Can’t add Clients to PiHole 5.0

Just upgraded to 5.0 and things went pretty smoothly, but I can’t add clients under the “Clients” tab in Group Management. Under known clients I have “0” and I can’t add any new devices. I currently have all my devices listed in etc/hosts, but would like to add them in the UI so that I can do per client blocking. Also, under the “List or configured clients” it shows that the list is “loading”, but it has been that way for hours now and doesn’t update or stop “loading”.

Please post the token generated by

pihole -d

or do it through the Web interface:

Tools > Generate Debug Log

Hello jfb, here’s the debug token: https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/d0xphdq4ra

*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Web version
[i] Web: v5.0 (https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-update-pi-hole/249)
[i] Branch: master
[i] Commit: v5.0-0-gb86e4a3
[i] Status: ?? style/vendor/Night_Pihole/

You have added an additional file to the web interface, a dark theme by the looks of things. Can you please run the following to see if you still have the same issue with a completely stock install:

cd /var/www/html/admin && sudo git reset --hard

If it works on stock, but not with the theme, then you're going to need to contact the developer of the theme to let them know it does not work with v5.0

@anon94500823 Furthermore, note that Pi-hole will ship an integrated dark mode in v5.1. Users can still add themes for maximum flexibility. You may want to ask the maintainer of this theme to check if they want to get it embedded into (and shipped with) Pi-hole.

That theme was added with the older PiHole, I figured that would be overwritten with the new install, but it wasn’t. Either way, I ran the commands you mentioned and still no change.

I tried resetting it and it didn’t work. I’m gonna restore a backup, remove the theme, then try updating again. I’ll report back.

Tried restoring a backup and everything failed. I think unbound is causing some kind of issue as I get no DNS resolution after restoring a working backup. I guess I have to start all over with this installation. Sucks.

Do the other pages, such as group management, work?

Hello. I managed to fix it with a completely new install. The theme was indeed causing issues although I tried removing it. I was able to add groups and clients successfully. But, I have a question. The “Default” group is applied to all clients, is it safe to remove the default label and add the custom labels I created? Also, should I remove all the clients from etc/hosts on the raspberry pi? Will it cause conflicts with the Clients list on PiHole?

Excellent news.

You can remove all the clients from the default group, but you cannot delete it the group itself

Oh ok thanks. After adding the groups and clients blocking has went down to 0!!! Do I have to apply the block lists to these client groups individually? These domains were blocked before and now they’re going through. I should have held back on updating till I got a better understanding of all this. I just ran PiHole up as part of my regular maintenance and updated to 5.0. I really wouldn’t have updated on my main device.

Yes, the blocklists need to be assigned to a group also. This way you can have, for example 10 blocklists and 2 groups. Maybe you only want 5 of those blocklists on group A, but all 10 on group B.

The docs probably explain it better than I:

https://docs.pi-hole.net/database/gravity/groups/

A real world example:

You have two blocklists on your pi-hole. One for blocking ads, and another for blocking porn. You have always wanted to have the porn blocked for the sake of your kids, but you are fed up with manually changing the DNS servers on the adults computers to circumvent these blocklists.

With groups, you can now separate them out and have two distinct groups "Adults" and "Kids".

In the adlist page of the group menu, you can now assign both blocklists to the "Kids" group, and only the ads one to the "Adults" group.

adultskids

I just ran PiHole up as part of my regular maintenance and updated to 5.0

This is why we don't have a mechanism to auto update Pi-hole, things can change drastically between one major version and the next. We always advise to read the release notes thoroughly before updating :slight_smile:

5.0 with everything set to default is basically the same as 4.x (superficially, anyway)

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Thanks for the explanation. I had absolutely no idea PiHole 5.0 was available. I just ran PiHole -up as part of my routine maintenance. When things broke I was unable to revert to a backup because unbound was not working after the restore. I just deleted all the groups and blocking was enabled again. I’ll look over the documentation and learn what’s new and how it works. Thanks for the help.

A post was split to a new topic: No clients in V5

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