Cant satisfy PTR request for a specific device

Help
1

I have a device (a philips smart soundbar) that hammers the pihole with PTR requests for 1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa , but after searching around and doing the suggested settings I have found, the device still keeps doing the requests. The soundbar is requesting the name for my router, which the pihole cant give, so I added an entry in the local dns from the web GUI. Despite this the requests are still coming. So I added an entry to the etc/hosts as well, which still doesn't work. I have also tried restarting the devices just to be sure.
DHCP is disabled on the router, and enabled on the pihole, conditional forwarding is disabled.
So are there any other methods of giving out the host name for my router? Or is the device in question totally borked?

Expected Behaviour:

That the pihole can respond to a PTR request for 1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa with the proper hostname for the client located at 192.168.1.1.

Actual Behaviour:

Device keeps sending PTR requests for 1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa despite hostname for that client is set in local dns and etc/hosts.

Debug Token:

KSOM2KHu (the problematic device in question has IP 192.168.1.139)

2

Your debug log shows that Pi-hole is correctly answering those requests:

*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Pi-hole log
-rw-r--r-- 1 pihole pihole 4.0M Feb 14 08:44 /var/log/pihole.log
   -----head of pihole.log------
   Feb 14 00:00:30 dnsmasq[3628]: query[PTR] 1.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa from 192.168.1.139
   Feb 14 00:00:30 dnsmasq[3628]: /etc/pihole/custom.list 192.168.1.1 is kviknet.lan

Pi-hole does not and cannot control client-side (mis)behaviour.
It is just listening for DNS requests in order to answer them.

Your client decides on any DNS query it sends.

You'd have to address this on the offending client, i.e. your soundbar.

You'd have to consult your soundbar's documentation and support for any details on if and how you would be able to control that behaviour.

3

Thank you for your swift reply. I had a feeling that pihole was doing as it should. There is hardly anything that can be done with the soundbar, it is just a "dumb" device. I think it might be so "dumb" that maybe it cant handle host names with a period in? Since the previous DHCP server, the router, didnt add any suffix like ".lan". Either way I am at a loss, but I will take this issue to the manufacturer :slight_smile:

4

I'm not overly confident that changing Pi-hole's reply would impact your client's behaviour, but you could try to change your custom name to a plain kviknet to confirm or reject your suffix assumption.

5

I havent added the suffix to the hosts file or local dns, it is added by the pihole. If I want to remove it I would have to remove the ".lan" suffix from the advanced DHCP settings.

6

Since you are using Pi-hole as your DHCP server, try unticking Never forward non-FQDNs to avoid Pi-hole's domain name being tacked on automatically.

7

Thank you, I have disabled that function now and will do some testing. I have also sent a support ticket to Philips, but I doubt that will have have any effect, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1 Like
8

Welp, didn't work. Pihole correctly responds with the hostname without ".lan" but still no dice. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Dang, this is really annoying, but there isn't really anything I can do about it sadly.

9

Sorry that I can't provide more help. :frowning:
(Don't forget to reenable that "Never forward..." option.)

10

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