See also a better way: Pi-Hole DNS Sinkhole and Add Blocker

The /etc/hosts file contains name resolution info that overrides DNS. You might add entries in the /etc/hosts file that is not in DNS.

Here we use the /etc/hosts file as an ad filter.

Here is a public hosts file that we will use as a starting point:

wget http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt

vim hosts.txt

Remove all lines before # [Start of entries generated by MVPS HOSTS] and append the rest to your own /etc/hosts file…or continue on to add the second list.

Here we download another list and concatenate it with the previously downloaded list of adservers and your existing /etc/hosts file:

wget -O hosts "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=0&startdate[day]=&startdate[month]=&startdate[year]=&mimetype=plaintext"
sed -i 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/g' hosts
cat hosts >> hosts.txt

vim hosts.txt

# Set to unix file format
:set ff=unix

# Strip out DOS carriage returns - enter Ctrl-v Ctrl-m to input the ''^M''
:%s/^M//g

# Strip all blank lines and comment lines
:g/\v^(#|$)/d

# Sort and remove duplicate lines
:sort u

cat hosts.txt >> /etc/hosts

http://wiki.contribs.org/Block_Adware_Sites

Here we use both adserver lists together:

wget http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt

mv hosts.txt /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/hosts/30hosts

vim  /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/hosts/30hosts

Remove all lines before “#start of lines added by WinHelp2002” and save.

Now we add the contents of another list:

wget -O hosts "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=0&startdate[day]=&startdate[month]=&startdate[year]=&mimetype=plaintext"

cat hosts >> /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/hosts/30hosts

expand-template /etc/hosts