Change "server.document-root" for lighttpd

[bcutter]

The issue I am facing:
I want to change the server.document-root from the default /var/www/html to e. g. /var/www/pihole.

For this I

• renamed the folder with cd /var/www; mv html pihole and
• edited /etc/lighttpd/external.conf to use server.document-root = "/var/www/pihole" and
• restarted lighttpd with sudo service lighttpd restart

That gave an error, lighttpd can not start. Using server.document-root := "/var/www/pihole" in the external.conf works (lighttpd service starts), but now browsing http://pi.hole/admin gives a 404.

I don't know how to achieve this. I checked

• https://docs.pi-hole.net with no results and
• also had a look at the (pretty old) raspbian - How Do I Change Pi-Hole's URL Path? - Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange and also
• found How to change pihole web admin interface path where the author wents a rather brutal way editing core files which seem to be not intentionally used for altering.

Details about my system:
Raspberry Pi OS
Only other external.conf line is server.bind = "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" [local pi-hole server address]

What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:
See above.

[bcutter]

Is this impossible?

[rdwebdesign]

I don't recommend.

From lighttpd point of view is possible, but Pi-hole installer and pihole -up (and maybe a few other functions) expect to find the web interface repo in /var/www/html. This change will break at least the update process and version check.

[bcutter]

Thank you, that's very helpful. I wonder if this "needs to be this way" (static - so maybe it is necessary to have a default path set) or if it's possible to remove those hard coded parts and replace them by a variable/placeholder like it is done for other parts already.

/var/www/html -> /var/www/$webroot where $webroot = pihole|html|whatever