Cannot reach admin interface but pihole is working and blocking ads

[1000yroldenglishking]

Expected Behaviour:

I should be able to reach the admin interface at http://192.168.1.4/admin

Actual Behaviour:

Browser is unable to connect. I've tried multiple browsers

Debug Token:

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/ooisd0lcfn

Details

I've installed pihole on an old phone connected with a LAN adapter and with a static IP of 192.168.1.4. I can ssh into the linux distro on the phone and see pihole status as well as pihole tail working fine. In my ASUS AC-86U router, I've set LAN DNS Server to the IP of the Pihole.

[JoelJeezy]

Hi @1000yroldenglishking, this intrigued me so I did a little research on this and found a possible solution...

In your screenshot, you have the checkbox "Advertise your router's IP in addition to user-specified DNS" checked. This results in both your router’s IP and the pihole’s IP being advertised to devices on your network. I don’t know if this is the cause of your admin page issue or not, but its worth ensuring that ONLY your pihole IP is marked as a DNS by your router.

Try unchecking that advertise router IP for DNS checkbox and see if your network device can load the admin page.

One other thing, since your pihole is statically assigned you might want to set the DHCP range to start at 192.168.1.5. (or higher) to completely block DHCP from the possibility of assigning the pihole IP address (192.168.1.4) to another device on your network. If pihole static IP is outside the range of DHCP, it would eliminate one variable in future troubleshooting.

[1000yroldenglishking]

Thanks for taking a look Joel. I've tried both ideas but it still doesn't load the admin page.

[1000yroldenglishking]

I solved this by running sudo service lighttpd restart but now the admin interface shows "FTL offline". Created a follow up topic here pihole-FTL and lighttpd services don't start in chroot environment