Can't connect to raspberry Pi after enabling DHCP

Help
1

Expected Behaviour:

DHCP server provided by pi-hole does not work. My router doesn’t allow to change DNS records so I use DHCP instructins

What I did:

  1. I installed Pi-hole software on my raspberry PI successfully, no issues.
  2. On my home router I assigned my raspberry PI a static IP: 192.168.1.2
  3. On Pi-hole interface I enabled DHCP server to handle IP addresses: from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.200. (raspberry PI address is outside this range!).
  4. I restarted everything
  5. I expected that now all devices will get an IP address from range that I set and ads are blocked

Screenshot 2026-01-03 at 15.21.42
Screenshot 2026-01-03 at 15.21.421312×1111 94.2 KB

IMG_9314
IMG_93141179×1547 113 KB

(It’s in Polish, I couldn’t change the language of this silly app, basically first toggle turns off DHCP server)

Actual Behaviour:

  1. Now I lost connection to my raspberry PI. When I do nmap to find connected devices I am getting:
➜  ~ nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24
Starting Nmap 7.98 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2026-01-03 15:01 +0100
Nmap scan report for myrouter.home (192.168.1.1) # ROUTER
Host is up (0.0063s latency).
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.56 # LAPTOP
Host is up (0.00055s latency).
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.152 # PHONE
Host is up (0.032s latency).
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (3 hosts up) scanned in 22.71 seconds

raspberry PI is gone? Also these addresses weren’t assigned by raspberry PI (Laptop is outside allowed range)

Copilot suggested to add/create this

interface eth0  # or wlan0 for Wi-Fi
static ip_address=192.168.1.2/24
static routers=192.168.1.1  # Your router's IP
static domain_name_servers=127.0.0.1  # Pi uses Pi-hole for DNS

to

sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

I tried with eth0 and wlan0 (my raspberry Pi currently is connected via WiFi) and none has worked.

What am I doing wrong or missing?

Thanks!

Debug Token:

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/FtY1n5YQ/

Static IP Not Working
2

Hi,

You need to use this command

sudo systemctl restart pihole-FTL

This ensures the DHCP service is listening for new requests.

1 Like
3

Are you sure your system uses dhcpcd?

1 Like
4

Check below one from a few days ago:

EDIT:

Ps, how do you expect the Pi to get above IP assigned from the router if you disable its DHCP service?

2 Likes
5

Thanks for all replies, so:

The problem was that my raspberry PI was not using DHCPD server. @deHakkelaar pointed me to the right topic. I am using Debian 12 and dhcpd didn’t work for me. That was a solution for me: Trying to understand why Pi-hole DHCP no longer works with my Virgin Hub 3.0. - #9 by deHakkelaar

This topic can be closed now

1 Like
6

Be careful not to mix the two!

dhcpcd is the DHCP client daemon contained in the dhcpcd-base package:

$ apt-file search bin/dhcpcd
dhcpcd-base: /usr/sbin/dhcpcd

And dhcpd is the DHCP server daemon contained in the isc-dhcp-server package:

$ apt-file search bin/dhcpd
isc-dhcp-server: /usr/sbin/dhcpd

Nice you got it sorted.

1 Like