DHCP issues with NetworkManager hotspot on raspberry pi 5

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1

The issue I am facing:

I can't connect to a networkmanager hotspot hosted on a raspberry pi, and it gives me this error when I try to connect:

Warning in dnsmasq core:
no address range available for DHCP request via wlan0

On my phone, it gets stuck on "Obtaining IP address...".

This seems to be because NM uses it's own dnsmasq (so, even if I apt remove dnsmasq it continues to not work)

Details about my system:

Raspberry pi 5 8GB
Non-docker install.

$ pihole -v
  Pi-hole version is v5.18.2 (Latest: v5.18.2)
  web version is v5.21 (Latest: v5.21)
  FTL version is v5.25.1 (Latest: v5.25.1)
$ nm --version # network manager
GNU nm (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.40
...

What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:

I made a hotspot using network manager and it didn't work correctly

sudo nmcli device wifi hotspot ssid <hotspot name> password <hotspot password> ifname wlan0

Should I try a docker install? Messing with NetworkManager? Something else entirely?

2

This is related to NetworkManager (NM) rather than Pi-hole.

NM is able to start dnsmasq processes as required.
NM configures them via configuration files from /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq-shared.d (for its hotspot service) and /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/ (for its DNS service).

While configuration files are cleanly separated, still both pihole-FTL and NetworkManager's dnsmasq would try to claim port 53 (DNS), and potentially port 67 (DHCP) and port 547 (DHCPv6) at startup - if they would be configured to do so.
So for NM's dnsmasq DHCP service and pihole-FTL's DNS service to coexist, you'd have to make sure that neither one uses the ports of the other.

E.g. you could try to add -port=0 to NM's dnsmasq config files to disable DNS functionality and only leave DHCP.

For further details, you should consider to also consult NetworkManager's documentation and support.