL IS MEANT TO BE USED WITH THIS VIDEO!

YouTube tutorials can be a pain to actually follow, so here’s the worksheet that accompanies the video - for your convenience.

I recommend both printing this out, to use as a checklist, and keeping the page up, so you can copy-and-paste the entries.

What you need:

  1. 2 instances of AdGuard Home

  2. SSH access to the device running the PRIMARY AdGuard Home instance

  3. AdGuard Home web UI usernames and passwords for both AdGuard Home instances

Reference Information

Prerequisites

  1. The primary instance of AdGuard Home is reachable by SSH

  2. AdGuard Home is running on both the primary and secondary instance

  3. AdGuard-1(or whatever your primary instance is called) can reach the internet

  4. You have all of the items in the “Reference Information” section, above

Nomenclature: I will be referring to the primary instance as adguard-1 and the secondary instance as adguard-2.

In my example, adguard-1 has an IP of 192.168.0.13, while adguard-2 has an IP of 192.168.0.14.

The SSH username on adguard-1 is netserv.

Both of my web UIs are running on port 80.

Both of my AdGuard admin usernames are agh.

Both of my AdGuard admin passwords are syncpass.

These values will be different from what you’ve listed in the Reference Information section, and you will need to make substitutions, as needed.

STEP 1 - SSH into adguard-1

  1. Open a terminal on your PC (WIN + R > cmd > Enter in Windows), and connect to adguard-1

    ssh netserv@192.168.0.13

    replace netserv with your SSH usename, and 192.168.0.13 with your adguard-1 IP address

  2. Enter your password when prompted

STEP 2 - Install Docker on adguard-1

  1. Install Docker by copying and pasting the following command

    curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh

  2. Add your user to the docker group so you can run Docker commands without sudo

    sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

  3. Log out of the SSH session

    exit

  4. Reconnect to SSH with

    ssh netserv@192.168.0.13

    replace netserv with your SSH usename, and 192.168.0.13 with your adguard-1 IP address

  5. Verify Docker is working

    docker --version

STEP 3 - Create the sync config directory

Create a dedicated directory for the sync tool and change into it:

mkdir -p ~/adguard-sync && cd ~/adguard-sync

STEP 4 - Create the sync configuration file

  1. Use nano to create the config file

    nano ~/adguard-sync/adguardhome-sync.yaml

  2. Paste the following content, substituting your actual AdGuard IP addresses, usernames and passwords. You may need to add ports to the end of the URLs, if you aren’t using port 80. The configuration includes the first line with the 3 dashes:

---
origin:
  url: http://192.168.0.13
  username: agh
  password: 'syncpass'

replicas:
  - url: http://192.168.0.14
    username: agh
    password: 'syncpass'

# cron schedule — runs every 15 minutes
# use standard 5-field cron syntax
cron: "*/15 * * * *"

# also sync once immediately on container start
runOnStart: true

# Optional REST API port for manual trigger
api:
  port: 8080

Save and exit

Ctrl-X, then Y, then Enter

STEP 5 - Run adguard-sync in a Docker container

  1. Pull the image and start the container with a restart policy so it survives reboots (copy the entire block at once, and execute the whole thing):

    docker run -d \

      --name adguard-sync \

      --restart unless-stopped \

      -v ~/adguard-sync/adguardhome-sync.yaml:/config/adguardhome-sync.yaml:ro \

      -p 8080:8080 \

    lscr.io/linuxserver/adguardhome-sync:latest

    NOTE: If something is already on port 8080 (e.g. NextCloud from another tutorial), change the left side of the port mapping: -p 8181:8080

  2. Verify the container started and check the first sync:

    docker ps | grep adguard-sync

    docker logs adguard-sync

  3. Check for any lines indicating an ERROR or connection refused


STEP 6 - Verify the sync worked

Open adguard-2's web UI in a browser and confirm its settings match adguard-1

  1. Do blocklists match?

  2. Do allow/blocklist entries match?

  3. Do DNS rewrites match?

  4. Do client lists match?

  5. Do general settings match?


STEP 7 - Manual test

  1. Launch 192.168.0.13:8080(except your actual adguard-1 IP, and port from Step 5)

  2. Click Synchronize


Maintenance commands

Run from adguard-1 via SSH:

Check container status

docker ps | grep adguard-sync

View recent sync activity

docker logs --tail 50 adguard-sync

Restart the sync container

docker restart adguard-sync

Update the container image

docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/adguardhome-sync:latest

docker stop adguard-sync && docker rm adguard-sync

Re-run the docker run command from Step 5

Remove sync entirely

docker stop adguard-sync

docker rm adguard-sync

rm -rf ~/adguard-sync

Architecture summary

Architecture Summary

Router DHCP DNS Servers

DNS1: 192.168.0.13

DNS2: 192.168.0.14


adguard-1 (192.168.0.13)  ←  primary, config lives here

└── adguard-sync container  →  pushes config to adguard-2 every 15 minutes


adguard-2 (192.168.0.14)  ←  replica, independent IP/auth

Both instances filter DNS for your whole network. If adguard-1 goes down, adguard-2 keeps filtering — and vice versa. The sync container only pushes configuration; it is not in the DNS query path.


NOTE: If you have any issues, please comment on the original video for assistance

Chris Okamuro
Previous

Poof.
Next

Incredulity