Thank You... I was lost in the forest...
OK so 'fresh' pihole -up on 'clean' sd card.
Verified 'usermod -a -G pihole www-data ' (only) writes whitelist BUT gives error something went wrong
sudo tail -F /var/log/apache2/{access,error}.log
-
- 'Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function utf8_encode() in /var/www/html/admin/api_FTL.php:393\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/html/admin/api.php(165): require()\n#1 {main}\n thrown in /var/www/html/admin/api_FTL.php on line 393,'
Which was fixed by - - "Client activity is empty, Query Log error" - - sudo apt-get install php-xml
Again, thank you - all resolved.